/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9661230]

What was the story with Tengen?

[Anonymous No.9661240]

https://youtu.be/fLA_d9q6ySs

[Anonymous No.9661262]

The most based developer in the history of game development.

[Anonymous No.9661284]

>>9661230
subsidiary of Atari
didn't want to pay NES licensing fees, so scammed the US copyright office to get the code for the NES lockout chip so they could bypass it and make their own unlicensed cartridges
guess they had already released licensed cartridges before? not sure how or why they did both

[Anonymous No.9661308]

>>9661284
>didn't want to pay NES licensing fees
Seems petty when the biggest developers in the world seemed more than happy to make games for the system

[Anonymous No.9661347]

>>9661308
In order to prevent a flood of garbage software which killed the industry prior, Nintendo only allowed devs to release 6 games a year. So devs had to limit their output and put more effort in whatever they released.

>biggest developers in the world seemed more than happy to make games for the system

all the devs hated this limitation, Atari wasn't the only one who tried to circumvent the system. Konami is guilty of this too.

Atari = Tengen
Konami = Ultra Games
Acclaim = LJN

This strict licensing was the reason the Genesis was such a huge hit with devs and consumers

[Anonymous No.9661352]

>>9661230
Only thing i know is that they have a superior tetris outing than nintendo's, with two player and more stuff to do

[Anonymous No.9661353]

>>9661308
It's not petty, it's pragmatic, they didn't like Nintendo's terms and conditions (which were not particularly generous, better players than Atari were disgruntled by that).
The fraud part is of course what got them in trouble, in hindsight they should have just done the pirate trick where your unlicensed game works as a passthrough which you plug any regular NES cartridge onto, to piggyback off its lockout chip. Nintendo couldn't sue for that.

[Anonymous No.9661376]

>>9661347
>This strict licensing was the reason the Genesis was such a huge hit with devs and consumers
Ha ha no, Sega was no better outside of being a bit more liberal on allowing gore and boobs in their games. Otherwise they had much the same rigid and very expensive licensing policies.

[Anonymous No.9661389]

They tried to decap a NES CIC chip, it didn't work out, and so they just filched the patents for it and made a clone chip. In fact to this day the NES CIC has never actually been reverse engineered and not much is known about its inner workings; all Flash carts use a clone of Tengen's CIC chip.

Most unlicensed devs did other tricks like shocking the CIC chip with an electrical charge to knock it out, and Nintendo repeatedly modified the NES to prevent this from working--the last run of NESes made in 1991-92 were heavily fortified against CIC defeater devices.

[Anonymous No.9661391]

>>9661240
>tengen: atari vs nintendo
this is actually an awesome story. tl;dr was just this guys post
>>9661284
>didn't want to pay NES licensing fees, so scammed the US copyright office to get the code for the NES lockout chip so they could bypass it and make their own unlicensed cartridges
also similar shit with konami and ultra in terms of making another company to print more games and bypass nintendo rules.

[Anonymous No.9661405]

>>9661391
In fact reportedly Howard Lincoln told Konami of America that they could set up a shell publisher if they wanted to put out more than 5 games a year and it would be quietly overlooked--Nintendo dropped the 5 games a year policy in 1991, though.

[Anonymous No.9661408]

>>9661389
the CIC has a tiny die and it's very hard to read it. the chip was made by Sharp and believed similar to chips they used in TV remotes of the period.

[Anonymous No.9661419]

Nintendo weren't even the inventors of licensing policies for console games; Mattel and Coleco did it first.

[Anonymous No.9661432]

>>9661347
Devs had to have a real studio, not make mini games, and the game actually be completed and beatable.

[Anonymous No.9661479]

>>9661347
>In order to prevent a flood of garbage software which killed the industry prior
That never killed the industry, that was Atari (who were one of the biggest players) killing themselves and scaring retailers by pushing their massive excess of stock onto them in a panic. Computer games and arcades did as well as ever, and the infamous crash wasn't really a thing known by the general public.

