Does anybody know what TAKERU is? I've googled and found that it were cartridges with software on a EPROM in Japan.
My questions:
- Was this done at home, or did you go to a shop where the game was put into the EPROM.
- Did the softwarehouses agree with this? Or was it illegal?
And yes, it was completely legal. Via Flying Bytes/Club GHQ JApan there were even quite a few dutch 'homebrew' titles available in the (Brother) Takeru machines. Neat stuff! Check out a picture of it over here.
Were there also well known games in the machine (from companies like konami) or was it mainly "homebrew"?
Maybe there is a list out there, with the names of the games you could buy, using the Takeru machine?
There were also well known games in the machine, there were sometimes even special Takeru versions/expansions (as was, afaik, the case with Falcom's Sorcerian).
The last generation of Takeru machines actually had a built-in ISDN network adapter, and -in case a game was not found on the local harddisk- a copy was obtained over a network. So, back in 1992 or so, way before the advent of internet as a common commodity, these machines formed a network throughout Japan.
Actually, this same network was also used for 'network karaoke', where lyrics etc. of lesser requested songs were delivered on demand.
The main business of the firm that operated the last-generation of Takeru machines was and still is karaoke.
Even today, this firm (Xing i.e. ex-sing, exciting singing???) is one of the bigger players in the karaoke market in Japan.
Very interesting information, Bernard. For sure Takeru helped a lot to mantain MSX and other platforms commercially alive in Japan in the mid nineties. Takeru was mentioned (and more than once, if I remember correctly) in the Spanish MSX magazine MSX Club.
Do you know when those machines disappeared in Japan and when they stopped selling MSX software?
If my memory serves me correctly, in the late nineties they were still selling MSX software (I saw a list of MSX soft distributed by Takeru in a Hnostar magazine).
