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History
In 1993, Welback Holdings, a known electronic games and toys makers from Hong Kong decided to launch yet another competitor to the Nintendo Game Boy. After the Gamate by Bit Corporation (1990), Game Master by Hartung (1990) and the Watara Supervision (1992), Welback Holdings thought they would be the one to create a successful competitor to the king of handhelds. While the console manufacturing would be handled by Welback Holdings themselves, the commercial activities would be handled by Timlex International, a division of Welback Holdings. This included patenting the console, publishing the consoles and games, finding distributors, etc.
Timlex International reached out to long-time partner to distribute its new handheld including Creatronic, Videojet, Cougar USA and Hartung. For games development, Timlex International chose to partner with Sachen, a Taiwaneses developer known for their unlicensed games for Game Boy and Mega Drive/Genesis and licensed games for the Supervision. Games by Sachen would be published under both the Sachen and Commin branding.
Release
Released on August 27, 1993 the system was released simultaneously in Europe and Brazil. In Brazil, the console was distributed by Cougar USA which decided to change the name of the handheld to Cougar Boy.
Demise
The Mega Duck’s demise came pretty quickly. Almost 4 years after the release of Game Boy, the Mega Duck had very similar hardware and was not that much cheaper than its competitors. The console suffers from poor quality titles and brought no innovation to the table. At that time, the GameBoy was already well established and had a great line-up of games. With next to no marketing done for it, the console quickly faded into obscurity. The Mega Duck would later on reincarnate itself into the Mega Duck Super Junior Computer, a learning computer released in 1995.
Console
There’s 3 known variation of the consoles:
Mega Duck |
Mega Duck (Hartung) | Cougar Boy |
Games
At least 24 games were released for the console, with at least 37 being planned as demonstrated by the numbering. It is possible that other games exist out there.
¹ The Four in One games contain the following games:
- Virus Atack
- Electron World
- Trouble Zone
- Dice Block – Sachen
² The Five in One game contain the following games:
- Store Tris 1
- Store Tris 2
- Taiwan Mahjong
- Japan Mahjong
- Hong Kong Mahjung