I would imagine so - everything is currently credited to Hed Arzi. Whether they always had an official license though, I couldn't say
I spent a bit of time working through this - there are so many bizarre rabbit holes, there's a wiki's worth of content in bootleg PC games alone. I fear that site, and probably others, are making assumptions, but there's also a cut-off date for when these bootlegging operations stopped being semi-legitimate. A "Медиа-Лайн" (Media Line) release. How do we know? Because... uh... hmm. I'm getting the impression that the Russian authorities started to clamp down on software piracy around 2005/2006, so the industry was forced underground. Bootleggers stopped putting their names on things, and while people have seemingly discovered the patterns to link the old with the new, I'm not totally sure how invested I want to get into this. Testing new-ish PC games from questionable sources requires a lot more planning than a couple of megabytes of Mega Drive ROMs - it's better tackled by someone who lived through it. And of course if it turns out there are new waves of this garbage to circumvent Western sanctions, that's not something I want to touch.
Today on "poor life choices" https://archive.org/details/smspsxemu Mega Drive emulator and games for your hacked up PlayStations, sold commercially in Russia. What could possibly go wrong? uuhhhhh... Those are some funky looking "Mega Drive" games. Also a needlessly flickery menu. You got your Sonic on my PlayStation. So yes a nice little compilation. ...is what I'd say if the games weren't running at half speed and the audio wasn't god-damned horrendous. I've heard worse things from video games but as far as emulation goes, it's beyond words. Slow, out of tune, and screechy - best not to play with cats or dogs in the room. Where does it originate from? (the audio clipping isn't the uploader's fault - it's really like that in-game) "1st SEGA Mastersystem Emulation CD", or the delightfully named, "PISS". This was originally put together back in 1998, was probably the first of its kind, and the author clearly put a message on the menu apologising for the sound. RGR Studio took all the credits out and sold it to poor people, because they hate you. I was wondering whether Sega Retro needed to care... until I spotted it already does.
Not sure I'm totally in the mood for Chinese Mega Drive bootlegs, but you might be: https://picclick.co.uk/Chinese-Bootleg-Sega-Megadrive-Games-5-are-Sealed-385678877572.html "li Cheng" BootlegGames Wiki has done some of the work. There's probably more to do.
https://picclick.com/SEGA-Games-Collection-Chinese-Big-DVD-Box-203509585484.html or you can take Chinese Mega Drive emulators for PC. All yours for $200.
https://picclick.com/Sonic-Generations-Chinese-Big-Box-Edition-PC-203613024127.html Russian bootlegs are all over the place. Chinese ones, less so. Sonic Generations released for the PC by "Game Cube". Good luck finding information on that.
In between the tat, genuine, licensed, Russian translations: No really. Though apparently these are pretty terrible. The two Sakura Taisen ones in particular - good chunks of the text were supposedly just put through automated translation tools with very little oversight. It's more than fair to say these don't look legitimate - the Sakura Taisen 2 translation didn't come out until late 2008, but I guess that's the biggest piece of evidence, as "Akella" wouldn't have been able to get away with blatantly bootlegging Sega products by then. As usual, Sakura Taisen continues to make my life difficult. I think I've found at least four Taiwanese releases of the second game, as well as a one intended for mainland China, which just happened to be released on the same day. A mixture of radically changing box designs and crappy auction photographs means it's hard to verify anything. Seriously how hard is it to take a digital photograph in a decent resolution, and have your auction site not resize, watermark or compress the hell out of it. All these designer smartphones with a bazillion camera lenses on them, and your shots still look like garbage.
Did you ever get a chance to check that one out? I'd love to hear that it was something different. The only MD SFII hack that I ever ran across was Street Fighter III: 18 Person, which was a bit underwhelming. Here's a pic of the original, unaltered English language bootleg. I always found the cover artwork for bootlegs to be half of the charm. Early releases seemed like they put forth a little more effort in trying to seem legit. For instance, here's an early clipart montage that I've seen used over a bunch of different cartridges in the 90's. And this one here, how did the bootleggers manage to make a back insert artwork without any of the text, logos, or other information? It's not like any of the modern graphic art programs were available at the time. Why they even chose a text-heavy Japanese war sim to bootleg was an additional head scratcher. Saturn bootlegs from the time always seemed to be a rarity for me. While Playstation silvers were all over the place, this was the only pressed Saturn bootleg I ever ran across.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. That's fucking witchcraft right there. The Saturn's copy protection wouldn't be fully cracked until 10 something years ago. How the hell did they press a disc like that?!
Well as someone from the Middle East, I don't have a lot of these bootlegs nowadays as much as I did years prior (especially on non PlayStation consoles). But I will at least share photos of ones I took in the past few years relating to SEGA in someway. North American SEGA CD Bootlegs. One of many, many Mega Drive clones in the region. Some Sega Saturn and Dreamcast bootlegs. I spot WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, Sonic R, Hang on GP, Sonic Adventure and... Daytona USA 2? More Saturn bootlegs, with a mix of North American and Japanese cover art. A few more Saturn bootlegs. And I saved the best for last. A Mega Drive or rather a Game Star System that comes bundled with a Bruce Lee game and... a hat?
