History Platform / Dendy

One of the best and one of the weirdest things piracy could ever create, '''Dendy''' brought joy to thousands of UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}n kids during TheNineties and was the console that spawned the first generation of console gamers in Russia. At first, Dendy looks pretty much like your regular bootleg UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem clone, but to Russian gamers, it was so much more. It indeed had almost the same fate as NES, just on a less epic scale. Despite being completely unlicensed by Creator/{{Nintendo}} (although the short-lived publisher of the console, Steepler Ltd., imported Nintendo's consoles legally as well), it boasted many achievements: Millions of sold Famiclones and peripherals, a really huge network with its own brand shops, its own magazine (a la ''Magazine/NintendoPower''), a TV show (think ''Series/{{Starcade}}'' or ''Series/XPlay'') and millions of obsessed fans.

The Russian counterpart to ''Nintendo Power'' began its life as ''Video-Ace: Dendy'' and, design-wise, was pretty bland. However, its publisher ''Video-Ace'' had some experience publishing a few movie magazines and a PC games magazine, and the design was soon upgraded. Some of the articles were translated from ''Joystiq'', again thanks to the publishers' connections. Unlike most of its contemporaries, ''Video-Ace Dendy'' concentrated more on movies, treating video games more like "interactive entertainment", and didn't have annoying ads. Later, however, when the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis first debuted, the Fun Club section rose in popularity and became a name known to Russian gamers as ''The Great Dragon''.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Some games, even if they were reviewed previously, get an in this case pointless re-review. For example: When ''Great Dragon'' was a spinoff, ''Dendy: The New Reality'' magazine reviewed VideoGame/{{Doom}} for [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem SNES]]. Later on, when ''Dendy'' magazine officially died... Doom was reviewed. Again, for the SNES, around the time the UsefulNotes/PlayStation debuted.

** The UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis walkthroughs earn second place, because the walkthroughs for its games were posted even with the fade of '8-bit' part, but the games for it appeared a bit later than the magazine was created. With Fun Club being par with the Genesis section.

* BlatantLies: A gigantic UsefulNotes/GameBoy shown in season two! [[spoiler:Although you may already guess it's a prop with a TV screen with a Super Game Boy plugged in.]]

* TheManBehindTheMan: In Episode #9 of the first season, where the UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem debuted on the show, Suponev tells us about the fact that Mario was made by Creator/{{Nintendo}}. Although he had mentioned that name [[LateArrivalSpoiler by accident]] right in the second episode of the same season.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: A lot of the cartridge labels, if they were done sober or otherwise, were certainly sloppy and trippy, often using artwork that is completely unrelated to the game and often just looks like a load of random images that have been cobbled together for no particular reason. Case in point, the ones presented in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3f3itoyRhE Dendy Chronicles #8]]''.

* DoingItForTheArt: Video-Ace Dendy and its following installments definitely had some soul put in it, inspite of the occasional mistakes.
** For example, say you need to write a one-page review for VideoGame/BattleCity. What you could put here, considering it's a first-generation NES game? But, naturally, one fan's review was so well-written that it included a basic premise, a description of the landscape and the ingame tanks, as well as wishing good luck to the beginner players. Of course, this may sound funny, but yes, it ACTUALLY is well-written, so now whenever it's needed to write a review on this game, the review follows a similar scheme.

* [[BrandNameTakeover Pirate Name Takeover]]: [[Franchise/MortalKombat Ho]] [[FanSpeak Sung Pak]]. Who actually was the actor for Liu Kang in the [[VideoGame/MortalKombat1 first]] and [[VideoGame/MortalKombatII second]] installments of Franchise/MortalKombat.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dendy.jpeg]]

[[Main/NamesTheSame Not to be confused with]] the adorable little intellect from ''WesternAnimation/OKKOLetsBeHeroes''.

As a bootleg console, the Dendy's library is made up of a large number of bootleg games of dubious or even non-existent quality. Actual games made it over via piracy, though they were frequently altered and this occasionally tripped CopyProtection. The system is also capable of playing legitimate Famicom carts due its nature as a clone console.