NTDEC

NTDEC / Asder
Logo.
Origin	Xinyi district, Taipei, Taiwan
Years	1983-Present
Consoles	Famicom / NES
First game	Pokey
Sounds used	NTDEC
Aliases	Mega Soft, Caltron, Multi-Idea Co., Ltd
Related companies	Rex Soft, Tip Top

NTDEC (Nintendo Electronic Co., 任天堂電子有限公司) is a company that produced pirate Famicom and NES cartridges from 1988 to 1991, and numerous unlicensed original games from 1991 onwards, although the company itself has been active since 1983. Since 1993 it has operated under the name Asder (亞斯德科技有限公司), and currently produces children's educational products.

History

Early history

Pirate copy of Life Force with the copyright crediting NTDEC. (Salamander name on cartridge but Life Force in-game)

According to Asder's website, the company was founded in 1983, but its activities at this point were unknown. The Famicom was released the same year but widespread piracy of its games had not yet begun. It may have been involved in Atari 2600 games, or non-gaming products.

Piracy (1988-1991)

NTDEC produced a large number of pirate copies of Japanese Famicom games between 1988 and 1991, which were sold worldwide. Unusually among pirate cartridge manufacturers, NTDEC cartridges are often identifiable by the company logo on the cartridge and the in-game copyright notice modified to read "NTDEC", as well as the rear label featuring a green "QUALITY GUARANTY" (sic) stripe (although this label was also used by other companies).

Two NTDEC employees were arrested in 1991 for the company's activities distributing cartridges in the US, and legal action was brought against the company by Nintendo shortly after for copyright infringement, as well as its use of the "Nintendo" trademark in its company name.

NTDEC original games (1991-1993)

Before 1991, NTDEC is only known to have released one original game, Pokey (1989). However, between 1991 and 1993, NTDEC published many more original games in Asia, some of which were distributed in parts of South America and Europe. Most of the games released in 1991 used the "Mega Soft" name, but the "Caltron" name was used for several releases in 1992, including the Caltron 6-in-1. This is possibly the most well-known of NTDEC's products as it received a release in many more countries than their previous games, including the US. Caltron itself listed a Los Angeles address and phone number on a survey card included with the game; this was presumably the address also used by the US "Mega Soft" company named in Nintendo's lawsuit. However, after this point NTDEC appears to have abandoned both the Mega Soft and Caltron names, and simply used its own name in its games.

Asder (1993-Present)

Nintendo's legal action of 1991 concluded in 1993 with Nintendo being awarded $24,059,062 plus attorneys fees of $108,829.00 and costs of $709.80, and a worldwide permanent injunction preventing NTDEC from infringing Nintendo's intellectual property rights. At this point the company ceased operations under the NTDEC name. However it appears to have simply renamed itself to Asder Electronic Co., Ltd, which continued to produce NTDEC's Famiclones, and released educational computer systems and TV game joypads containing Mega Soft games, as well as several original Famicom titles continuing NTDEC's CN-xx numbering.

Asder is not known to have developed any original Famicom games since 1994, although it released the Famicom-based PC-95 keyboard presumably in 1995, and another Famicom-based keyboard, the PC-2000, possibly in 2000. It currently produces educational products such as children's "laptops" with simple low-res mono LCD screens, as well as a keyboard-based plug & play TV system and its own educational game console, the "A.Smart", but the latter two systems appear to be based on a 16- or even 32-bit architecture rather than Famiclone hardware.

