just been talking about this in the IRC to an ever dwindling audience, so I guess I'll bring it in here. you may know of the
Mega Duck handheld, which is fairly close to being a Game Boy clone (but incompatible) & has a bunch of Sachen games and a silly name. it also received an interesting spinoff in Germany in the form of the
Mega Duck Lerncomputer which looks like it did the Game Boy Printer before Nintendo did.
anyway no one really seems to know who made it; there are a bunch of names attached to it like Hartung and Creatronic and Videojet and Timlex, most of which seem to be distributors, so I decided to have a look into it.
Timlex seemed like the most likely suspect since their name is on The Brick Wall, the first game for the system and one of the few not made by Sachen. so I found
this and
this pretty quickly which seem to conclusively link it to them.
but then, who were Timlex? did they do anything else? the answer would seem to be yes -
http://hongkong.mingluji.com/Timlex_International_Limited this page reveals
two website URLs, timlex.com and welback.com.hk, &
this one reveals a Chinese name 添益國際有限公司. both websites are gone now, but archived copies of timlex.com list a bunch of products including early digital cameras and LCD games (seemingly just standalone stuff, including some licensed from Japanese companies, no Mega Duck) & Welback seems to be the parent company, incorporated in Bermuda obv as a tax dodge (Watara did something similar I think).
anyway searching for Welback I found a press release from the console's launch:
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/welback-holdings-launches-mega-duck-game--6934& that slightly unfortunately they seem to have made a massive loss the year following its release:
http://www.scmp.com/topics/welback-holdingsbut even under that name the trail seems to run cold around 2003 or so. OR DOES IT.
no! because Welback Holdings has been renamed a series of times, nicely summarised here:
http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/SCPLY/company-infoit went from Welback Holdings to Terabit Access Technology International to Ruili Holdings and now operates under the name See Corporation Limited.
(edit: also its hard to say with all these arcane tax-dodging corporate maneouvres going on but I guess
Welback Enterprises might have been what remained of the electronics division, but it was closed in 2011)
I can't find See Corporation's website anywhere, but evidently they have
moved into the entertainment industry, and here's a summary from
Google:
- Quote:
-
See Corporation Limited acts as an investment holding company. The Company operates in five segments: film and TV program production, event production, artiste and model management, music production, investment in securities and investment in a pay TV operation. Film and TV program production segment include four films and two TV program, Love Is The Only Answer, Marriage With A Liar, MicroSex Office and All About Love, respectively for films, and Rough Justice and The Dragon Gate for TV programs.The Company produces music albums for its artistes. Its subsidiaries include Anyone Holdings Limited, Cross Challenge Limited, Day Achieve Limited, Ease Strong Limited, Grand Class Investment Limited, Icon International Model Management Limited and others.[/quote]
and here, finally, is a trailer for their movie MicroSex Office.
so thats where the story of the Mega Duck ends. not with a bang, but with a dubious Hong Kong sex comedy.
Featuring a character called "Breasty".
