Sachen | The Legend of NES

Sachen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of all the companies that produced unlicensed games for the NES, Sachen is the largest and arguably most confusing for collectors. Sachen, also known as Thin Chen Enterprise, was founded in Taiwan in 1988 and has 68 NES titles in their catalog, many of which were also licensed to other game publishers all over the world. That makes Sachen's catalog of NES games more than twice as large as any other publisher. While Sachen games were never distributed in the United States by any major retailer, they could be found in smaller independent stores throughout the country, and eventually even ordered from Sachen's own web site. The rarest game in the Sachen library is Padillon Gals, which is a different version of Galactic Crusader that features some added adult content. Their final NES game, Huge Insect, was sold exclusively online. Sachen continued producing games for multiple consoles well after the end of the NES, but eventually went out of business in 2007.

The Sachen catalog has games that range from young children's educational titles to adult-themed casino games, and includes several multicarts as well. With the exception of the Super Cartridge series, all of the games have an ID Code that starts with either TC (Thin Chen) or SA (Sachen), although some label variants do not include the codes. Generally speaking, compared to all the other unlicensed games that were produced, the overall quality of the Sachen carts, labels, and boxes give the impression that they were made at least in part by hand, out of whatever materials were less expensive at the moment. If you think some of the pictures below look blurry it's because the game labels actually are blurry, apparently very low resolution and printed out on a less-than-professional printer. Not many collectors specifically go after Sachen games because so many of them are hard to find, and the staggering number of variants that exist in the cartridges, labels, and packaging is overwhelming.

Auto-Upturn

TC-017

Bingo 75

SA-007

Challenge of the Dragon

TC-011

Chess Academy

SA-015

*USA version of Chinese Kung Fu

Chinese Checkers

TC-019

Chinese Kung Fu

TC-011

Colorful Dragon

SA-005

Cosmocop 2-In-1

SA-023

Dancing Blocks

SA-013

Final Combat

SA-020

Gaiapolis

TC-029

Galactic Crusader

TC-009

The Great Wall

SA-019

Happy Pairs

TC-016

Hell Fighter

SA-016

Hidden Chinese Chess

TC-002

Honey Peach

SA-006

Huge Insect

SA-022

Jovial Race

TC-001

Jurassic Boy

TC-028

Little Red Hood

TC-004

Locksmith

SA-017

Lucky Bingo

SA-004

Magic Cube

TC-018

Magical Mathematics

SA-014

Mahjong Academy

SA-026

Mahjong Companion

SA-027

Mahjong Trap

TC-010

The Mahjong World

SA-008

Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu

TC-007

Metal Fighter

TC-008

Middle School English

SA-003

Millionaire

SA-012

Olympic I.Q.

TC-015

Padillon Gals

TC-009*

Penguin and Seal

SA-002

Pipe V

SA-011

Poker I 4-In-1: The World of Card Games

TC-012

Poker II 4-In-1

TC-013

Poker III 5-In-1

TC-020

Q-Boy

TC-026

Rockball

TC-024

Side Winder

TC-003

Silent Assault

TC-005

Poker Mahjong

SA-018

Popo Team

TC-023

Pyramid I

SA-009

Pyramid II

SA-010

Silver Eagle

TC-025

Strategist

TC-014

Street Heroes

TC-027

Super Cartridge Ver. 1

4-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 2

10-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 3

8-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 4

6-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 5

12-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 6

6-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 7

4-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 8

4-In-1

Super Cartridge Ver. 9

3-In-1

Super Pang

TC-021

Super Pang II

TC-022

Taiwan 16 Mahjong

SA-001

Taiwan Mahjong II

(Bonus Tiles Mahjong)

SA-025

Tasac

SA-021

Thunder Blast Man

TC-030

Tough Cop 2-In-1

SA-024

Twin Eagle

TC-005

Sachen games have a lot of label variants, and they can be hard to identify and categorize. There are 3 basic types:

1. Wide Border Label- Features a white border with colored squares in the bottom corners. Will always have the game title, Sachen logo, and ID Code.

2. Narrow Border Label - Features the same artwork as the Wide Border label, but has a thin white border all the way around and no squares at the bottom corners. Will always have the game title, Sachen logo, and ID Code.

3. No Border Label - No border, and little or no text of any kind. Will sometimes be different artwork than the standard labels, but usually is the same artwork zoomed in and cropped around the edges.

Side Winder

Wide Border & Narrow Border labels

Poker III 5-In-1

Narrow Border & No Border labels

Almost all Sachen games have a blue back label with white text. However, there are some that have a purple label with black text applied overtop of the blue label. They say the exact same thing, so the significance of the purple label is unclear.

Sachen blue & purple

back labels

Sachen games also come in a wide variety of cartridge molds. Some copies of games have a port with pins to connect a dongle adapter cable, some have a switch to select a compatibility setting, some have the cutouts for these options but not the actual hardware, some are black, and some are gray. Below are examples of different Sachen cartridge variants.