termis, you f'n rule. Thank you for the swift response and the evidence/sources to build a credible account of Vistar's history in Korea.
If anyone else can provide more input/observations, please do so.
BONUS: termis, do you know if PCE had any presence in South Korea prior to the introduction of the Vistar? I mean...did some folks import it? Did magazines mention it?
Thanks again.
Yeah, no wuz. The PCE was imported into Korea by several different mobs.
The original PCE, in its original form, was first imported into Korea by some small-time importer called Alpha Trading. It seems the original CD-ROM was imported as well. I'd imagine it was gray-market import, but this ad claims they're the official importer of NEC consoles in Korea.
Then Daewoo stepped briefly stepped in to importing the PCE shuttle, as the "Zemmix PC Shuttle". Zemmix series, as some of you may know, are a series of MSX consoles in Korea by Daewoo, but they also used the Zemmix brand for their one-off venture in a non-MSX console. Daewoo localized the PCE shuttle for the Korean market with a 220v PSU, and tacked on a Daewoo sticker on the bottom with the label "Daewoo PC Shuttle". Unlike the Vistar, the Daewoo imported the Japanese version of HuCards. But similar to the Vistar releases, the Daewoo-released HuCards were just stickers on the back of the HuCards, along with a translated(?) manual. I see Daewoo-versions of HuCards of Dragon Spirit and Deep Blue in these two blogs below. The author mentions recalling having several other Daewoo-imported HuCards, including R-Type part I/II.
http://blog.dreamwiz.com/hanhogyu/3830105http://blog.naver.com/backmr?Redirect=Log&logNo=42529355But Daewoo eventually stepped out of importing PCE as well, and that's when Haitai (a now bankrupt confectionary(!) company) came in to release the Vistar.
So in sum - Vistar is not the only Korean-market PCE, and it's not even the first one...