Let me pedantic while being clueless at the same time, the western NES design introduced the problem, since the original famicom had vertical insertion cartridge already right ?
[1] Actually, history of game consoles in Russia in early 1990s is quite curious. Nintendo themselves weren't interested in our market, so Russian-Chinese manufacturers promoted their clone quite freely. I believe it was even better than original famicom, since original controllers were detachable and easily replaced and also it came with a lightgun. Cartridges were cheap and abundant, about $2-4 each. Also there was a lot of 10-in-1 (100-in-1 even) catridges. After SEGA released their mega drive 2 console in Russia, dendy business started to decline. Look at this pic: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Dendy%27s... Ridiculous bottom-left cartridge with the picture of Morpheus from the Matrix and hilariously named FBI was clearly released in 1999 or later. Anyways, all our favorites were the same with the rest of the world: mario, contra, battle city (this one was a real hit! everyone had it). Ah, sweet times.