Nintendo primarily wanted market control, and they got that for a while. The quality control didn't amount to all that much in terms of the quality of actually playing the game, it basically just had to be technically beatable and not crash constantly, for all Nintendo cared, it could be a crude cashgrab or a complete turd, and the NES has quite a lot of low quality titles bearing that seal of quality.
Lots of good stuff, but if you pulled a random NES title out of a hat, chances are good it's going to be a mediocre or poor one.

[Anonymous No.9661485]

>>9661284
Tengen initially released Pac-Man, Gauntlet and R.B.I. Baseball as a legit Nintendo licensee before breaking the agreement and staring to produce unauthorized cartridges. Some major Tengen games like Paperboy, Temple of Doom or Gauntlet II were also published by Mindscape to reach wider distribution chain as most retailers would not carry Tengen-made cartridges.

[Anonymous No.9661501]

>>9661419
It made sense after what happened with the 2600
>>9661391
Gaming historian is legit great. Over the last few years Hulu and Netflix or whatever have all released their own dogshit video game history docuseries and they're always way too sprawling and unfocused and for people who dont have more than a superficial interest in the medium. Either way gaming historian brutally mogs anything else ive seen.

[Anonymous No.9661507]

>>9661284
Atari really had some of the most questionable approaches to business I've ever seen in the gaming world. Like they were always just trying to lazily game the system for more money no matter what. For such a large company to have the attitude they had, it's no wonder they didn't stay on top.

[Anonymous No.9661549]

>>9661507
Atari kept acting like they were the kings of shit mountain. Even well after they weren't.

[Anonymous No.9661569]

>>9661507
I just finished Atari 50 and it's actually pretty interesting
They put these like Proctor and Gamble execs in charge of everything, and it's easy to heap blame on them because they objectively didn't know what they were doing, but to their defense there was no roadmap before them to show them what to do and not to do. Like there was no consumer electronic that had a lifecycle the way that a video game console does.
So they basically
-didn't know not to flood the market with shovelware, because execs didn't know a good game from a bad game and good game and only cared about total units sold, not understanding how much damage they were doing to their brand
-didn't know how to sunset the 2600 and introduce the 5200. Which again, to their defense, a proper console lifecycle had never been rolled into the next console's lifecycle before, and it's a minefield of confusing people and alienating consumers. And of all the lessons Nintendo and Sony learned from Atari this is the biggest one. Sega uh... could've learned this lesson better.
-It's too broad of a statement, but they really didn't understand the marketplace and how some people chased graphics, some people didn't care, some people wanted a fullblown home computer, some people didnt care, etc. So genuinely the smartest thing Atari ever did (in my opinion) as a hardware manufacturer was way after the 1983 crash when they cut the 2600 down to like a half it's size, and sold it for way cheaper as the Atari 2600 Jr. Because yeah, then you can get all these people who aren't chasing the hardware specs under your umbrella, who are going to buy your software (where the money is), and might get grandfathered into the next gen.

Anyway I'm just repeating what the game said, so take it with a grain of salt. I just think it's interesting how most of the subsequent manufacturers learned from Atari's mistakes and the whole Nintendo moratorium on publishing too many games is a good example of that.

[Anonymous No.9661571]

NOA also had a list of content guidelines for games that they didn't have in Japan, where there weren't really any rules outside no outright porn that included no gore, religious or political references, bobs and bagine, swearing, etc although the rules were never perfectly enforced and quite a few games got away with stuff that they weren't supposed to because NOA just weren't paying attention or it was a "favorite son" like Konami who often had religious imagery in games.

[Anonymous No.9661575]

>>9661376
EA basically pulled the same move as Atari when they found Sega's licensing terms to be unfavorable and is the reason their Genesis games looked different than the normal ones.

[Anonymous No.9661576]

>>9661308
Says the FUCKING DICK SUCKING FANBOY GO BACK TO /V/ CUNT!

[Anonymous No.9661636]

>>9661575
>>9661376
as usual you had to pay Sega a fuckton of money, a lot more than the actual cost of manufacturing the cartridges was, follow their Q/C rules, they controlled cartridge manufacturing, and decided when your game would get made and shipped, and how many cartridges you could order. EA wanted to make their own carts, make exactly the quantity they wanted, and ship them on their own timetables.

