Did arcades and the consoles enter our country about the same time they hit USA's shores, or did we only get them a few years after they got popular in the West? Are video games here as big as it is in Japan and USA in the 80s and 90s?

Were all the cartridge-based games and consoles imported (from which region?) or completely pirated? I don't think I have ever seen official game cartridges until the DS-era. In fact, I'm actually surprised our technology level was that high enough to bootleg games, including Pokemon ROMhacks and fan-translation.

What about the Nintendo 64? I have seen at least one Gamecube before (although no idea where to buy it) but I have never seen N64, Xbox, and Dreamcast in person. Were games for all those consoles pirated too?

Hearing about Commodore and ZX Spectrum, what about PC's history in Malaysia? Did we ever get (official or pirated?) Apple II and DOS/Win95, or just Japanese ones like the PC-9801? For a long time I thought Dota and CS:CZ were the only computer games out here. Did our country ever get the Doom/Quake/Half-Life/Unreal Tournament fever as America did? When did online gaming pick up here?
Overall, what is the general most popular game for each pre-2006 console in Malaysia (or, in PC's case, for each era/decades)? I think for PSX/PS2 it's obviously FIFA/NFS, whereas for GB/GBC/GBA it's Pokemon.

One thing I dont understand. Why PS1 made my TV broke. TWICE

I find it that pretty much all the younger generations these days have no idea how video games came to Malaysia. I don't too. So for future's sake, let's document the arrival, lifespan, and popularity of arcades, and each console/handheld generations throughout the years, and to see how far back video gaming has been in Malaysia. Basically, I need those who have lived long enough to explain all that. This is kinda a tricky issue though, because while I have never seen any pre-PS2 consoles/games in a shop (or anything in that generation like Gamecubes, Xbox, or Dreamcast), I have seen things like bootleg GBC games and what seems to be bootleg SNES cartridges in very old shops. So there's the trouble of dealing with the history of bootlegs and pirated video games (anyone remember those handheld Tetris?), how they compare with the quantity of original materials here, and anything relevant.

You need to know that during famicom era, we do receive the original NES (japan model) and a lot of bootleg model. Any other console like pcengine or turbografx is really rare. i dare say there is not much information before playstation era. Only NES, SNES, gameboy and few sega genesis /mega drive.

Others all play arcade. Cos console that time were really expensive.

Micro Genius

Did arcades and the consoles enter our country about the same time they hit USA's shores, or did we only get them a few years after they got popular in the West? Are video games here as big as it is in Japan and USA in the 80s and 90s?

1. malaysia used to have a huge arcade scene. unfortunately due to our malaysian laws, arcade game machines are licensed the same way as gambling outlets (meaning only 18 and above can enter etc.). this changed around the last decade, but by that time arcade scene almost died bcos the ps2 basically is an arcade machine that connects to your tv.

One thing I dont understand. Why PS1 made my TV broke. TWICE

The Atari 2600 console and original cartridges were available in Malaysia in the late 70's. At that time our CRT TV system was PAL only, so our imported cartridges would be from a PAL-compatible country (US was NTSC).

Defender was a stand-out game for the 2600.

I also have vague memory of seeing a Pong machine in KL before the Atari 2600 came out.
We had shops selling fake Apple ]['s and IBM PCs. One of these Apple shops, Pineapple Computers, is still around today.

Almost all games/software were pirated. One would go to the computer shop and choose the games from a catalogue, then wait for them to be copied to 5 1/4 inch floppy disks.

The popular games were Choplifter, Castle Wolfensten, Zork, Wizardry and a few others I have probably forgotten.

cikelempadey, of course buddy