Cheating Nintendo's Rules

Part 1: The Sub-Companies

Many people wonder why some companies published games under different names, such as how Konami published games under Konami and Ultra games. This was done to cheat Nintendo's release rules. Nintendo limited every third party contributor to release only a few about of games per year, hoping to make them concentrate on the quality of the games. With this method though, companies couldn't get many games out and couldn't get as much profit. In order to bypass this rule, the companies made sub-companies so that they could release even more games onto the NES, therefore getting more product out and more profit.

Part 2: The Blockout

On Nintendo carts and the system itself, Nintendo installed a security chip which could only be unlocked by a certain code. If a game didn't have the code, it wouldn't play. This was supposed to keep companies from making unlicensed games. Well, Tengen (aka Namco) was a lot pissed off at this, plus the president of Namco hated Nintendo's president's guts. So they made some weird petition/request to the US patent office and somehow got the office to give them Nintendo's code (read "Game Over" to find out the full details). Other companies came up with devices that "zapped" the security  chip so that it could bypass it. These games can seriously damage your NES. I hope this small editorial answers some of your questions on how companies cheated Nintendo and its Nazi like tactics.

by BkdTatrHrt@aol.com