Nintendo vs. Tengen: How Nintendo Won the Battle (But Lost the War) For Video Game Domination
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- In the late 1980s, Nintendo OWNED the video game market and monopolized the entire game creation industry. Indeed, their dominance - and control - was unmatched.
Then, Tengen game along. The offshoot of Atari used corporate espionage, lied to the United States government, and obtained patented Nintendo source code, enabling them to bypass Nintendo's stringent quality control measures and make their own unlicensed games.
This is the story about how Tengen challenged Nintendo and helped to set the stage for more than a few companies to knock Nintendo out of command over the home console market.
#videogamehistory #videogames #nintendo #nintendoentertainmentsystem #atari
I remember getting that $5 certificate as a kid and was wondering how this was a punishment to Nintendo since you had to buy one of their games to redeem the savings. That was a sweet deal that they got from that case.
It seems the only people who get anything out of class action suits are lawyers.
Sometimes the government will cut themselves in for some money but consumers usually wind up getting a coupon that probably benefits the company more than punishing them.
The settlements usually read like "The law firm of Shyster and Cohen is proud to announce the great deal they have reached for class members in their latest settlement.
Shyster and Cohen will receive $250 million in legal fees, The Department of Justice will receive $ 100 million and $75 million will go to the state of California.
Members of the class action will receive a coupon for 39 cents off the purchase of a new car from the defendant."
A half off coupon would have hurt Nintendo.
At $5 off I suspect they were still making money.
Gauntlet was one of the first nintendo games I got. Pretty fun and challenging game. I was in 5th grade when I got it and in 12th grade when I actually beat it.
You actually beat that game? Holy crap lol i always just figured they made it impossible because they didn't want you to beat it lol
I feel lucky to have obtained a copy of Tengen Tetris for the NES at a tag sale for just $1 many years ago.
What's interesting is that back in the day, Tengen Tetris was widely considered to be better than the Nintendo version since it had 2-player - yet nowadays all the focus is on Nintendo Tetris with its thriving competitive scene
@@joshthefunkdoc
I wonder how things would've differed back then regarding those opinions if Nintendo had finished implementing the 2-player mode on their version of NES Tetris?
Just curious, what's it worth?
@@matts1978
*Just
Checking a price charting site right now, looks like at least $72 for just the Tengen Tetris cartridge itself.
@@matts1978 A loose Tengen Tetris NES cartridge is worth about $100. A complete boxed one would be at least double.
The Tetris story is worthy of it's own movie... which is why we made one.
Famicom no keyboard not pc 😂 despite standing for Family Computer.
@@MrVariant keyboard was available in Japan though.
@Ayrshore interesting lol gotta love these laws and bypasses. Though nintendo got theirs between this floodgate with the vid, and losing to game genie that bypassed the crazy difficulty to make US rentals (banned in Japan) viable again.
The story of Tetris has pretty much ended tho sadly as the game has actually been beaten as in, the kid kept playing until it pulled a pacman 256 and shut down. But i feel like the Super Mario Bros story is never gonna end they are STILL finding ways to shave milliseconds off one world record after another its crazy, and loads of fun to follow actually
This is why i have no problem downloading roms of my favorite games.
Not to mention big cuddly N went after game rentals too.
Except that it’s not just the bigwigs that are profiting from sales, the low and mid level developers are hurt financially when people do this. The ones that are just barely making it financially don’t need that kind of stress.
I remember RBI baseball and I think we had a few other Tengen carts.
I also remember they came from Aldi, a discount supermarket.
The threat from Nintendo "sell a Tengen game and loose the right to sell Nintendo" didn't mean much to Aldi at the time they rarely sold electronics.
I seem to remember the price being about half of what a Nintendo game would have been.
This video has very fortunate timing, what with Nintendo revising their guidelines for what they’ll allow people to stream their games and systems to include unlicensed games, things that defeat Nintendo copy/region protections (like the 10NES chip), ROMs, and modified consoles.
You know what's crazy? Nintendo originally wanted to partner with Atari to produce the NES in the US region.
wasn't it Atari that approached Nintendo with this deal first?
