Ramar International Co., Ltd. (also goes by Rinco which is a shortened version of their name) was a short-lived publisher and manufacturer for Famicom/NES games. Their only known game to be released was The Dragon but their logo has shown up in the ROMs for some of Hummer Team's games.
Overview[]
As stated, The Dragon was the only known release by Ramar and was the first known game made by a group of ex-Sachen developers. One notable thing about The Dragon itself was that it also used Arabic text, which means Ramar most likely had their focus on Middle Eastern markets as well. They seemingly planned to publish Hummer Team's Space Shuttle Exploration and Panda Adventure, but these games were never released on single-game cartridges; only surfacing on 2000s multicarts and plug & plays by either Trump Grand or ABAB Soft. The Space Shuttle Exploration ROM code contains a Rinco logo, as well as a copyright notice, stating its year of creation as 1996. As to why the game(s) weren't released is unknown, but it's possible that Ramar folded before they got a true release.
There is one further cartridge developed by Ramar, though it is unclear if it was ever fully released (as only one copy of the game is known to exist). It is a multicart labeled "Talking Three in One", featuring The Dragon, a game labeled "Super Street Fighter II", and an Arabic-language hack of Captain Tsubasa. On this cartridge, The Dragon is an otherwise-unknown variant featuring elaborate voice samples, and sampled music in its intro. The "Street Fighter" game is actually titled Os Cavaleiros do Zodíaco, the Portuguese name for Saint Seiya; it is an original fighting game on Hummer Team's engine, with similar sampled sounds to The Dragon.[1]
Their game division seems to have reappeared back in the late 90s/early 2000s at some point but their sole purpose was selling games and multicarts for mainland China only. However, there's no known information on these carts and since Ramar wasn't making enough profit, they decided to retire their game division once more. Afterwards, they started selling GPS and computers under the name Mountain Wise International Co., Ltd. and have no remaining recorded history.
Some Famiclones share the "Rinco" name such as the Thompsonic. They might've manufactured Famiclones at some point but it's unknown when these were sold.
Game List[]
Released Games[]
- The Dragon (standard version)
Unreleased Games[]
- The Dragon ("talking" version)
- Os Cavaleiros do Zodíaco ("talking" version)
- Space Shuttle Exploration (Contains Ramar and Rinco information in the ROM, but the game was only released by Trump Grand and ABAB Soft.)
- Panda Adventure (Contains Rinco information in the ROM, but the game was only released by Trump Grand and ABAB Soft.)
Trivia[]
- Another company's name, Tony Tech, also appears on The Dragon's title screen. It's unknown if this is the true name for the EX-Sachen developers, a possible distributor for Ramar or another alias for them.