[Anonymous No.9661649]

>>9661347
>This strict licensing was the reason the Genesis was such a huge hit with devs and consumers
Actually they just liked Sega's more badass image and the fact that the Genesis was much more advanced tech than the NES, which was over half a decade old by the time the former got released internationally. Western devs were also in love with its really simple, straightforward architecture and 68000. In 1990, games like Strider or Batman looked face-melting compared to anything on the NES.

[Anonymous No.9661740]

>>9661389
>In fact to this day the NES CIC has never actually been reverse engineered and not much is known about its inner workings
It hasn't been decapped, but it's pinout is known, all registers are known, and it's code has been dumped and fully disassembled. We know what it does, and how it does it. It's pretty much a tiny 4-bit CPU with it's own tiny work RAM and 512/768 bytes of ROM, and the ASM code on the ROM takes the handshake from the cartridge, wrangles it through, and then sends the reset(or not) on what it calls P1(Pin 9 as per NESdev wiki) to the console. Decapping it wouldn't really be of much use unless we are going for transistor-level accuracy or "gotta emulate every last detail 100% correctly even if it tanks performance" MAME-level accuracy.

[Anonymous No.9661743]

>>9661230
They made cool cartridges for starters.

[Anonymous No.9661763]

Some of the Nintendo mappers were decapped relatively recently; for MMC3 this was important because nobody knew exactly how the IRQ behavior worked and this is essential for correct emulation. Similar with MMC5. I believe they used the early NMOS versions of the chips for study rather than the later CMOS revisions as NMOS logic is easier to decode.

[Anonymous No.9661787]

>>9661284
>subsidiary of Atari Games

Fixed for you. Atari Games and Atari Corp. were two different companies. Atari Corp. was the hardware division of Atari. Atari Games was the arcade division. Warner Bros. who bought Atari, split up the company into two entities and sold them both off. Jack Tramiel bought Atari Corp.

[Anonymous No.9661792]

>>9661308
biggest semen slurper

[Anonymous No.9661850]

>>9661347
>Acclaim = LJN

The Acclaim and LJN rabbit hole is a weird one. LJN was originally an independent company, during the NES years. But Jack Friedman sold LJN to Acclaim in the early 90's and used that money to fund THQ. This thread is all about Nintendo licensing, and any 3rd party game publisher that had a contract with Nintendo pre-1991/ 1992 were locked down to Nintendo's hardware and could not publish their games on any competing console. I think the FCC cracked down on Nintendo by 1991 and Nintendo had to change their contracts and remove the exclusivity deal. EA was never a Nintendo publisher and worked with Konami/ Ultra on the NES. They jumped over to the Genesis/ MD in 1990. LJN created a separate company called Arena Games, so they could publish Genesis/ MD games and work around Nintendo's contracts. Acclaim created the company Flying Edge, which would publish Genesis/ Sega games exclusively. Flying Edge was a division of Acclaim, and Arena was a division of LJN. But Acclaim purchased LJN and all of LJN's subsidiaries. in the end, Acclaim owned LJN, Flying Edge and Arena Games. Jack Friedman started fresh with THQ. Tengen was a division of Atari Games. Atari Games was owned by Namco at some point, then sold to Midway, and then Midway went out of business and was sold off in chunks to WB games, with some of the sports properties being sold off to EA. EA owns NBA Jam and Blitz?

[Anonymous No.9661865]

>>9661787
To make things more confusing, Atari Games is legally known as Atari Games Corporation.

[Anonymous No.9661870]

>>9661850
No. Nintendo got sued and a Federal judge ruled that they violated antitrust statutes so they had to give up their exclusivity clause.

[Anonymous No.9662073]

>>9661230
Protip: The unlicensed Tengen version of After Burner isn't as good as the Famicom version.

[Anonymous No.9662150]

>>9661865
>To make things more confusing, Atari Games is legally known as Atari Games Corporation.

It's confusing. I probably got some things wrong. Atari Inc. was the original company. Warner Communications bought Atari inc. in the late 1970's. Then Atari inc. under-performed for Warner Communications, so they split Atari inc into these two entities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Corporation

Current Atari was formally Infogrames. Who bought the Atari name from Hasbro in the late 90's. Hasbro purchased the rights from Jack Tramiel after the Jaguar tanked the company. I think the current Warner Bros. owns the TENGEN name as well as the remnants of Atari Games corp.

