Tengen: Atari Games vs. Nintendo

Let us all appreciate Edvard Grieg for the intro music, what an awesome tune!

This whole video is ironic now that Nintendo allows steam garbage indie games on their switch in early access or not even that. Very ironic.
Edit: I'm talking about the cheap or sometimes even $20 asset flips with little to no gameplay. not the actual established titles that were brought from steam after actually being successful and loved by the community.

This is definitely the story of game companies that show the decisions and rights between companies and nintendo standing on there own feet trying to keep the market away from the crash only for atari and tengen to come in and basically almost crash the market again and shows Nintendo's strict rules kinda put a hole in there foot

Another illuminating video from the gaming historian. Thank you for this gem. 🙏

I remember getting the $5 coupon back in '90! I didn't know what it was about at the time, but this video makes it clear what I was missing. Thanks for this!

You could probably also argue that without nintendos strict licensing policy. The game industry might not have taken off at all in the US when it did. Nintendos policy stabilized an industry.

once you know all the story, you quicly figure how unethic was atari's behavious, even if it was an advantage for the consumer. i mean, to give a fake reason to get the algorythm of nintendo, because they don't want to hire an hacker, it's like purchasing a guide to finish game when it's too hard for you.

that probably inspired ea when they blackmailed sega to release unofficial cartridges for the genesis system.

this gaming history is plenty of lawsuits 😂
animosity between brands is not only a modern thing.

The lawyer that made the "self-help" argument had to be laughing while writing that argument.

Nintendo was strict, and they did what any company in power would do, consolidate more power. Even Sony did this when they were the market leaders. At the time it was a necessary evil, if they ever had any hope of reigning the bull in. And ultimately they did. It was a pain for other companies, but hey, at least we got some decent games out of it. Games like Tengen Tetris for example. 🙃

I have a Tengen black-cartridge version of Pac-Man. Interesting to finally know the history behind these unusual, unlicensed cartridges.

The balls on Atari in the late 80s where made of pure tungsten... Glad they did what they did or our Nintendo overlords would rule the whole planet instead of just the video game industry...

Before apple, there was Nintendo 😅

These games would ruin your NES if you played them frequently. The NES could safely handle about 100 or so Tengen chip startups before it fried the circuits.

IANAL not am I a Nintendo hater or fanboy buuuuuutt...
Maybe this is the Genesis of Nintendo's litigious nature?

Never did get a copy of Tengen Tetris, the superior 8-bit version.

Nakamura: Nintendo is a monopoly!
Also Nakamura: I will work for their competitor

That’s not how monopolies work

Atari really never got over the fact that they had a golden goose and strangled it to death.

Watching this while the Microsoft/FTC lawsuit over Activision is going on i can only imagine how amazing a Gaming Historian video on that situation would be.

This story is interesting cause a lot of what they are trying to sue Nintendo for was basically the very same thing that cause the videogame crash to begin with. The videogaming crash happen cause of too many games are made with no quality control and too many console manufacturers and third party developers rushing games to market. When Nintendo came along and try to fix everything with quality control, everyone else got jelly and decided why couldn't they do it too and when Nintendo tell them no they sue instead of embrace. It really is what they say, the more things changes the more they stay the same cause with no quality control after the NES a lot of consoles just couldn't compete and this is what Atari doesn't understand otherwise their Lynx and Jaguar console would had be successful.

I just came to comment that I miss this piano intro

common nintendo L

Watching this, you can't convince me that business executives didn't had breakfast together every day and discussed "who should we sue today?" and "I need to sue someone before lunch today or I will lose my shit."

Atari wanted to publish unlicensed games without any of the publisher's guidelines or quality control?

Isn't that how they crashed the industry back in 1983?

Atari games, it could be with great graphics at that time, but crap gameplay. I would have said go the tiger 😂

Man Nintendo has always been such an asshole of a company. Constantly participating in anti competitive practices. Bunch of dicks.

I suggest you should cover how the PS1 came to be.

Okay, this guy has always been a good content creator. I thought this video was released within the last year or so. But this is very good quality.

💪🎯💯‼️

Still my favorite episode of Gaming Historian after all these years. Simply amazing. Keep up the fantastic work!

I feel how frustrating this would be, looking at the time period here is important. Nintendo wanting to ensure the Seal of Quality was important. This was so soon after the Video Game Crash, bad games made with low quality programming that made it extremely difficult for consumers to differentiate good games from bad. Tengen themselves showed very clearly that they were not licensed games; the black altered cartridge made it easy to tell for experienced users. I feel like there could have been a strong middle ground where the games could still be sold, but had to be labeled as “Not Licensed or Guaranteed by Nintendo or it’s subsidiaries” while also needing to use clearly altered style of cartridges.
A simple label like this would have kept the game market extremely open, but also protected Nintendo’s reputation.

So Atari literally went "You know what, we actually ruined the game market in the past, let's go for round two baby!!!" 😂 And I'm just imaging the CEO of Atari games US sitting behind his villain sized desk and chair, when the personel walk in and say, "Nintendo denied our surplus option!"

CEO: "Is that so? Initiate operation Bootleg"😂😂

This would make a great TV miniseries or Netflix movie. Like the American Crime Story style 8-bit Battle, Game- Wars

When I was a kid we had the tengen Pac-Man I always wondered why it was in a different cartridge but my dad still plays Pac-Man to this day I would have to ask if he has a gray cartridge now I believe he does.

Great video! Never knew why there would sometimes be different cartridges.

Actually The Tetris Version That Made by Tangen is Better Than Original

committing fraud to get copyrighted material, obviously illegal

Funny how so many people over the decades act like Nintendo was the "good guys" but truthfully they used very questionable monopolist practices that should have got them is far more legal trouble.

This is a professional documentary. Amazing work, Norman

Your deadly hot going this one man thanks keep up the good work

Thanks!

Chapter 1 TL;DR
Atari split into 2 because of the video game crash of 1983. Atari Corp and Atari Games. Atari Games didn’t get the rights to produce games under the Atari license. So they made a company called Tengen to get around it and basically tricking Atari.

I always heard a story that Rare managed to beat the lockout chip fair and square but rather than produce unliscenced games, they instead used their findings to just create an NES dev kit and then submitted the games to Nintendo for approval. Nintendo gave them freedom to produce as many games as they wanted to, either because they were impressed or because they feared Rare would share their secrets with the world.

i love rbi baseball 3 as a kid

I didn't Nintendo walked so Apple could run over consumer freedom