You know which font I'm referring to... the rounded, art-deco-ish one that seems to show up in every single one of Gamtec's games.

Well, anyway, I actually discovered its actual origin today.

It's not, in fact, an original creation of Gamtec, as I had also assumed.

Rather, it's from a 1989-era DOS paint program called "PC Paint". And it just so happens that this program was released as legal abandonware by the author himself:
http://www.shdon.com/pcpaint

I've noticed a couple of the other built-in fonts in PC Paint showing up in other unlicensed ROMs, for that matter. The "Bold" font also seems to be particularly popular amongst bootleg game developers.

bloody hell. so that's where it came from. the other day I chanced upon an MSX game called "Kempelen Chess" by Pony Canyon which also used the font, so I was pretty sure it wasn't Gamtec's own creation, but I was no closer to finding its actual source until now.