Tec Toy games

Tec Toy is a Brazilian company and one of the most interesting cases in the whole history of video games. Brazil had heavy restrictions on importing electronics, so consoles could not simply be shipped in from abroad. Tec Toy therefore began manufacturing and selling Sega hardware inside Brazil — with its own packaging, its own distribution and, above all, Portuguese versions of the games.

The consequences were remarkable. While the Master System was being retired everywhere else, in Brazil it kept selling and became the most widespread gaming system in the country. Long after Sega had moved on, new games for the old hardware were still appearing in Brazil — and that parallel universe is now one of the most sought-after corners of retro collecting.

Tec Toy also made its own games, by a method you will not see anywhere else: it took existing Sega titles and repainted them around Brazilian comic-book characters. The best known is Turma da Mônica (Monica's Gang) by Mauricio de Sousa, a national institution every Brazilian child knows. The result was a handful of games that exist nowhere else on earth — technically derived from familiar Sega titles, but with their own story, cast and artwork.

For us Tec Toy is also unusually rewarding because so much of it is playable: a large part of the catalogue is Master System and Mega Drive cartridges that run straight in the browser, and the Portuguese editions of the classics have their own charm even if you do not read a word of it.

What we have from them

You can immediately play both Brazilian exclusives — Turma da Mônica em: O Resgate and Turma da Mônica na Terra dos Monstros. Among the classics there are Sonic 3D Blast, Streets of Rage 2 and Columns.