Tetris (Was: Re: [GLLUG] following thread "Re: Newbie Installation fest?" but off topic...)

Charles Ulrich dincht at securenym.net
Thu Sep 23 09:53:04 EDT 2004


On Thursday 23 September 2004 07:05, Jolyon Michael Vincent wrote:
> I'm probably botching this story, but the short of it is that you
> shouldn't assume you have the solution because you may find you don't
> have the rights to the thing you want most till you renegotiate the
> deal in the end. Which is where Nintendo came in. And won.
>
>
> Enjoy Tetris!

There's a bit more to this story... Tetris has forever been shrouded in 
copyright and licensing issues. Many of us remember the Tengen Tetris 
battle as one of the most important. Don't have time at the moment to 
tell the whole tale myself, so I'll rip it off wholesale from the 
following well-written article on 1up.com:

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3130201

"Tengen was one of the few companies that dared to fight Nintendo's 
indomitable monopoly over the 8-bit games market in America and Japan, 
and became something truly rare: an unlicensed NES publisher that could 
be counted upon to produce generally decent games. Shady manufacturers 
-- American Video Entertainment, porn-peddling Panesian and the Color 
Dreams/Bunch Games/Wisdom Tree trifecta of crap -- certainly churned 
out their share of off-brand software, but their slipshod wares mainly 
served to reinforce the value of Nintendo's "Seal of Quality." Tengen, 
however, existed as an offshoot of Atari and built a library on ports 
of their own arcade titles as well as popular Sega games. Tengen also 
produced a healthy dose of Namco ports (Namco's early success as a 
Famicom publisher in Japan had given them the confidence to refuse 
Nintendo's restrictive licensing terms, a brash move which ultimately 
failed).

...

"The acquisition of the Tetris license was a major coup for Tengen -- a 
great deal of buzz had built around Pajitnov's invention, and a fierce 
bidding war between Western publishers burst to life around it. The 
company wasted no time in producing the NES version, based on the Atari 
arcade game. Unfortunately, Tengen didn't have the home console rights 
to the game; the company's representatives had been mired in a morass 
of licensing misinformation which affected dozens of companies around 
the world. A savvy Nintendo rep swooped in and procured the rights to 
the game through the proper channels, making the NES and Game Boy the 
exclusive sources for console versions of Tetris. Tengen was caught in 
the unenviable position of being forced to recall the games they had 
distributed -- a financially devastating turn of events given the cost 
of NES ROM production. 

The Score 

"The recall of Tengen's Tetris was also something of a loss for players. 
Nintendo's version was unquestionably prettier than Tengen's, featuring 
vivid colors that made the visuals much more kid-friendly than the 
other game's somewhat drab style. But the Nintendo-published Tetris 
bore little resemblance to the Atari arcade machine, which included 
head-to-head competitive play. The Nintendo game, however, was 
single-player only. 

"It was fun, but only about half as fun as it should have been -- and 
half as fun as the version Tengen had already released. 

"Still, the resolution probably worked out best in the long run for 
everyone but Tengen. Unlicensed publishers had a difficult time getting 
their products into most retailers thanks to pressure by Nintendo 
(whose console represented a massive source of income for the likes of 
Toys R Us), so the Nintendo version was able to reach far more gamers 
than Tengen's ever could have."

Charles Ulrich
-- 
http://bityard.net



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