Ending-Man Terminator

Terminator 2 (Chinese: 终结者二; pinyin: Zhōngjié zhě èr; Super Design Ending-Man BS-500 AS) is a video game console sold in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, India, Kenya and Hungary. It was also sold in Italy as "top consolle". It is a hardware clone of the Nintendo Famicom.

The insides of Terminator
Terminator
BS-500 AS (Terminator) with the original controllers, gun and 3 cartridges.
ManufacturerEnding-Man
TypeVideo game console
GenerationThird
Release date1992, reintroduced in late 2019
DiscontinuedAround 2014-2016
MediaROM cartridge
CPU1.66-1.79 MHz emulating 8-bit MOS 6502

Hardware
Processor Emulation of 8-bit MOS 6502 1.66-1.79 MHz
Video Clock 5.37 MHz
Resolution 256 x 240
Colour Palette 25 on screen
(out of 64 possible)
Standard Usually set by jumpers

Usually PAL 50 Hz, can also operate in NTSC, NTSC 4.43 and PAL-60 Hz

Sound 5-channel mono 1 channel noise
1 PCM
3 channels for sounds
Media ROM cartridge
(Nintendo Famicom 60-pin standard)

Background

This particular Nintendo-clone was hugely popular in Poland[1], Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bulgaria,[2][3] Romania, Pakistan, India, Kenya, Iran and Bosnia, throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. The system has gained cult status, and was widely available on flea markets and even in some electronic stores. Due to political and economical restraints, the fourth and the fifth generation consoles such as the Sega Mega Drive, SNES, or PlayStation were not readily available in these countries. The third generation remained highly popular, particularly Terminator 2 which was the one of most successful Famicom clones. It left a mark in pop culture and 1990s-2000s youth, establishing itself as antonomasia for 8-bit video gaming, to the point of being more popular than the original NES in these regions.

Terminator 2, like most known Famicom clones, was compatible with 60-pin Famicom cartridges and NES games, which could be played using a special converter. Original Nintendo games were not popular however, due to mass copyright infringement and lack of officially licensed products on the market. The majority of the games sold with and for the system were cheap unlicensed copies, manufactured mostly in Russia and China. Games for the Terminator 2 were still widely available in Central and Eastern Europe throughout 2000s, mostly on street markets and in small toy stores.

The typical retail set included the system, two detachable controllers (both with "turbo" buttons, which meant 4 buttons in total), a light gun, which also based on the original Nintendo gun accessory except the design, power supply and RF cable. The console had a built-in RF modulator, as well as mono audio and composite video through RCA connectors. The system itself could include built-in games, but most common versions were bundled with cartridges such as "1000000 in 1" or "9999999 in 1", supposedly featuring a million games, only a small number of which actually being separate games and the rest just renamed versions of the latter. Usually these were popular games such as: "Super Mario Bros." or "Duck Hunt". Sometimes they were renamed though, possibly in an attempt to avoid lawsuits.

Design

Terminator's box art was inspired by Japanese Sega Mega Drive 2, using colourful triangles in the background and similar logo writings.[4] The unit itself combines design patterns of both Japanese MD and MD 2, being similar size and shape to the later but having characteristic CD-ROM inspired circle around the cartridge slot and blue reset and power buttons inspired by earlier MD's reset button. Some sets even featured a controller which looked like 6 button controller for MD.[5]

Pricing

The Terminator 2 consoles were mass-marketed by most of the major and smaller electronic stores. It is difficult to determine an exact price for the system, but in place like Gabrovo, Bulgaria in the mid 90s, one could buy it for the rough equivalent of €10. In Romania in 2015 it cost about €10, and in mid-90s roughly the equivalent of $7-10. In Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Bosnian war it would cost equivalent of €15. In Poland it used to cost equivalent of €9 to €15 and the games €1 to €2. In Georgia, in early 2000s it used to cost equivalent of €6 to €15.

From 1998 until 2000, the Terminator 2 console used to cost €15 to €25 in Serbia. A normal price for a copied cartridge was €0.5 part of which were unauthorized "1,000,000 in 1" cartridges, containing several repeating games. In the early 2000s, Sony PlayStation became available in Serbia, making Terminator obsolete. In 2013 a price of the console was €11 and it was still sold in Chinese shopping malls throughout Serbia.

As of 2020, the console can still be purchased from Chinese on-line retailers, priced about €20.[6]

Reintroduction

After the original being discontinued around 2014-2016, in 2019 the console was redesigned and can be purchased from online Chinese retailers[6], with a new box, occasionally with a generic name like "retro 8 bit tv console" or a more well known name like "terminator 2020".[7] The design remains mostly the same, with the major differences being the size of the blue buttons, being slightly bigger and less tall, the "Ending Man" logo is smaller and spells "Terminator®" with 3 Chinese characters below(in some variations the logo is non-existent), the cartridge remover lever is just aesthetic and not functional like the original, the LED moved from next to the power button to the front center of the console, the controller plug is now a 9-pin (Sega Genesis/Mega Drive plug) connection instead of the 15-pin (Famicom plug) the original Terminator used[8]. Some less noticeable differences include the cover having a hinge (sometimes black, other times blue) while the 90's model had a slider(black)[9], the console is now powered by a USB-to-microUSB cable connected to a USB power adaptor, only 2 AV connectors(yellow and white) instead of the 3 (red yellow and white) connectors, the number of vent holes in the back decreased from 20 to 12[10], some text in the circle around the top of the console was changed or removed and the controllers changed in shape and plug, the shape is more ergonomic but still simplistic with the ending man logo printed on, keeping the 4 buttons, select and start and the direction pad, and the plug changed to match the new connector in the console.[11]

The new model is still compatible with the 60-pin Famicom cartridges games.

gollark: Or "Golang", since "Go" is an awful name and unsearchable.
gollark: yep.
gollark: The server/reverse proxy is in (*oh, the horror*) Go.
gollark: Even osmarks.tk supports Unicode!
gollark: They're only a decade or so late!

See also

References
  1. Kubos123 (2012-03-06). "NESblog: Pegasus BS-500AS". NESblog. Retrieved 2017-10-25.
  2. forum.uni-sofia.bg, Sofia University St. Kl. Ohridski
  3. "zamunda.net, discussion on a torrent tracker". Archived from the original on 2014-11-29. Retrieved 2013-06-08.
  4. "Amintiri din copilarie: Hasta la vista baby!". Zona IT (in Romanian). 2014-05-04. Retrieved 2017-10-25.
  5. Liftarn (2010-04-04), Jurasic Park branded 8-bit Nintendo clone., retrieved 2017-10-25
  6. https://imgur.com/AGdTo6d
  7. https://i.ibb.co/1QW8KpG/terminator-2020.png
  8. https://i.ibb.co/1nLBK0q/differenes-front.png
  9. https://i.ibb.co/pw3JmCB/hinge-difference.png
  10. https://i.ibb.co/R6Bd75Q/back-changes.png
  11. https://i.ibb.co/kHS5zzr/controller-comparison.png
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