Popular conceptions about Nintendo's release history in Europe claim that their hardware was never released in the former Eastern Bloc until the 21st century. Rather, these countries instead saw the proliferation of various clone consoles called "Famiclones", such as the Dendy (a Taiwanese-built bootleg that achieved widespread popularity in the Commonwealth of Independent States, made up of the ex-republics of the former Soviet Union) and the Pegasus (which became as popular in Poland as the Dendy did in Eastern Europe). However, while Famiclones did indeed dominate the Eastern European gaming market during the 1990s, Nintendo was not only aware of this, but actively attempted to halt the spread of bootlegs in these regions in favor of officially sanctioned products.

In 1994, Nintendo made a deal with Steepler, the Dendy's distributor in Eastern Europe, to permit continued sale of the Dendy in exchange for equal distribution of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy in the Commonwealth of Independent States; official Russian releases of these systems even included Dendy stickers on the packaging to reflect the arrangement. Meanwhile, in various other parts of the former Eastern Bloc, Nintendo made deals with other third-party distributors; among others, the NES, SNES, and Game Boy saw official releases in Poland, Hungary, and the former territories of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia during 1993–1994.