@@SneakyGreninja
No, at the time Nintendo was not sure how best to work it's way into the US market and thought that a deal with a company that had done it before them would help them break into the market easier. Same thing happened with the Genesis too as Sega really wanted some help after the Master System failed to get a hold.
A video on Wisdom Tree would be good. I would also love to see one about Active Enterprises.
I second this comment
Oooh. What is Active Enterprises?
@@faub3282Action 52 / Cheetahmen
@@faub3282 they made the infamous Action 52 for the NES and Genesis, along with The Cheetahmen II (which was never officially released, but ended up on the secondary market after 1,500 copies of the game were found in a warehouse in Florida).
Another reason why the Sega Genesis is one of the greatest video game consoles ever.
Me looking through all my black NES carts to see if I have illegal Tetris!!
I'm so glad I was a part of the PC master race by 1993/94. You can't tell me what games I can or cant play. And I could emulate a SMS, NES and SNES a few years after.
Thank you for finally settling my 35 year curiosity for why the Gauntlet cartridge was different looking in my collection.
I feel like Almost Something is baiting me by saying "cart-ridge" instead of "car-tridge" 🤔
lol. I promise I’m not. It’s very funny to find out words you’ve been saying one way your whole life are allllllll wrong. Leave it to UA-cam to point that out!!
@@AlmostSomething you're not wrong, you're unique!
HA! Let's go with that.
The words cartridge has been used way before videogames even existed. Gun owners in the 1910s-1970s had been using the word quite a lot.
At one point, my brother, a former Nintendo Gameplay Counselor, owned Tengen Tetris, which is still considered one of the rarest NES games.
6:18 I have 20 different Tengen titles in the black cartridges:
1. After Burner
2. Alien Syndrome
3. Fantasy Zone
4. Gauntlet
5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
6. Klax
7. Ms. Pac-Man
8. Pac-Man
9. Pac Mania
10. R.B.I. Baseball
11. R.B.I. Baseball 2
12. R.B.I. Baseball 3
13. Road Runner
14. Rolling Thunder
15. Shinobi
16. Skull & Crossbones
17. Super Sprint
18. Tetris
19. Toobin’
20. Vindicators
Tobin was fun
Skulls & Crossbones was a fun game, I used to play that game alot.
Tengen also had to deal with the fact that if you were a kid in the 80's, nobody really wanted these black cartridges, as having any kind of knock-off product made you look uncool.
Says *You.* In my area? having ANY game outside of the norm was seen as unusual and different.
@@reignick1133 to the one's at your lunch table, maybe. Believe me bro, I was no fan of the system. I felt really cool about my K-Mart air-pump shoes until the first day of school.
@@DrDeathpwnsu I had a pair of Spaulding Typhoon pump shoes in 2nd grade. My fam couldn't afford the Reebok ones but I felt cool with those.
@@nater86zx Yeah little brother, I had the same ones in middle school. I remember thinking all the jocks would think I was cool because Spaulding made all the basketballs and footballs.
@@DrDeathpwnsu Too bad kids are a**holes and you can't get away with having a knockoff.
One kid in class had an actual pair of Reebok pumps, and one day during morning meeting (when you all sit on the carpet together) this kid dissected his shoe tongue and pulled out the plastic bubble and tubing. It was neat to see what was inside a pump shoe, but I remember thinking "jeez, kid I would do anything for a pair of real pumps and he just destroys his?" haha.
The video gaming market was different back in the day
That's why UA-camrs make videos about it.
Nintendo has always been draconian, but I feel like events like this is why Nintendo has remained so paranoid and litigious to this day.
Smash bros community mess too.
2:20-3:00 lol so many bootleg games were terrible 😂 just like today with a million editions, except for a vast future and nOS (when on sale, which 9:10 is why nintendo was slow for modern day retailer/eshop sales).
Tengen Undercut All Publishers! $15 a Game! I Got a New Game Almost Every Trip to Phar-Mor with My Mom!
I miss Phar-Mor
@@1978garfield I was Too Young to Truly Appreciate Phar-Mor But I Remember How Large the Store was! And The Rentals!