[Anonymous No.9662178]

Tengen was as bad and dirty as Codemasters, Color Dreams and Wisdom Tree.
There's a reason why the average videogame store back then refused to carry their games.

[Anonymous No.9662217]

>>9661308

[Anonymous No.9663206]

>>9661870
>No. Nintendo got sued and a Federal judge ruled that they violated antitrust statutes so they had to give up their exclusivity clause.

Oh, that's what happened. It really seemed like Sega was getting a lot of new third party support for the Genesis/ MD between 1991 and 1992. Like, it was something seeing Konami on a Sega platform. Though, less of a deal seeing Capcom. Street Fighter II SCE was one of the first actual Genesis/MD games that Capcom made in-house. But there were Capcom games on the Genesis that were ported by Sega before that. From 1989-1990, Sega has very few third party publishers for the Genesis. TENGEN was one of them. TENGEN going unlicensed on the NES, they did get a third party license from Sega for the Genesis/ MD and were one of the first western third party publishers for the console.

For me, the first TENGEN game I ever had was Pac-Man for the NES. I remember this cartridge, and it was a really good port of Pac-Man. My dad loved the game. The cart looks awesome. I loved the art. For an unlicensed cartridge, it looked good. I always heard that other unlicensed games tend to shoot extra voltage into the NES, and 'daze' the NES10 lockout chip. They can damage the console, and even causes a burning plastic smell. The TENGEN carts use some sort of reverse lockout that doesn't do any damage.

[Anonymous No.9663256]

>>9663206

When I was a little kid, this was the version of Pac-man my parents had on the 2600:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCPpgt0s70U

I liked playing it as a kid, and just didn't know any better. But years later, my Dad gets Pac-Man TENGEN for the NES, the unlicensed black cartridge that I just took for granted. Like, I never really asked why it was in a weird black cart. the game looked like this, and was a generally better version of Pac-Man. Or at least closer to the arcade game, but still not exact. the NES game is still at a smaller resolution compared to the arcade game. the Cherry sprites missing details. But, it was a solid enough port. Namco used the same port too? I also remember renting the TENGEN Ms. Pac-Man NES port too. It looks closer to the arcade game, but the screen has to scroll. Giving you 3/4th of the screen. But still, not a big annoyance. But the game does have co-op option, and the option for smaller and more compressed maps that fit the screen, and the option for larger maps. Namco game has the whole map viable on screen, like the Pac-Man NES port, but graphics are less than arcade accurate. The TENGEN game has to scroll to use arcade resolution graphics. I don't think the Namco version is bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_bUrJmCUyA&t=60s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-_mOUOnZxk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jINUCRdN6lw&t=385s

[Anonymous No.9663305]

>>9661230
I'm sure there's any number of 90-minute video essays you can look up on this subject.

[Anonymous No.9663318]

>>9663206
>The TENGEN carts use some sort of reverse lockout that doesn't do any damage.
They plain stole the patents and made a clone of the NES lockout chip.

[Anonymous No.9663330]

>>9661230
transcending history and the world, a tale of tens and gens

[Anonymous No.9663402]

>>9661571
Their guidelines could be quite vague and inconsistent at times, several studios have commented on it. I recall an article about it being a confusing mess to try to get Nintendo to accept their port of Maniac Mansion.

>>9661575
I still to this day wonder just why EA had that weird yellow tab on their carts. Everyone back then when they saw it assumed it was something you were supposed to be able to remove to plug in some kind of upgrade or additional accessory, and having a completely separate piece of the cart that is even a different color must have made the manufacturing of the carts more much expensive than if it was just two black plastic shells.

>>9663206
>always heard that other unlicensed games tend to shoot extra voltage into the NES, and 'daze' the NES10 lockout chip. They can damage the console, and even causes a burning plastic smell. The TENGEN carts use some sort of reverse lockout that doesn't do any damage.

