One interesting thing about Gowin's older monochrome games, as discussed in
this thread, is that they're credited to a semiconductor company named Syntek (which is absolutely not to be confused with Sintax). According to the Taiwanese intellectual property office's
trademark entry for Syntek, the trademark is owned by, well, Syntek Semiconductor. Or, in Chinese, 太欣
tai xin. And yes,
they still exist.
So what trademarks does Syntek have? Well,
Prince YehRude, for one,
Magic Ball, for another. I don't see any others related to unlicensed GB games, though
this 1992 logo of theirs (which they're still using; see their web site above!) can also be found in the ROMs.
But here's the interesting thing. The agent who filed the Syntek trademark is named He Lianguo (何連國). Apparently this guy does trademark registrations for a lot of folks in Taiwan, judging from a search for the name. But what's particularly interesting is that he also
owns some trademarks... things like
New GB,
New GB Color, and
V.Fame.
Coincidence? Could easily be, given that the guy seems to be a big trademark lawyer or something. But it's still worth mentioning.
Speaking of Gowin, incidentally, the name "Gua Gua Dragon" has existed
since 1994, though the actual mascot only seems to have been
trademarked in 1999 (in a much uglier variation than we're familiar with!). The current Gua Gua Dragon, however, only came about
two years after that. (Also, I'd never noticed that his belly is a Game Boy. That's amusing.)
Oh, this is bizarre. Y'know whose logo is buried in the graphics for Gowin's School Fighter? SYNTEK. Same logo as in Prince YehRude, exactly. I don't see anything else that's left over from one of the monochrome games either, which makes it even weirder.