I remember when Phar-Mor went out of business. Wasn't it some CEO scandal or something?
@@greenmachine5487 Embezzlement! The CEOs Shifted 10mil to the 'World Basketball League' 😂
@@greenmachine5487 Yup, the CEO was embezzling money and using it to support an WBNA team or some such. It was insane,
this channel is a gem!! subbed
Tengen Tetris was pulled because Atari technically pirated it. Tengen's parent, Atari Games licensed the game from Mirrorsoft. Mirrorsoft sublicensed it from Andromeda Software. Andromeda licensed the game from ELORG, at the time part of the Russian Office of Foreign Trade. Tetris was originally developed as a side project at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and its intellectual property was owned by the Government of Russia. The problem is that Andromeda Software only had the rights for personal computers, not game consoles. Atari illegally sold the Japan Console Rights to Bullet Proof Software. Companies are only allowed to sublicense the rights they have, which made Atari's (and Bullet Proof Software's) sublicense license for game consoles invalid.
Henk Rogers of Bullet Proof Software found out the hard way when he came to Russia to get the handheld rights for Game Boy. He found out that his console rights were invalid, and that ELORG hadn't given home console rights to anyone after he told then they were publishing the Japanese console version and that they were the biggest publisher of Tetris in the world at the time! Oddly, ELORG was meeting with Robert Stein of Andromeda and Kevin Maxwell of Mirrorsoft that day, and that Henk Rogers was an unexpected visitor. ELORG eventually chose Rogers and Bullet Proof Software for the handheld rights, and amendment ELORG's contract with Stein with definition of a computer that excluded game consoles (processor, keyboard, monitor, disk drive, and operating system). ELORG then asked Henk Rogers to bid for the home console rights, seeing he was the most responsible and honest of the three bidders. Henk Rogers called Nintendo, and then they sent him back to Moscow, and Nintendo and BPS secured the home console rights. Nintendo travelled in secret, to prevent Atari and Mirrorsoft from finding about this deal. When Atari launched Tetris, they got a cease and desist from Nintendo. Atari and Tengen then sued Nintendo and lost, with the smoking gun being the amendment contract between ELORG and Andromeda only allowed the game on computers, not game consoles. Atari and Tengen decided they would not win on appeal. Nintendo Wins the console rights to Tetris.
Technically Tengen didn't pirate Tetris for the NES. They actually made their own unique version. The issue with Tengen Tetris was cause of two things: 1 - Tengen released it as an unlicense game and 2 - Tengen believe they had the legal rights to produce their own version when they don't. Had Tengen choose to release the game as a license NES title then they wouldn't had been blacklisted by Nintendo. Nintendo would had chosen them to port their version of Tetris to the Game Boy instead of Nintendo's own version.
@@VOAN If Tengen released it and didn't have the legal rights to produce it, that is PIRACY. Remember the original rights to Tetris at that time were owned by the Government of Russia and their Academy of Sciences Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre and the rights were licensed internaltionally through Elorg. One can only sublicense rights they have, and because Andromeda and Robert Stein licensed the game from ELORG for computers (but not consoles), and then sublicensed it to Mirrorsoft (and their subsidiary Spectrum Holobyte), and then Atari sublicensed it from Mirrorsoft for North America / Japan. But there is a problem, Mirrorsoft only had the HOME COMPUTER rights, not the CONSOLE RIGHTS. This is why when Atari's subsidary, Tengen sold console versions without a valid license for the console rights, THIS IS INDEED AN ACT OF PIRACY.
Back then the FTC actually had a backbone. Seems like they're finally finding it again recently though.
They’re still bought and paid for by corporations like every other US three letter agency. They’re allowed monopolies to form for decades and breaking them up is going to be a long slow process. Consumers have suffered greatly due to their inaction.
I couldn't help but notice the Hyundai chip at 3:09 lol
Hyundai still makes chips as SK-Hynix (South Korean Hyundai-Electronics)
Competition is what makes markets fair. Not restrictions and over reaching governments.