There was other unlicensed games that did indeed do that. It was found that if you sent a voltage spike to the chip it disables it until you power cycle the console. The NES10 basically does the equivalent of pressing the reset button if the other chip on the cart ever fails it's security check (Hence why the NES keeps resetting if there is no cart inserted), so disabling it works for bypassing the DRM. The Famicom never had it, so it could not be integrated that well into the console unlike later Nintendo systems, which is why just simply removing the pin from the chip that sends the reset signal disables the DRM completely instead of prevents the console from working at all.

No idea if it could cause damage, but it likely was not good for it. I think Codemasters was one who did that, there was a switch on their earlier carts that adjusted this behavior because it was not perfected. I think later ones removed the switch because they revised the method so it worked on every model successfully.

[Anonymous No.9663414]

>>9663402
Forgot to mention, as I recall they relied on having a series of capacitors that would charge up and then send said voltage spike to the NES10 chip. I think it might sometimes take a reset or two before it worked as the caps needed a few moments to fully charge.

I recall seeing that weird gold cart with the switch on the back on a game an old friend had called Big Nose The Caveman, I was so confused a the time why the game needed a switch to make it work.

Here's what the PCBs of that game and it's sequels looked like, notice the large capacitors on the top sticking off the circuit board.

[Anonymous No.9663454]

>>9661230
tldr; unlicensed developer gets past NES security and trolls Nintendo.

[Anonymous No.9663456]

>>9663402

I played one or two of those Codemasters ones as a kid, after having rented them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_compilations
I think I played the Adventure one. I didn't like it very much.

[Anonymous No.9663770]

>>9661575
>>9661636
The only difference between Nintendo and Sega was that Nintendo went crying to court instead of trying to secure a deal with Tengen (Which also made other third parties nervy about dealing with Nintendo). Meanwhile Tom Kalinkse immediately called Trip Hawkins bluff on EA circumventing their lockout saying he'll offer an exclusive deal with Sega where they'd ignore EA bypassing if EA prioritized the Genesis and made exclusive games for it. Sega had already got burned with Accolade and lock out chips in a lawsuit that went against them in the early 90's. So Tom simply pivoted and met publishers on their terms.

[Anonymous No.9663805]

The early Mega Drives made in 1988-90 had no lockout system, but after EA came to terms with Sega they changed the BIOS to check cartridges for a Sega copyright string at bootup. This meant that the initial unlicensed EA titles like Marble Madness and John Madden Football would not boot except on those early revision Model 1 consoles.

[Anonymous No.9663813]

so like others said Nintendo had some rigid quality guidelines including that a developer had to have a real office building and at least $100,000 in assets. they also charged publishers 2-3x the actual cost of manufacturing cartridges to ensure they'd always make a profit even if the game failed to sell.

[Anonymous No.9663839]

>>9663402
>Everyone back then when they saw it assumed it was something you were supposed to be able to remove to plug in some kind of upgrade or additional accessory
It's difficult for normal gentiles to get inside the heads of coked-up marketers/industrial designers. That aside, I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally wanted it to look functional in order to spark that curiosity.

[Anonymous No.9663851]

>>9661230
You could've look this up with one search instead of making a sad thread about the topic.

[Anonymous No.9663962]

>>9663851

Sad? It's gotten 52 replies.

[Anonymous No.9663970]

>>9663402

So that's what that's for. I had Quattro Sports.

[Anonymous No.9663992]

>>9663962

[Anonymous No.9664001]

>>9663402
>Their guidelines could be quite vague and inconsistent at times, several studios have commented on it. I recall an article about it being a confusing mess to try to get Nintendo to accept their port of Maniac Mansion.
Manic Mansion seemed to be a game that NOA were particularly dick-ish about for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.9664013]

>>9661230
>What was the story with Tengen?
shovelware developers.

>>9661262
you have severe brain damage.

>>9661347
>This strict licensing was the reason the Genesis was such a huge hit with devs and consumers
that wasn't the reason. it was an incredibly successful (and powerful) console that had an enormous market. "strict licensing" crippled adoption of megadrive by developers - ASK ACCOLADE and ELECTRONIC ARTS, FAGGOT. you retards of this board will just make up any old schizo tale.

