Thanks to the internet and general globalization, people around the world have access to and play more or less the same games. There are some outliers, like in China where PC gaming and the mega-giant Tencent is the dominant force, South America where it still can be impossible expensive to get the newest official consoles and games and South Korea where gaming addiction has become such a massive problem that the government instituted the "Shutdown Law", preventing kids under the age of 16 to play games between 10 pm and 6 am.

That being said, I think it's interesting to go back and look at what retro gaming was like back in the day, before the internet and before people really started documenting and recording games. After digging around on YouTube, I've found a number of interesting videos showcasing retro gaming from around the world. Most of these aren't translated and my findings here are mostly subjective or anecdotal, so please feel free to correct me in the comments below or tell us about retro gaming in your country.

Denmark

People think the "video games crash" was a massive deal, but that was only really something that happened to Atari and all the American clone consoles. Here in Denmark we were fine, because like the rest of Europe we had the Commodore 64. My first computer was a Commodore 64 with a datasette tapedeck, which I got in '89 around the time when it was on the way out, so it was impossible to find official new games, since most stores and consumers had moved on to the Commodore Amiga 500. While Denmark is mostly known for such video game contributions as Hitman and Kane & Lynch these days, some retro gamers might be familiar with the clunky Sword of Sodan, which like many other Amiga games was also ported to the Mega Drive.

One character that every Danish retro gamer probably know is Super Oswald. This was a simple game that appeared on a weekly TV show where people could call in, control the character via their phone and win prices. Eventually Oswald was replaced by the even more popular Hugo, who since have gotten some international renown.

Saudi-Arabia

I've only really been made aware of Arabic retro gaming over the last couple of years thanks to Instagram and if I've learned anything, it is that people in Saudi-Arabia are massively nostalgic for Captain Tsubasa. I assume that there might have been the TV show and a massive amount of merchandising. While I don't think there were any official translations of the Famicom games, I've seen several Arabic translations in various romsets. The MSX also seemed to have been relatively popular there as there's a bunch of original Arabic software, including a digital version of the Quran and this strategy game (?) below. I recommend checking out Old Gamer on YouTube for an Arabic AVGN-style retro gaming reviewer.

Taiwan

Taiwan is probably most infamous in retro gaming for it's massive amounts of bootlegs, mostly for the NES and mostly from a company called NTDEC/Asder. While they did have a handful of original games for NES, it was Funtech that tried to put Taiwan on the map with the Super A'can, which unfortunately was a commercial failure. Interestingly enough, some of the best games on the system, such as Sango Fighter, were ported to MS DOS. Low Score Boy on YouTube explains the history of the platform in this video.

Russia

After the fall of the U.S.S.R, Russia opened itself up to a brand new swath of American stuff like Lewis Jeans, Coca-Cola and video games. A company called Steepler jumped at the chance to become of official publisher of Nintendo in Russia and their market was flooded with the aforementioned Taiwanese bootlegs. A Russian AVGN guy by the name of Kinamania on YouTube has made this very interesting and well produced documentary about the Dendy; the Russian NES. Don't forget to include subtitles for this one.

This is some of the more interesting retro gaming videos from around the world that I've found so far. Please let me know of others or of interesting retro gaming facts from your home country.