Cyprus, Greece, and Spain for arcade games?

[nmantas]

I have noticed a bunch of used game boards from these countries on eBay and think it is a bit odd. Many are bootlegs. I know there is a Ms Pacman ROM that is made in Greece I always figured it was the code and not the physical pcbs made there. So what is up with all these arcade pcbs from these countries? Is it that that the bubble popping on large arcades was fairly recent in these areas and they have more parts to sell or is it something else?

 

[Ghostlyguy]

I assume that bootleggers saw a gap in the market in those countries and provided games to them. Maybe there was not as many official games being provided to countries outside Canada, US, UK, France, Australia ... (Check out this list to see which countries have the most collectors)
https://www.arcade-museum.com/members/statistics/countries.php

But I don't know jack about the industry over there.

 

[J67AB]

I grew up in Spain, from what I remember in Andalusia (southern Spain) there were a lot of generic cabs that were used with different pcb's (like the UK). There were a lot of domestic bootleg stuff Cirsa / Phoenix and then original Sega cabs. Spain also had a lot of domestic production set up for everything. It was a dictatorship until the mid 70's and the country was cut off from the rest of Europe tradewise for decades. Spain in the 60's, 70's and even 80's would set up domestic production of their own version of what wouldn't feasible to import in but was easy to reproduce using national sources. Pinball, guitar Amps, cars, tv's you name it. You could call it a bootleg but it was more of an absence of a distribution of goods from the west. Huge black market for knockoffs.

 

[Ghostlyguy]

I grew up in Spain, from what I remember in Andalusia (southern Spain) there were a lot of generic cabs that were used with different pcb's (like the UK). There were a lot of domestic bootleg stuff Cirsa / Phoenix and then original Sega cabs. Spain also had a lot of domestic production set up for everything. It was a dictatorship until the mid 70's and the country was cut off from the rest of Europe tradewise for decades. Spain in the 60's, 70's and even 80's would set up domestic production of their own version of what wouldn't feasible to import in but was easy to reproduce using national sources. Pinball, guitar Amps, cars, tv's you name it. You could call it a bootleg but it was more of an absence of a distribution of goods from the west. Huge black market for knockoffs.

Cool, thanks for sharing. I feel so sheltered living in the states.