[Anonymous No.9664015]

>>9663992

[Anonymous No.9664017]

>>9661347
read this, you fucking idiot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

[Anonymous No.9664158]

>>9663256
Pac-Man was Namco's old original Famicom port from 1985. Dig Dug 2, Galaga, and Xevious were released in North America by Bandai a bit later.

[Anonymous No.9664340]

>>9663770
>>9663805
It wasn't really a lockout system, it was called the TMSS, the TradeMark Security System. Basically the Genesis would check if a text string of "SEGASEGASEGASEGASEGA" was present in specific locations in memory. The development documentation of the Genesis actually mentioned that games should do this, some ignored it because it didn't seem to do anything.... until SEGA made it a requirement in later revisions for the game to boot. The idea being that "SEGA" is trademarked, and a game would basically be violating their trademark if it sent that text string to the console without their permission and they could sue. Eventually exactly that happened, SEGA sued.... and lost because it was ruled that nobody would be able to see those 1s and 0s making up SEGA's trademark being electronically sent to the console to make it boot so they can't reasonably argue it's trademark infringement.

The whole "security" system depended not on any sort of DRM, anyone would have been able to bypass it, the dev documentation even said how to, the whole system depended on it being possible to sue anyone who does... and the lawsuit failed.

Nintendo actually did something similar with the Gameboy. That Nintendo logo that appears on boot is actually a security check, the image is being sent from the cartridge and if a single pixel is off it won't boot the game. The difference here is that you ARE seeing the trademarked logo so if it went to court it would likely have been ruled in Nintendo's favor.

Eventually a flaw was discovered though that it reads it first to determine if it passes or not, then reads it again to display it, so some realized they could send the proper logo then quickly make the cart send THEIR logo when it's read again to display it. Argonaut demonstrated this to Nintendo and got hired over it.

[Anonymous No.9664345]

>>9664340
Also:
>This meant that the initial unlicensed EA titles like Marble Madness and John Madden Football would not boot except on those early revision Model 1 consoles.

True, one way to bypass this is to plug them into something like a Game Genie so that the Game Genie itself performs the necessary steps to boot the system and then passes execution over to the game. Some of those games also later got revisions to get past TMSS, but not all.

There was two parts to the TMSS, some of the games that didn't do it properly (most I believe were Japanese) didn't do one of the two steps, very few didn't do either (I recall Popolocrois was one of those)

[Anonymous No.9664357]

Some later Master Systems also had a copyright string check and in doing so made SG-1000 games not runnable on them.

[Anonymous No.9664370]

>>9661419
The Colecovision did do a copyright string check on power up, but some unlicensed games were made for it anyway mostly Epyx's and since the console had entirely off-the-shelf components, figuring out how everything worked was trivial.

[Anonymous No.9664385]

>>9661740
>It hasn't been decapped
You can find die shots of the CIC online. There's literally a code number etched into it.

[Anonymous No.9664395]

>>9661571
Most NES carts were also made by Nintendo themselves while a lot of Famicom carts were made by the publisher, if they were a hardware manufacturer like Konami or Namco (Capcom elected to just buy Nintendo's PCBs instead of make their own though). NES carts were made with high quality components and avoided cheap measures like glop top ROMs while Famicom carts could be all over the map, some with crappy plastic shells and poor quality PCBs that are prone to traces breaking or lifting.

[Anonymous No.9664549]

>>9664015

[Anonymous No.9664597]

>>9664340
>so some realized they could send the proper logo then quickly make the cart send THEIR logo when it's read again to display it. Argonaut demonstrated this to Nintendo and got hired over it.
That's actually pretty interesting

[Anonymous No.9664664]

>>9664549

[Anonymous No.9664686]

>>9663402

I knew someone who had a Micro Machines NES cart that looks like this one. yeah, it has that switch on the back I think it was for compatibility? They were weird carts to see at the time. I never would have understood the concept of licensing at age 10.

[Anonymous No.9664709]

>>9663206
FYI, all three releases of Pac-Man on the NES, (Tengen licensed, Tengen unlicensed, and Namco,) are the same as each other and the Famicom release. The Tengen version of Ms. Pac-Man, however, is a lot better than the Namco version, and btw, Ms. Pac-Man never even released on the Famicom.

