Steepler begins selling the Dendy console in Russia in December 1992

In late 1992 the Russian company Steepler began selling Dendy, an 8-bit console that was a clone of Nintendo's Famicom (known as the NES in the West). The hardware was produced in Asia, and Steepler distributed it under the Dendy brand in Russia, shortly after the Soviet Union had collapsed.

Official Nintendo products were almost unavailable and too expensive for most Russian families at the time. Dendy offered a cheaper alternative that plugged into an ordinary television set and used cartridges, which were often unlicensed collections of many games on a single cartridge.

The console became the first video game system for a whole generation in Russia and neighbouring countries. Its popularity grew through shops, markets and a television programme promoting it in the mid-1990s, and "Dendy" became a common word for any 8-bit console in everyday speech. That cultural legacy explains the nostalgia that still drives interest in retro cartridges today.