How Nintendo NEARLY KILLED The Giana Sisters 

Thank you for lending me your voice 😁

Thank you!

Thank you friend! ☺️

Thank you! And so cool you still have your original cassette.

Thank you!

You're welcome!

Thank you! 👍

I knew about the Jumpman thing, but I found that more to be a description than a real name. But you're 100% correct. And yes, Super Mario Bros. Because that is how I pronounced it as a Dutch kid. I didn't know then it was short for Brothers. Bro's. lol. busted.

Sir Clive was long gone from Spectrum at that time, so he couldnt care less. Alan Sugar (behind the Amstrad) bought up the specs for the ZX spectrum hardware series in 1986.

Ha! That's how I saw it as well!! 😄

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing your story. It's similar to mine actually. Except for the NES.

That's fair. Katakis/R-Type is discussed in my video btw

US Gold did not have the license to R-Type, Activision did.

tbh, I still feel like Nintendo's lawsuit, had Rainbow Arts actually played ball, wouldn't have held up in court, as "clones" were widely accepted in gaming in the '80s (as this video of course mentions), Nintendo wasn't even above making them themselves back then (Devil World, which never saw a North American release due to Nintendo of America being really weird about religious iconography in games at the time, was straight up a Nintendo Pac-Man clone), and simply being similar to an existing IP usually isn't enough to justify a lawsuit over, especially if no actual copyrighted elements show up in the imitator (pretty sure Nintendo didn't have a copyright on powerups that let characters break blocks with their heads, Italian siblings where one has a name starting with "M", enemies you can stomp on the heads of, etc.). I don't think even US Gold's marketing with "The Brothers Are History" would be enough to count as infringement, like it was pretty commonplace in the '80s and '90s for companies to razz their competitors like that, often much more aggressively and directly, in fact, with Sega getting away with doing so *far* more directly to Nintendo themselves just a few years later (but admittedly it was probably still not the smartest decision for a small developer and budget publisher to be that antagonistic about it, maybe). Again, a lot of this is discussed in the video, I'm just saying. Granted, all of this is based in my understanding of intellectual property laws here in the US, so I don't know, maybe laws about this stuff are different in Germany and Nintendo would've had more of a case? Who knows, but I still think Nintendo would've likely had much more of an uphill battle making the case than Rainbow Arts probably assumed, and possibly even knew that themselves, making the whole thing an empty threat (which apparently nonetheless worked).

Katakis and Thunder Boy were probably pushing things *a lot* closer, and there very well may have been a more legitimate argument for infringement there, but it kind of seems like Great Giana Sisters was more fair, about the typical level of closeness to the original you'd expect from an '80s clone, but with still enough differences that I think they'd have had a good argument in court, considering the player character and enemy sprites, powerups, the appearance of the blocks and other level elements, etc. are all clearly different from those in Super Mario Bros.

@@jmp01a24 What I meant was that Activision took on board Rainbow Arts' external contractors Factor 5 to code the 16 bit versions of R-Type. Thank goodness Turrican put everything right for everyone, not looking or feeling like any game before ;-) 🤣😂

Thank you! Fellow Dutchman. 😀

Thank you. And suggestions for a new versus are welcome!

@@RetroGameCouche.g. Who can write the best 10-Liner-Game in Basic for the Commodore 64?

@@madmartigan1498 Clemens isn't a great coder, but I'll ask him anyway :)

Interesting theory, and something I have overlooked. It might have indeed been the UK publisher that was way to aggressive in their marketing, which might have peaked Nintendo's interest. In my video I don't mention the publisher, but blame it on Rainbow Arts themselves, which is unfair.

@@RetroGameCouch US Gold had cooperation with Capcom and SEGA master/megadrive system. I am sure Nintendo watched them close, in case they could do a marketing trick or stick it to US GOLD. Geoff Brown could be a greedy SOB and were prepared to get a game pulled, just to stick it to Nintendo. Plus they got a lot of free press and Nintendo was "the bad guy" in the room so to speak, for doing this to such a classic game. At least when it came to a couple home computer systems. Hardware and games were shifting into 16 bits and console systems - its where the money were as far as they was concerned.

For a while it was officially licenced by Nintendo, but it's still a clone in my book 😊

One of the best thing, what happened to the C64.

Agreed. Hands down the best game on the c64.

@@talos86 Ofcourse it's good. It stole from an all-time classic. No hate though. I love the Commodore 64. It holds a special place in my ♥

@@crescent5311 when i played first with the Giana Sister i never heard of Super Mario or Nintendo at all. Nintendo products where not available in the former soviet member states(Hungary) til 1990. I was one of the few lucky kid, how had the chance to get a C64 on his birthday in 1989. C64 was ultra rare too, but sometimes available.

@@talos86 You did better than me. I never really owned a Commodore 64. I used to play it over a friend's house who was well off. Your family must have made pretty good money.