Aaronix Industries (嘉霖行股份有限公司) or simply Aaronix, is a Taiwanese electronics company most well-known for distributing the SG-1000 II and the Master System in Taiwan as well as creating Zonic Electronics, who would become one of the most important Famiclone makers in China. The company was founded in 1980 by Jiawen Tsai (蔡嘉文).[1]
Involvement with Sega[]
Due to legal restrictions, Sega could not release their systems in Taiwan. So they partnered with Aaronix in 1985 to release both the SG-1000/II and the Master System in Taiwan. Some models even seem to come with Terebi Oekaki. Similar to Samsung in South Korea, Aaronix would not just release Sega's products, they would also modify the games they released to remove any mention of Sega and would sometimes even change the name of the game. Aaronix would even pirate games originally from the Othello Multivision. (A licensed SG-1000 clone)
Aaronix would later start converting MSX games to work on the SG-1000. They would also release an accessory known as the 8kB RAM Adapter to play certain MSX games which required more RAM. One of the games they released, The Castle, already had an official release for the SG-1000. But the cart came with extra RAM which would make the game more expensive to produce. So possibly as a solution, they released this game for the 8kB Adapter.
Famiclones[]
Due to poor sales caused by their competitor, Way-Up Corp. (a company who would release pirated SG-1000 games and clones), starting around 1987, Aaronix started to sell Famiclones under both their main name and as Zonic Electronics. By 1989, their systems would hold 45% of the entire video game production industry in Taiwan and additionally held 65% of all market distribution.[1] Aaronix's Famiclones claimed to be higher quality than both Japan and the competition and would usually make models ranging from low to high-end. They would also give these consoles to distributors to release outside of Taiwan.
Released Software[]
SG-1000[]
All of these are conversions of MSX games by Konami with a few exceptions
- Cabbage Patch Kids
- Circus Charlie (Features two title screens. One in Chinese)
- Hyper Olympic (MSX)
- Hyper Sports 2
- Konami's Tennis
- Magical Tree
- Konami's Ping Pong
- Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Requires 8kB RAM Adapter[]
- The Castle (MSX) (Features two title screens. One in Chinese)
- The Goonies (Known on the title screen as 七寶奇謀)
- Magical Kid Wiz (Features two title screens. One in Chinese)
Also released by Way-Up Corp.[]
Aaronix's conversions of these games (unlike Way-Up Corp.'s) don't require the 8kB RAM Adapter and they don't modify the game in anyway.
- Bomberman Special
- Rally-X
- Road Fighter
NES/Famicom[]
- 64-in-1
Trivia[]
- A device test program credited to them would later be seen on various modern plug'n plays, including systems containing a specific 200-in-1 multigame software and several licensed systems. This does not clearly indicate if Aaronix is still active in the modern day, though.
Gallery[]
