Steepler Ltd.

Steepler Ltd.
Origin:	Russia
Year of foundation:	1992
Year of collapse:	1996

Steepler Ltd. (also refered to as 'Dendy Company') is one of the unlicensed game distributors founded in 1992 by Andrew Cheglakov. It's being infamous for their own Dendy Classic and Dendy Junior famiclones as well as their extensive advertisement campaign which includes Video-Uss Dendy magazine and Dendy: The New Reality TV show. Having a large shop network all over the former USSR, they collapsed somewhere about the 32-bit era in the year 1996.

History and Overview

1992: The beginning

Before Dendy actually started to exist, the gaming in former USSR was sparse. The most widespread 'species' known to be exist in those times were LD handhelds like Elektronika's clones of Game & Watch or Chinese Brick Boy units. Less popular consoles were ZX Spectrum and its' clones; the list is being ended with imported stuff like Atari consoles or Chinese famiclones. This year's December is known for Dendy (that will become Dendy Classic next year). For this, a shop on Petrovka Street was opened where Dendies were sold $94 each, as well as cartridges and peripheral. The lack of money at the very beginning was mostly compensated with the TV advertisement featuring the infamous phrase "Денди, Денди, мы все любим Денди! Денди - играют все!" ('Dendy, Dendy, we all love Dendy! Dendy - everyone's in the game!', this catchphrase will eventually hit the intro of The New Reality show). Alongside, December seemed to be a good time for New Year presents, and Dendy console became the best option for parents who chased for New Year presents for their kids.

1993: Expansion in the elephant family

The end of this year (possibly November) introduced Video-Uss Dendy magazine.

1995: Suponev introduces GameBoy, Video-Uss introduces Great Dragon

This year becomes disasterous for Steepler. Aside from doing good in the beginning of this year, Steepler eventually started to collapse.

1996: Eventual collapse

Not exactly known what led Steepler to bankruptcy. Rumor has it that the contract with Nintendo was the reason due to the licensed cartridges and consoles not being sold because of their price being higher than the price of pirated ones.

Products They Sold

Dendy Classic and Dendy Junior

Probably, their most infamous products are still Dendy Classic and Dendy Junior famiclones. According to the 'Kommersant' newspaper's legacy articles, they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company (the title of which is promised to not to be mentioned in the article, later on, it turns out to be Acer) but the actual manufacturer of them is believed to be Tenzor factory in Russia. Aside from being widely advertised, the factor that influenced their high popularity was relatively cheap price and high reliabilty as well as guarantee, which is usually not presented in case with Chinese famiclones. Even to these days, Dendies are proved to be a 'bulletproof' hardware compared to the newer famiclones like Magistr (sold by New Game).

All cartridges actually come from China, however, instead of being sold directly in the stores, they got Dendy brand back stickers and carton box inside which they were wrapped (with 'TV GAME CARTRIDGE FOR DENDY' on the front).

Aside from wide range of cartridges, Steepler presented a lot of extra peripherals for Dendy like Beretta Gapdone lightgun or OWL Pad.

PRO 16-Bit

Little known about this console, perhaps it's meant to be a hardware clone of SEGA MegaDrive II that actually has been sold along with the actual imported MDII yet had cheaper price.

SEGA MegaDrive II

This is nothing else than the actual SEGA MegaDrive II imported from Japan. However, it's not truly know if there were imported cartridges or not, however it's clear that not all the games were delivered from SEGA.

In some episodes of The New Reality, Suponev shows a Mega Key cartridge which is actually a tool that helps to override region lock.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Steepler is known to have a deal with Nintendo to 'build the bridge' that will bring SNES consoles, cartridges and accesoiries to the former USSR in 1994. Dendy: The New Reality probably played a primary role in advertising SNES among children despite having really high prices.

Media

Ott Vinta!

Steepler is known to sponsor the first episodes of Ott Vinta! (lit. Taking Off!) computer game reviwing show hosted by Anton Zaicev as Gameover and Boris Repetur as Bonus. The show, however, lived longer than Steepler did.

Adventures of Dendy the Elephant

A 17-minute short cartoon made by Argus International, Приключения Слонёнка Dendy (mistranslated as Adventures of Elephant Dendy, keeping the Russian word order). The plot of the cartoon is pretty generic: The Boss, who terrorizes the peaceful city where Dendy's corporation is prospering, decides to get Dendy out of his way. Meanwhile, the little elephant prepares for a world tour with a purpose to 'make everyone in the world play Dendy'. On his trip, he brings only one suitcase. The Boss's henchmen are up to replace this suitcase with the bomb one, but eventually confuse both of them and take the wrong one. The henchmen also attempted to replace a bottle of champagne with poison, but, obviously enough, they failed yet again. In the end, Dendy and his newly hired Secretary go on a trip without any accidents while Boss's headquarters collapse in an explosion made by the bomb suitcase.

Frankly enough, Dendy is the only character in the cartoon to be called by name. Also, despite this cartoon has a purpose similar to a motion picture, The Wizard, the plot is more elusive and 'cliffhangerish' than The Wizard's.

Interestingly, Dendy's grandgrandfather drawn on the picture is shown in this cartoon.

Advertisement

Steepler is known to be advertised on the television. Some of their ads are known to be shown during the broadcast of Dendy: The New Reality show.

Trivia

• Ivan Maximov was in charge of designing Dendy the Elephant, Steepler's probably most infamous trademark.

Gallery (Hardware)

Dendy Classic's box (with the Steepler's logo on it). Shot by Valera Kibiks.

Dendy Classic bundled with gamepads, DC adapter, manual and warranty card. Shot by Valera Kibiks.

Dendy Classic's manual, warranty card, registration card and cash cheque. Shot by Valera Kibiks.

Dendy Junior's box (with Steepler's logo on it). Shot by andrey228.

Dendy Junior's box (rear side). Shot by andrey228.

Dendy Junior's peripherals and manual. Shot by andrey228.

Dendy Junior console, gamepads, AC adapter and RC transmitter (in case if the TV set had no video/audio inputs, mostly like old Soviet TV sets). Shot by andrey228.

Beretta lightgun's box. Shot by Valera Kibiks.

Beretta lightgun in a package. Shot by Valera Kibiks.

Steepler's early design of cartridges' package boxes. These always had holes to show the sticker of the cartridge itself (in this case, TMNT Tournament Fighters). Shot by clockwork.

Steepler's early design of cartridges' package boxes. Rear view. Shot by clockwork.