[Anonymous No.9664717]

>>9661575
>EA basically pulled the same move as Atari when they found Sega's licensing terms to be unfavorable and is the reason their Genesis games looked different than the normal ones.


EA was an official third party developer, but Trip Hawkins set up a deal where EA could manufacture their own carts, instead of using the Sega carts. Apparently, EA could make more money directly if they manufactured their own carts. Later EA carts used the Sega produced ones.

[Anonymous No.9664756]

>>9664686
Micro Machines reportedly glitches on some NESes because it does weird programming tricks that aren't compatible with certain hardware revisions.

[Anonymous No.9664770]

>>9664756
if you mean the title screen reading from the PPU registers that works on almost all NESes except some really early ones from the initial 1985 test market run as those had an older PPU revision.

[Anonymous No.9664792]

>>9663402
NESes made in 1987 and earlier had no protection against lockout defeater devices. This was gradually improved by putting resistors around the CIC chip, and the final run of consoles made in 91-92 were quite well insulated against most unlicensed carts.

[Anonymous No.9664925]

>>9664792
Until they released the toploader that had no NES10 as it was pointless by then since it had been defeated. Thanks to the lack of NES10 and no bendable connector they were a lot less likely to have issues playing games than the original NES.

Never was a fan of the dogbone-styled controller shape though.

[Anonymous No.9664967]

>>9664925
unlicensed games except Tengen ones don't work on the top loader at all and can damage it as there's nowhere for the zapper voltage to go to

[Anonymous No.9664987]

>>9664792
I believe mine was made in 89-90 and it worked when I tried it with Spiritual Warfare. There's a momentary pause when you turn it on before the lockout chip gets knocked out.

[Anonymous No.9664995]

>>9664925
can't play those on a Famicom with an adapter either for same reason. luckily you're not missing much with most unlicensed games anyway.

[Anonymous No.9665324]

Tengen carts also have no Japanese components in them, usually everything was American or Taiwanese parts. This was because none of the Japanese electronics companies wanted to sell parts for unlicensed NES games and risk pissing off Nintendo.

[Anonymous No.9665417]

Thinking back, it is impressive how many of the black Tengen cartridge games I have played. They published a lot of unlicensed NES games

I remember Rolling Thunder black cartridge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LwUwrWfY1s
Tengen After Burner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwBxDBNn_dI
I remember how much better the master System version was in comparison.
And there's that unlicensed Tengen Shinobi port:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSjRNTmGHqo

[Anonymous No.9665467]

>>9665417
They developed 19 games in-house and published four Famicom games made by other developers in the US. In addition, four Tengen-developed games got a Famicom release. That's a total of 23 unique games that Tengen developed, published, or both.

[Anonymous No.9665478]

>>9665467
>In addition, four Tengen-developed games got a Famicom release
Three: Pac-Man, RBI Baseball, and Afterburner (Shinobi did not get a Famicom release).

[Anonymous No.9666206]

>>9664340
>Nintendo actually did something similar with the Gameboy. That Nintendo logo that appears on boot is actually a security check, the image is being sent from the cartridge and if a single pixel is off it won't boot the game. The difference here is that you ARE seeing the trademarked logo so if it went to court it would likely have been ruled in Nintendo's favor.
that also failed pretty hard as bootleggers were able to work out that they only needed one part of the logo's tiles for the gb's bios to verify it as legit. nintendo were always shit at security, and nothing changed in the switch era. it's always amazing to hear stories about nintendo crying about their "intellectual property" when the NES is just a reverse engineered clone of Ikegami Tsushinki's donkey kong arcade board.

[Anonymous No.9666215]

>>9661230
>>9665417
> loud as fuck intro music
people should be shot in the face for creating such garbage intros. how the fuck do youtubers get the video part right by fail so hard at audio every single time?

>And there's that unlicensed Tengen Shinobi port:
looks very dull compared to sms version but is a bit smoother. i would put that down to some bad programming for sms' z80. sms was just a superior console in every way.

[Anonymous No.9666284]

>>9666215
>people should be shot in the face for creating such garbage intros. how the fuck do youtubers get the video part right by fail so hard at audio every single time?

