Sega Mega Drive for me. We had knock off NES consoles in my country with 100 in 1 cartridges but we just called those “TV games”. Nintendo never bothered with any non first world country back then, so pirates picked up the slack. I don’t think I even knew of the ‘Nintendo’ brand when I was a little kid until I started using the internet and collecting magazines.
But Sega wasn’t quite as stiff upper lip and exclusive as Nintendo and had no problem with lowering themselves and selling their goods to us plebs in the 3rd world. So Sega was the premium brand here and “TV games” were just cheap shit in comparison in my eyes.
We had a knock off NES when I was a little kid (called a Pegasus) but my first actual legit name brand console was the Sega Mega Drive.
Wish I still had it. When I was about 13, I went through a really dumb phase for about 1 month total where I decided I was too grown up for this stuff and I sold my Mega Drive and comics for enough money to buy one CD, probably of a band that I don’t even listen to anymore. Regret it to this day.
Brazil wasn’t much different in regards to being ignored by Nintendo and Sega picking up the slack and money, first with their Master System then with the Mega Drive.
The thing with the infinite amounts of famiclones was that the original Famicom was fully made of off-the-shelf parts, that is, if you know how to solder stuff, you can make one by yourself if you buy the components. When Nintendo started considering the Brazilian market, they realized they were too late: our local famiclones were better machines, with some of them having slots for both western and Japanese cartridges.