The fact thst they gave so many LJN games approval...
IKR!
Gauntlet was such a fun game, I never owned it but rented it many times. Good ol days.
Companies like Wisdom Tree WERE sued. (Not specifically them) and Nintendo LOST those lawsuits. IT was ruled they could sue the stores SELLING those games...but not the game developers. The reason why Wisdom Tree games remained for sale everywhere is because they weren't being sold in Toy R Us, or KayBee Toys who Nintendo could make one lawsuit to get rid of a big portion of the market for those games. They would have had to sue hundreds of small independent Christian book stores at an enormous cost for little to no payout.
I can remwber when the price fixing stuff was going on. You had some retailers that absolutely hated that they were stuck with stick unable to eeduce the price to moce them out. This may not seem like.its that bad but.i when i got older worked as a Meat market manager and learned anytime you have a back stock of something your losing money every single day , you storage fee is by the foot more or less. You will reduce price even to a loss just to move the stuff out as your just going to lose more. Its such a big problem manufactures will offer a 'billback' paying to cover what the retailer has been losing by holding their product. As i sais theres a cost by the square foot and also insurance fees that have to be paid as well and the nintendo products had a very very high cost relative to their volume. So you got alot of money in a very small space.
I have always found the side channel attack on the patent office to be a brilliant move. If they had just found a different way of achieving an effective solution in emulating the 10NES, they could have had a solid leg on which to stand in court considering the appellate court was fine with reverse engineering.
2:57 Answer: They had GOD on their side!!
Looking at the Switch Eshop, you can see that Nintendo was in the right in the NES era.
Someone on eBay had the whole Tengen collection CIB up for auction. It was at $1,000 during the last minute. I waited until the last 5 seconds and put in a bid of $1,200.. only for it to sell to someone else for a little over $1,400. Probably for the better. 💀
Most of those rules has absolutely noting to do with quality. I mean, NONE actually did. But most were so unrelated to quality that there was no way Nintendo could claim it was.
To be fair, Bible Adventures was pretty impressive graphically considering the hardware. 🙂
Nintendo actually didn’t take much of the European market until the SNES & N64. Instead, personal computers like the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and later Amiga 500 reigned.
Nintendo also didn’t originally have its lockout procedures on the Japanese Famicom, leading to some of the same quality issues which plagued the Atari 2600. This, in turn, is part of why they added the CIC in the U.S., as well as later decisions like the Nintendo-logo shaped disc lock for the Famicom Disc System.
Atari made a much better Tetris for the NES than Nintendo did and it was obvious. That pissed the big N off too.
Great video, i had no clue about this
My RBI baseball was one of my favorites.
I have a copy of RBI Baseball 2 and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and was always botherd that the carts didn't match, and always wondered why? Thanks for explaining this!!!!!
I had a copy of Afterburner growing up. I remember it being a lot more fun than Top Gun.
I never knew this and know I understand why Gauntlet may not be a reality to the Switch.
Honestly, these guys were making some pretty cool games. Kinda annoying that Nintendo was always putting the kibosh on them.
Tengen's Roadblasters, Shinobi, Rolling Thunder and Gauntlet were Great Arcade Ports!
Nintendo didn't put the kibosh on them. They were suppose to follow the policy like everyone else since not doing so will create a situation similar to the gaming crash of 1983. Nintendo allowing partners to be able to developed and release only five games per year is a strategic curb to maintain quality control so to not have too many games flooding retailers. Tengen lose to Nintendo cause they are still living in the past and did not know the consequences of gaining customer trust and quality control. When they can't get their way due to Nintendo not treating them like a super special partner or something, then they go against the console giant. Also people need to stop thinking that Tengen is a small company, they are not, they are a subsidiary of Namco, Atari, Midway, and Sega. This is why they were able to make games off of IPs from those companies because those companies own them. It's like if Naughty Dog or Media Molecule sue Nintendo, Naughty Dog and Media Molecule are not small companies, they are part of Sony.
@@VOAN Still, I would have welcomes all their games on Nintendo consoles.