List of games produced by NTDEC

As NTDEC / Mega Soft / Caltron

Name	Released	Description	Cart No.
Pokey	1989	A compilation of small gambling games.	(CN-04 ?)
Fighting Hero	1991	A port of the original Street Fighter	CN-01
Hit Marmot	1991	A whack a mole type of game.	CN-02
Magic Block	1991	Sliding puzzle challenge.	CN-03
Balloon Monster	1991	Super Buster Bros. clone.	CN-05
Magic Carpet 1001	1991	Horizontal shoot-'em-up.	CN-06
War in the Gulf	1991	Horizontal shoot-'em-up.	CN-07
Bookyman	1991	Graphic hack of Brush Roller. Seemingly replaced by Cosmos Cop in the ID line.	CN-08
Cosmos Cop	1991	Clone of Space Harrier.	CN-08 (NES: CN-09)
Adam & Eve	1992 (?)	Clone of Balloon Fight.	CN-09
Porter	1992	Some port of Sokoban.	CN-10
Super Gun	1992	Vertical repetitive shoot-'em-up.	CN-12
Destroyer	1992	Vertical shooter.	CN-13
Go! Benny!	1992	Horizontal shoot-'em-up.	CN-14 (?)
Sea of Dreamland	1992	Horizontal shooter.	CN-15
Tank	1992	Horizontal shooter.	CN-16
Dream Fighter	1992	One-on-one fighting game.	CN-17
Skate Boy	1992	Horizontal skating game. Clone of Metro-Cross	CN-18
Fighting Hero III	1993	Sequel to Fighting Hero with game mechanics more akin to Street Fighter II.	CN-19
Chik Bik Ji Jin - Saam Gwok Ji (三國志-赤壁之戰)	1993 (?)	A port of Warriors of Fate.	CN-20
JP Ronny	1993	Platformer game.	CN-23
Master Shooter	1993	Zapper game. Last game as NTDEC.	CN-26

As Asder

Name	Released	Description	Cart No.
San Guo Zhi: Qun Xiong Zheng Ba 三国志群雄争霸	1993 (?)	One-on-one fighting game.	CN-21
Cobra Mission	1994	Zapper game in the veins of Hogan's alley.	CN-27
Zhen Ben - Zhi You Ji 真本西游记	1994		CN-28
Huang Di 黃帝: 涿鹿之戰	1994 (?)	Action-platformer game.	CN-29
Asder PC-95	1995	Educational cartridge sold in Arabic countries as well as Poland and South Korea. PC-98 is a later update of the software sold in other countries.

Multicarts

As NTDEC main focus was not the production of their own Famicom titles, they released numerous multicarts containing Nintendo-licensed games starting around 1989. However, most of these cartridges are generally not explicitely credited to NTDEC hence they will not be included in the following list.

Name	Released	Description	Cart No.
Caltron 6-in-1	1992	Compilation of early NTDEC titles.	CN-11
Caltron 9-in-1	1992	Unreleased compilation of NTDEC titles with different games from the released 6-in-1.	N/A
Asder 20-in-1	1993 or 1997	Compilation of various titles from the NTDEC and ASDER library as of 1993. Also features some multicart exclusives such as Benico, Top Hunter and some poker-related games.
Powerful 250 Powerful 250 in One	1991	Large compilation of japanese games with some hacked. Features as well Pyramid and Hidden Chinese Chess by Sachen.
1000-in-1 (and variants)	1991 (?)	Compilation of about 30 licensed games from Japan such as Rockman. Monkey King is present on the menu splash screen.

Unreleased

• Dragon Palace Adventure - Advertised in some manuals included in NTDEC games released around 1991.

The Pearl Turn screenshot.

• The Pearl Turn - Listed on a Famiclone box with other Mega Soft games, whether it was released or not is unknown.

Other Famicom products

• NT-xx series Famiclones
• NTDEC Stick Turbo Jr. - clone of the ASCII stick going by the same name.
• Asder PC-2000 - Some Famiclone shaped like a portable computer with integrated educational software (?)

Related games

These have features such as fonts and the sound engine in common with NTDEC/Asder's games, and as such may have shared some development staff, but they appear to have been released by other companies.

• Elfland (1992, credited to Tip Top) and subsequent games from this developer such as Super Fighter III.
• Lethal Weapon (1994, credited to Aoji Go Go) (Actually a port of Lethal Enforcers; unrelated to the film or NES game of the same name)
• All games by Rex Soft

Trivia

• The sound effect used in the Asder intro is almost identical to one from S.C.A.T..
• NTDEC originals were distributed in South Korea by Game Line.
• NTDEC apparently sold Memory Controllers chips (most notably MMC3 clones) to smaller publishers in the early days. It would have been too expensive for those to produce their own.
• In Argentina, NTDEC had a subsidiary named NTD C.

References

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