Eh, at this rate I'll take it over the ones that just have random scenes from an anime, usually Dragonball or Bleach, to loud random explosions and blaring heavy metal.

[Anonymous No.9666316]

>>9663402
https://www.crockford.com/maniac.html always an interesting read. Crockford's article on Habitat is also interesting (but unrelated).

[Anonymous No.9666373]

>>9666316
Yeah, that sounds a lot like the one I read long ago, I didn't remember which specific one it was.

[Anonymous No.9666382]

>>9663402
>>9666316
I think Maniac Mansion got a special treatment, special attention, because it was already known for this type of content.

[Anonymous No.9666751]

>>9666206
>when the NES is just a reverse engineered clone of Ikegami Tsushinki's donkey kong arcade board.
LOLno actually it's a bootlegged 6502 and a reverse engineered TMS9918 with some improved features.

[Anonymous No.9666759]

>>9661569
thanks, I do want to get that atari 50. but they put out shit ports and lazy games out themselves. Im sure the atari 50 doesnt want to mention the rumored porn movie they let be filmed be in their offices. they had crazy college kids running the day to day it seemed. it all appears to have been haphazard

[Anonymous No.9666787]

>>9665467
>and published four Famicom games made by other developers in the US
Three: Pac-Man, RBI Baseball, and Afterburner (Shinobi did not have a Famicom release)

[Anonymous No.9666906]

>>9666215
>people should be shot in the face for creating such garbage intros.

Yeah, I agree. Sorry about that.
> and sublicensed to MirrorSOFT LTD
How much of that held up in court?

[Anonymous No.9666991]

>>9666787
Sega did port a few other games to Famicom like Space Harrier and Altered Beast, but yeah Shinobi was US-only. They did this because the Master System market was small so doing Famicom ports was necessary to make some extra bucks.

[Anonymous No.9667001]

>>9666206
>nintendo were always shit at security, and
The improved SNES lockout chip seemed pretty effective as there were almost no unlicensed SNES games.

[Anonymous No.9667087]

>>9667001
>The improved tiger repellant seemed pretty effective

[Anonymous No.9667298]

>>9666215
It's smoother in the sense that it doesn't scroll vertically ever. Vertical stages were redone to be horizontal.

[Anonymous No.9667312]

Ron Gilbert considered the NES Maniac Mansion to be the best and definitive port of the game though.

[Anonymous No.9667560]

>>9662178
Yeah, because Nintendo used their monopoly muscle to force retailers to not stock those games. And to force devs to play by their unfair rules which is why these unlicensed games were made in the first place.

BTW, I trust the Tengen Seal of Quality more than I trust the Nintendo Seal of Quality.

[Anonymous No.9668773]

like most unlicensed developers they worked on the cheap and their games tended to be low budget jank with small ROMs. also Atari Games didn't really know how to make anything but arcade stuff.

[Anonymous No.9668801]

>>9661230
My Gauntlet IV doest work anymore. I think it's the PCB.

[Anonymous No.9668808]

>>9667312
He probably didn't see nor had much of a part in the enhanced IBM PC nor the Amiga versions. Not saying the NES Maniac Mansion is all bad, but those two aforementioned ports have more than just graphics glitter to them.

[Anonymous No.9668810]

>>9661262
That would be Wisdom Tree.

[Anonymous No.9668814]

>>9668801
broken trace probably. unlicensed carts often weren't made to the same manufacturing standards as the licensed Nintendo ones. Acclaim's are really ghetto (licensed but they made their own PCBs).

[Anonymous No.9668828]

>>9668814
Gauntlet IV is Mega Drive not NES though?

[Anonymous No.9668842]

>>9668828
yeah I forgot. Mega Drive carts are usually extremely simple so repairing them is cake. often you can just get some wire to bridge a broken trace and that fixes it.

[Anonymous No.9668847]

>>9668810
>(((wisdom tree)))
Nah, I'd rather trust Tengen and Codemasters than what Color Dreams turned themselves into; a bunch of massive 2d sprite pallette swappers and even for so, peddlers of vile Abrahamic snake oil and, in addition one of the greatest lies ever spread and promoted on the face of the Earth.

[Anonymous No.9668931]

>>9668847
Seek help.