Yeah, when I worked as a Gameplay Counselor at Nintendo in 1990-1991, the only game at the time, that I can remember being told we do not answer questions for, was Gauntlet by Tengen. I did a YT video on my birthday last year going over my remaining manuals if you are interested in seeing them, at least for reference. I think we even provided Tengen's support number to callers.
That's so cool!!! Thanks so much for sharing - will check out the video.
Well in The UK we had Amiga and Atari ST battle going on around this time.
Nintendos patent solution is that if the iec chips don't sync the ppu is over electrified. Proof your breaking the console every time it iccurs
I had the Tengen version of Tetris and I would swear after playing both versions the Tengen version is far superior.
Two correction: First: Tengen released 20 unlicensed games to the NES. I have them all. (Afterburner II, Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone, Gauntlet, Indiana Jones, Klax, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac- Man, Road Runnder, Rolling Thunder, RBI Baseball, RBI Baseball 2, RBI Baseball 3, Tetris, Toobin', Shinobi, Skull and Crossbones, Super Sprint, Vindicators) Second, Tengen didn't bring
Afterburner II, Shinobi, Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone to the Genesis. Those were originally Sega games that Sega licensed to Tengen to release on the NES. The Genesis versions were made by Sega. Shinobi and Fantasy Zone weren't even released on the Genesis, they where on the Master System.
If those companies would have said fu to Nintendo the SMS would have destroyed Nintendo in every way.
This explains why my mother was able to buy me 5 Tengen games for $5 back thenfor my NES. I wish I still had them.
I remember seeing a copy of RBI Baseball on a Tengen manufactured cartridge a few years back.
Nintendo concerned about racism? And Punch Out wasn't a hysterical brawl of stereotypes? 😂
Not to mention Mario... mama mia!
Nintendo acting like this is why they have always been considered a security threat. Nowadays, they use much more underhanded means.
Tengen had some sweet games
I remember this and thinking about it now I don’t blame Nintendo. Yes, the pricing thing was a little extreme but as far as controlling the output of games was a wise idea or else there would’ve been another crash…apparently Atari didn’t learn the first time which didn’t happen that long ago. Were all the games good?…no. But Nintendo still exists. Going behind Nintendo’s back about the patent wasn’t cool either. I don’t think anyone here realizes how hard it is to produce something from thin air then for people to turn around and ride someone’s coattails for their own gain. That’s why we still remember Mario and forgot about Bentley Bear. If you leave careless greedy children in charge of the doors of the dam, the village will flood.
I still have a GREY copy of Gauntlet for the NES. Interestingly it does not have a year printed on it, nor the copyright symbol for Nintendo on the back. Is this copy a licensed copy or unlicensed?
nicole.express/2022/the-center-point-can-not-hold.html
I BELIEVE that the grey version is licensed, black unlicensed.
It's a bootleg, throw it away lol
I think they should go after PLAYSTATION for cutting games from other platforms. Or even go as far as market wide of exclusives. And must compete with other means.
10:57 Get your facts straight! Afterburner II, Alien Syndrome, Shinobi, and Fantasy Zone were IP’s belonging to SEGA, not TENGEN! Alien Syndrome and the original Shinobi weren’t released for the Sega Genesis. SEGA released AfterBurner II, Super Fantasy Zone, and Revenge Of Shinobi for their Sega Genesis! Tengen did release some RBI Baseball games, Klax, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, and Gauntlet IV on the Genesis. Those IP’s are the only games that were released by Tengen on both the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. At least in North America.
I noticed that also, Had to listen a time or two to make sure thats how it was said wrongly. Pac man, and rolling thunder originally were licensed from namco to be on the NES. surprised there not more blowback there on namco for these titles released by tengen on the NES.
@@mrmovieprop Namco did their own publishing and development for the Sega Genesis. It was either Bandai or Tengen that published Namco developed games in North America.
If stores can sell at the price they want Nintendo just jacks up the MSRP
imagine buying a car - & they tell you what brands of tires your allowed to buy - what brands of oil your allowed to buy
I mean they do kind of do that, Ford recommends you buy Motorcraft products but doesn't force you to
I still have Tengen Gauntlet and played Tengen Tetris. Tengen games were simply better.
