Nintendo vs. Tengen: How Nintendo Won the Battle (But Lost the War) For Video Game Domination 

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.

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.

I feel lucky to have obtained a copy of Tengen Tetris for the NES at a tag sale for just $1 many years ago.

The Tetris story is worthy of it's own movie... which is why we made one.

This is why i have no problem downloading roms of my favorite games.

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.

A video on Wisdom Tree would be good. I would also love to see one about Active Enterprises.

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" 🤔

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

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.

The video gaming market was different back in the day

Nintendo has always been draconian, but I feel like events like this is why Nintendo has remained so paranoid and litigious to this day.

Tengen Undercut All Publishers! $15 a Game! I Got a New Game Almost Every Trip to Phar-Mor with My Mom!

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.

Back then the FTC actually had a backbone. Seems like they're finally finding it again recently though.

I couldn't help but notice the Hyundai chip at 3:09 lol

Competition is what makes markets fair. Not restrictions and over reaching governments.

The fact thst they gave so many LJN games approval...

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.

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.

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? 😂

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?

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.

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 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.

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?

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

Is it me or does the narrator sound like Tucker Carlson?

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.

tengen tetris was the superior version

Never liked Nintendo, still don'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

All while LJN got away w the destruction of all movie based games. Except for true lies later on w sega