삼성전자 Samsung Electronics
Founded: January 1969 (January 13th, 1961??)
Status: active
Key People: Kim Kwangho:
CEO (around 1996)
Choi Geesung:
CEO (January 2010 - today)
Kang Seonguk:
Chief of game department
Yi Minho:
Team lead game publishing (1999)
Website: www.samsung.com/sec/

Profile:
Samsung Electronics released Sega's home consoles in Korea, the first one being the Samsung Gam*Boy, a licensed version of the Sega Master System. Versions of the Mega Drive (first Super Gam*Boy, later Super Aladdin Boy) and its peripherals, as well as the Saturn followed. The Dreamcast instead was planned for release through Hyundai-Sega, but cancelled after many delays, due to the system's commercial failure in Japan.
Samsung was the first publisher to produce professional localizations, their first translated releases were Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Kenseiden and Phantasy Star Online. They even developed a single Mega Drive game on their own, Uju Geobukseon.
In the mid- to late nineties the company also became known as a publisher for PC games, most notably the Final Fantasy Series (Samsung even advertised a PC port of Final Fantasy V, but it got cancelled) and of course Sega's PC ports. In more recent times, Samsung Electronics appeared as service provider for online games like Astro Ranger by Biscuit Soft (service discontinued on December 24th, 2009) or Lost Saga by IO Entertainment.

Games:

SPC-1000 games - SPC-1000 (1984-1986)


Keenon

In the mid-80's, Samsung kept offering games for their own major home computer system, many created by second parties like Static Soft, but also a lot of in-house developments. As the number of games is very high, with most very simplistic and not even a release date known, the known games are briefly shown on a seperate page.



Scramble

우주 거북선 (Uju Geobukseon) - Mega Drive (April 28th, 1993)


Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

Cover

The first and only (released) Korean Mega Drive game takes the legendary armored "turtle ship", that historically ended the Japanese invasion in Korea at the end of the 16th century, into outer space (hence the title, which translates to "Space Turtle Ship". It is often transcribed as "Uzu Keobukseon").

A typical but reasonably well executed shoot 'em up, nothing about Uju Geobukseon is as interesting as the premise. The weapon system is quite simple, there's only one weapon (other than the smart bombs) that can be upgraded many levels, the highest of which also change the ship's appearence for a more futuristic chassis.

The game is unforgiving for failure, though. Any enemy hit downgrades the weapon by multiple levels at once. When hit at a low status, the player loses a life and is reset to a checkpoint, barely armed and extremely slow, which makes it very hard to catch up again in later leves. Not enough, when losing in short sequence, which is rather probable, the ship is set even further back than the first time.

Uju Geobukseon received some rather unfavored reviews in Korea compared to other domestic games at the time, but it really isn't all that bad. Samsung's game development team engaged in more Mega Drive projects after this was completed, but none of those saw a release.



Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

Uju Geobukseon

마지막 승부 2on2 (Majimak Seungbu 2on2): The Legend of Siren Basketball - PC-DOS (1996)


Majimak Seungbu 2on2

Alledgedly Korea's first visual novel game, Majimak Seungbu 2on2 tells a story of basketball, rivalries and kidnappings. There are playable basketball sequences in the game, but they're completely menu based.


Majimak Seungbu 2on2


Majimak Seungbu 2on2

짱구는 못말려 (Jjanggu-neun Monmallyeo) - Windows (July 1997)


Jjanggu-neun Monmallyeo

Jjanggu-neun Monmallyeo

Samsung was a company of many firsts, and this was the first Korean game in official license to a Japanese IP, Crayon Shin-Chan.

As one would expect from a Shin-chan game, the graphics in this platformer look decidedly low-end, nonetheless the style doesn't always look truly faithful to the source. It has all the crazyness, though, and the story is told in animated sequences that would fit perfectly into the show. A flying chicken costume and several sequences on vehicles guarantee variety from the standard running & jumping.

Samsung published many more sequels to this game, but only this first entry was developed by their internal studio Reality Weaver, while all subsequent games were outsourced to other teams, thus will be dealt with in later parts of this article.



Jjanggu-neun Monmallyeo

Jjanggu-neun Monmallyeo

섹시 라이언 (Sexy Lion) - Windows (1998)


Sexy Lion

Despite this game being called Sexy Lion and the lion featured big on the cover, he actually plays a minor role in the game as well as the story.

The actual hero is a boy named ID (yes, that's I-dee) who has been shrunk by a witch and his girlfriend kidnapped. So his has to make it all through the garden and the house, divided into nine stages, in his microscopic state to rescue her and get rid of the spell.

Most of the time ID just walks left to right, jumping over obstacles and attacking enemies with his yo-yo. But for the boss fights, the game switches into a terrible brawler-mode featuring the worst collision detection in gaming history. Every once in a while stages mix it up a bit with a race against the Lion, a trolley or a swimming level. The game is very glitchy, though, so getting that far before it crashes is rare.

This game was made by another internal team calld Dream Craft Goo.



Sexy Lion

라브린토스 (Laburinthos) - Windows (1998)


Laburinthos

Laburinthos

This game doesn't seem to have been released as a standalone box, at least it is only known as an extra for the CD-ROM that came with Gamepia issue 2/1998. Somewhere between Myst and a typical "interactive movie", or more precisely a crime thriller set in the near future (2011), it also featured a bunch of small arcade and puzzle sequences.


Laburinthos


Laburinthos

Laburinthos
Unreleased Titles:

씨티 히어로즈 (City Heroes) (1993-1994)


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