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JungleTac, as The Successor to NASA?

更新日:2024年12月18日

This is an extra part of the "How many Famiclones have ever been manufactured?" series, originally intended as a small supplement to the previous article focusing on NASA, but it turned out to be a rather in-depth article about JungleTac, one of the major famiclone forces of the 2000s.


Have you heard of JungleTac Interactive (丛林互动科技开发有限公司), one of the leading manufacturers of famiclones in the late 1990s and early 2000s? This is a story that they may be linked to NASA, or a story about their interesting relationship with Sega.



The box of an NS-101 sold by Lee Star Co, Ltd. The location is given as Chang'an Industrial Zone, Shenzhen, but there should have been no such industrial zone in Shenzhen. it's assumed the neighboring industrial zone of the same name in Dongguan City. 

Lee Star Co., Ltd.


In the previous article introducing the NASA famiclones of Deli/Deka/Lingli, I stated that there were no known traces of these companies after 1994. However, I then discovered a company that seems to be a likely successor called 'Lee Star Co., Ltd'. It was one of the companies that sold the last NASA-branded products: the NS-101 (Mega Drive clone). Apart from the company name, nothing else is known about the company except that it was located in mainland China (Shenzhen or Dongguan), but there is a company with the same name in Taiwan, which interestingly also had a close relationship with NASA.


On the Taiwanese side, 'Lee Star Co., Ltd', whose Chinese name is 菱辰貿易有限公司, was headed by Xu Mei-Bon (徐美盆), a key member of Deka Electronics, the company once responsible for the original 'NASA' brand. Taiwanese Lee Star's main business was also trading in video game consoles and related products. Two companies with the same name, both associated with 'NASA', could not possibly be unrelated. It is highly likely that they were virtually the same company.


Lite Star Electronics


While tracing the background of Lee Star, I was reminded of a mainland company of Taiwanese origin, which also has the "辰" character in the company name, and even founded in the same year. The company is Shenzhen Lite Star Electronics Technology Co. Ltd (深圳星辰电子电器有限公司). It might be a mere coincidence if the similarities were just around the company name and the year of establishment. However, I found another similarity that cannot be ignored. The founder of Lite Star Electronics is named Lu Zong-Yeung (呂宗榮), which is pretty close to Lu Zong-Yi (呂宗儀): the co-founder of Deka Electronics. Considering that many small and medium-sized enterprises in Taiwan are often family-owned, it is hard to believe that the four points of similarity - company name, manager's name, business description and year of establishment - are mere coincidences.

Lite Star started as a video game console and peripheral manufacturer established in mainland China on 8 March 1996 with Taiwanese capital. Their main products were famiclones and video game peripherals such as controllers and memory cards. Those products were 100% for export.


Lite Star was one of early international famiclone manufacturers to put an emphasis on educational computer-style and controller-style plug-and-play. Their most popular famiclone is probably the model 1000-AX, known as ‘MEGA KID’ and other names. You may have seen this shape before. It is one of the most widely-used form factors for educational famiclones, with more than 60 variants registered with Unauthorizon.


The 1000-AX. This photo shows the sub-licensed one released by Kontorland (Turkey).
Design patent of Model 1000-AX by Lu Zong-Rong (State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China,  Receipt Public Notice No.: CN3096963D, 30.12.1998).

Lu Zong-Rong was also a product designer and was granted a number of patents and design applications in mainland China. However, traces of his activity as a product designer ceased in 1999. In the same year he founded JungleTac Interactive (丛林互动科技开发有限公司), and was later awarded a number of patents and design applications with the company again.JungleTac's location was identical to Lite Star's until a certain point in time, and some of Lite Star's products were actually developed by JungleTac. This means that the two companies were affiliated, or at least had a close relationship. JungleTac's company profile says that it became an independent game developer in 2002, so it must have been under the Lite Star umbrella until then.








JungleTac's Products


JungleTac developed both hardware and software for famiclones. The company's software side has already been well researched by volunteers, and you can read more about it on BootlegGames Wiki. Together with Nice Code Software (西安东信软件公司), they pioneered the formation of legal software collections for famicom architecture plug-and-play consoles, and were also among the first manufacturers to use the expanded famiclone chips such as the UM6578 and VTxxx series.


In terms of hardware, the Zone series and the Vii are relatively well known as the company's products, but they are just the tip of the iceberg, and in fact they have left a number of unique footprints in the history of unauthorised consoles. Their starting point is already quite interesting in the first place. JungleTac's company introduction states that as of 2002, the company had already been ‘With more than 10 years of Play vs TV game (author's note: plug-and-play game console) development and manufacturing experience". It was quite advanced as only a handful of plug-and-play manufacturers active in 1992 have ever been confirmed including Dar Yar, TXC, Koromix and Atlantis. As far as I can see, none of these companies seem to have any connection with JungleTac, which adds to the mystery.


As An Officially Licensed Manufacture from Sega



Lite Star's company history states that the company ‘Licensed by Sega. Manufactured Sega MD-2' in 1997 (see above). And JungleTac's introduction to the company as of 2002 also states that the company ‘has ever become OEM of SEGA and later has been authorized by SEGA to produce and market the collections of 16 BIT game console and learning aid products’ (See below). The "16 BIT" in this sentence is obviously the Mega Drive.


The article reporting UMC's acquisition of the Mega Drive rights (‘电子游戏软件’, 26th period, September 1990, p.5). Note that AtGames acquired all rights to the Mega Drive in Greater China in 2005, so it is assumed that UMC's rights had been lost by then.

In the Greater China area, Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer United Microelectronics (UMC) had acquired the full rights (presumably exclusive to China) to the Mega Drive from Sega in 1996 and started manufacturing chips for the Mega Drive. Along with the chips, UMC also sub-licensed the Mega Drive rights to several manufacturers. They were allowed to use the Sega logo officially and often added a hologram sticker to indicate that they were using UMC's chips for the Mega Drive. For example, you can see it on Tianli's, BBK's or Malata's Mega Drive integrated VCD players.


The fact that Lite Star also used the same hologram stickers suggests that they were one of those sub-licensed manufacturers. So the 'OEM' that JungleTac's refers to probably meant the manufacture of the Mega Drive under Lite Star. So what is a Sega-approved 'collection of 16-bit game consoles'?


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