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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