You pronounce Tengen the way I used to as a kid. I’ve since heard it pronounced Ten-Jen and questioned myself about how I always pronounced it.
I would LOVE more info on time warner😮😮
Nintendo wouldn't do so hot with rental stores like they did in Japan, so they just made the games nonsensically hard to avoid them being beaten in a weekend of a rental.
And of course, their attempts to destroy the game genie failed utterly.
Yeap they did failed to killed the Game Genie but in the end they did won the war. Game Genie doesn't exist anymore. Game Genie did try to get a revival during the PS3 era but failed again as by then people embrace DLCs (disc locked contents) instead of cheat codes.
Nintendo has always been a hostile to the customer style of company. I haven't cared for anything that they've done for ages.
The tengen version of tetris is actually closer to the arcade version (and the better version in my opinion)
8:34 this is incorrect, 100,000 copies were sold in stores, not 50, 000
This is why i feel ZERO guilt nor remorse when i download roms to emulate,f*ck Nintendo.
Anderson Cooper that's you?
I always wondered what was up with those janky black cartridges!
Bingo!! Another war that Nintendo lost at!!! Which reminds me! There’s still hope for Vimm’s Lair just like Garry’s Mod, and after that Nintendo can go to hell for what they did to Vimm’s Lair.
Nintendo motivations seem to come from INSANITY the more that gets revealed , the tragedy here is if Nintendo behaved like a normal company during NES run , they could've been 3 times as $$$ wealthy today in 2024 😮😢😢😢
it's times like these where you realize nintendo has always been led by soul sucking inhuman ghouls
Tengen took Sega games to... Sega 😅😂
Tengen tetris was the best tetris.
I never got my $5 coupon!
9:56 Sam who? Do you mean Jack Tramiel?
Sam Tramiel was jack’s son who ran the company with him. On the wiki it said Sam was the president and jack was the ceo but I’m not sure, I just know they ran Atari together.
is this joe gagne?
Dude you have to mention the video game crash in America because of letting everyone just make whatever and put it on the Atari...
You can't say Nintendo was.all bad when they brought back the industry that Atari/tengen lead into the dirt a few years earlier.
But most of all the games.sucked before Nintendo
You should check out the previous video on this same channel (right before the Toejan and Earl video)! It covers the video game crash in detail and leads directly into this video
Is it me or does the narrator sound like Tucker Carlson?
It's a Tucker AI voice
Time-Warner purchased Atari. Well there's why Atari went to total shit. Couldn't have been bought by a slimier company except perhaps Microsoft.
Ten'G'en? I have always heard it pronounced Ten'j'en.
Well, there's a very simple reason you heard me pronounce it Ten'G'en...
...I got it wrong. That's my bad.
@@AlmostSomething No worries. Lol, I was thinking I had it wrong all these years! Cheers from Northern California
tengen tetris was the superior version
Having only 50 levels doesn't necessarily mean it's superior. People choose that version due to it having a multiplayer mode. The Nintendo version goes on forever up til the kill screen whenever that happened. Only thing is the Nintendo version is single player unless you had two consoles and two TVs hookup.
Never liked Nintendo, still don't.
It's sad that they're still here but sega isn't
So, Nintendo has always been a bastard.
so you gave up on making random bs fact video and decided to make a video where you read off a wiki page
Sir, I have EXCELLENT news for you! Through the magic of the internet, UA-cam has billions of hours of entertainment for you. If you don’t like what I make (which, by the way, it seems like you do, since you’ve watched multiple of my videos) than you can watch other high quality programming that you will enjoy. Happy viewing!
@@AlmostSomething Na i am getting a kick out of the fact that some one who knows nothing about video games started a video game channel
Awesome! In that case, please do keep watching and commenting. It really really helps others see the content and boosts the videos in the algorithm. Your support - intentional or otherwise - is truly appreciated. Have a great day!
All while LJN got away w the destruction of all movie based games. Except for true lies later on w sega