Starsoft Nicht Existierent (Starsoft Doesn't Exist)

By Russ Perry Jr and Eckhard Stolberg
(2000)

 

A lot of us have been looking for carts by Starsoft to add to our collections, but what if I told you there's no such thing as Starsoft?

"What?", you say.  "That can't be.  I've seen them on lists, I've seen scans of the labels etc; I know they exist!"

Well, sure, the carts exist, but Starsoft does not.  What most people will point to is the "S.S." that is imprinted on the back of many pirate cartridges, but if S.S. stood for Starsoft, where are the boxes with that name on them?  The truth is, they don't exist.

If you open up any of the S.S. carts, you'll almost certainly find one of two different circuit boards inside - one that says Suntek, or else one that says SAE.  In fact, the carts known as "cooper black" style (named for the font used on the end label) also contain Suntek or SAE chips.

Now, I'm sure we've all seen Suntek listed on want lists too, as there are Suntek-labeled carts out there.  But apparently Suntek (perhaps as Suntek Software, or SS?), and later SAE (Suntek Advanced Electronics perhaps?) began selling their cartridges to anyone who wanted to slap their own label on them.

But who would buy them?   At the very least, Quelle in Germany, Zellers in Canada, or Rainbow Vision in Australia.  Note how many pirate carts don't have a manufacturer, but do have a part number on the label, like "SS-001" (all Rainbow Vision carts are numbered this way).

Now, it seems obvious that Suntek is an Asian company, and given the fact that most to all of their games are pirated, I think we can guess that it's not a Japanese company, but probably one from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, or China instead, as they don't follow copyright conventions the way Japan does.  Sadly, I can't find an exact match for the Suntek name on the net anywhere, so they may or may not still be in existence.  Given how new pirated carts still show up, either Suntek is still at it, or some other company has picked up the gauntlet.

For a while though, during the investigative process, it appeared that Suntek had eventually become Sunsoft!  There's a bit in the history section of their UK website that includes a cryptic mention about how "Sun Electric Corporation (which SunSoft branched from) was founded 25 years ago and specialized in game software for even the early Atari machines".  Early Atari machines?  Could this be the mystical Suntek?  Suntek carts were the only games I could think of that matched that description.  More so, the Japanese website mentioned a division called Suntak.  Close enough?

No, it turned out.  Atari licensed Kangaroo from Sun (Ed.: Actually called Sun Electronics Corporation AKA Sun Denshi), and that's what they meant about the Atari connection.  And Suntac, similarity in name notwithstanding, actually makes communications equipment.

And yet, there may be more to this mystery than at first, it seems.  The ROM chips in the S.S. carts all have UMC serial numbers, or a note next to the chip saying UMC.  It turns out that there is a company in Taiwan called UMC, founded in 1980, who not only apparently made chips for Suntek games, but also made processors and graphics chips for Asian-made Atari 2600 and 7800 consoles.  So, given the access to chip designs, and game ROMs, is UMC the company behind the TV Boy?  Sadly, the TV Boy that was opened up for investigation had nothing telling written on the board or chips.  So, perhaps that's a mystery for another day.

Okay, we've learned that what we think of as Starsoft carts were actually made by Suntek, and sold by a large number of pirate companies and large distributors.

So, where did the name Starsoft come from?  It stems from a trade (between a German collector, Hans R., and a seller here in the U.S.) regarding a bunch of Quelle carts, possibly their first appearance in this country in bulk.  When the recipient received the carts, he inquired what the S.S. on the back stood for, and he was told that it "could be many things, but is rumored to stand for Starsoft".  In reality, Hans and a friend made it all up since they didn't know what it stood for at all.  Hans tells me it was a close call between Starsoft and Supersoft.  He later admitted his part in the whole sordid story on the German Gamecreate website.

ADDENDUM

Check out VGARC's multi-part article by Stefan Gancer on the history of Sunsoft.

Olaf Pieters mentions "S.S." actually stands for Sunscience and sent along a photo of a Quelle Taipei Grand Prix cart with that on the label:


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