Marek Więcek recreated the Pegasus he remembered from childhood by wiring early Famicom-clone chips onto a universal prototyping board, testing each part as he went, and fitting the working console into a modified metal case. His build also offers a window into the history of a Taiwanese-made Famicom clone that became a familiar name in Poland during the early 1990s.
What was the Pegasus?
Pegasus was a Famicom clone marketed in Poland by BobMark International, not a console designed in Poland. The name became closely associated with home gaming there, but it is important to distinguish BobMark’s systems from later imitation consoles that also used the Pegasus name.
The museum account describes the MT-777DX as the first model and the IQ-502 as a later one. It identifies both as manufactured in Taiwan and associates the IQ-502 with Micro Genius, but does not establish who made the MT-777DX. The same history places the consoles’ arrival in Poland in 1992; Gareth Halfacree’s Hackster.io account gives 1991 as the first Polish release year. The available accounts therefore support “early 1990s,” not a single settled start year.
How Więcek built his Pegasus recreation
Więcek wanted to recreate the hardware he remembered, but could not initially verify whether the two main chips he had obtained actually worked. He set aside his original plan to design and etch a printed circuit board. Instead, he assembled the console on universal prototyping board using wire, so he could build and test functional sections one at a time.
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Starting with the CPU and memory
The chips were a UA6527 CPU and a UA6538 graphics controller. Więcek describes them as parts associated with early hardware revisions; later revisions used a “NES on a chip” beneath an epoxy blob. His first tests focused on the CPU: he wired it to force NOP instruction execution with resistors, then added memory and ran simple code to blink an LED connected to the CPU’s integrated I/O.
Adding graphics, cartridges, and controllers
After those tests worked, he added the graphics chip, cartridge slot, and controller connectors. He used low-resolution scans of schematics he had found online to guide the connections. The project account describes this staged approach, but does not establish a precise chip configuration for every Pegasus revision.
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Finding the cause of the scrambled picture
When Więcek first tried cartridges from his collection, the console produced sound and showed CPU activity, but the picture was scrambled. He traced the problem to a video-memory chip that was too slow. After addressing that fault, he moved on to the enclosure: rather than use his initial idea of a 3D-printed case, he modified a metal case, drilling and cutting openings for the connectors and cartridge slot.
Which cartridges does the recreation support?
Hackster reports that Więcek’s recreation accepts 60-pin Famicom cartridges. An adapter can be used with a subset of NES cartridges, but the report does not claim compatibility with every NES game. Direct Famicom cartridge support and adapter-based support for some NES cartridges are different claims, so neither should be read as a guarantee that any particular cartridge will work.
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Why this build matters to Pegasus history
The project joins a personal memory to a piece of Poland’s console-gaming history: Więcek was not designing a new Polish console, but reconstructing the Famicom clone he associated with growing up there. As he put it in Hackster.io’s published account, “But almost everyone who grew up in Poland during the 90s feels rush of nostalgia while hearing about ‘Pegasus.’” The build’s practical details make that nostalgia tangible: early-revision chips, incremental wiring and testing, a slow video-memory chip, and a case cut to fit the finished hardware.
The history is better understood through its documented models and context than through unsupported sales figures. The museum account describes Pegasus as broadly popular, but does not provide a sourced production or sales total.
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Marek Więcek’s project description on Hackaday.io · Gareth Halfacree’s Hackster.io report · Gry i Komputery Minionej Ery’s Pegasus history
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