Did you know that arcades were actually prohibited in Singapore in 1983? Amid a North American video game crash, Singapore's then Ministry of Culture issued a nationwide ban on video game arcades in a bid to curb addiction, as well as reduce truancy, petty crimes, and possibly beat 'em up-style fighting incidents. Private clubhouses such as the Singapore Armed Forces Reservists' Association (SAFRA) and Civil Service Club (CSC) were exempted from the ban, provided that they enforced checks regularly. PC and console gaming were also excluded from the arcade prohibition, resulting in their respective markets proliferating. This in turn would turn Singapore into one of the forgotten battlegrounds of the Console Wars between Nintendo and Sega. By then, the ban was lifted because it failed at curbing addiction and reducing delinquent crimes.
If only other Japanese consoles that's not Nintendo's Famicom or NES, both of which were sold in Singapore, such as Sega's SG-1000, Sega's Master System, Epoch's Cassette Vision, Epoch's Super Cassette Vision and Sony's MSX were on sale in Singapore's video game stores, they would have thrived in terms of sales numbers amid a ban on video game arcades, because video game consoles are exempted from the video game arcade ban, and video game console sales actually thrived due to the ban.
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