Tengen: Atari Games vs. Nintendo

Gaming Historian · 2.4M views · 2015-05-29 · 26:10

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Overview

Gaming Historian recounts how Atari subsidiary Tengen challenged Nintendo's licensing rules with a lawsuit and unlicensed NES games, including the lockout chip fight.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a compact account of the Atari-Nintendo lawsuit and its technical and legal details, which shaped the game industry.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2017–2022

Topics

Game history & retro gaming Tech company stories & documentaries

What people said

AceJohnny2 · 2017-07 · Strong recommendation
Another take about Atari's subsidiary Tengen and the Atari-Nintendo lawsuit is this wonderful 30minute video by Norman Caruso, the Gaming Historian: [VIDEO] Highly recommended to learn about the technical and legal details of the lawsuit that shaped gaming industry landscape to this day. Edit: And come to think of it, some of the details and wording in Maher's 2017 article seem pulled straight from Caruso's 2015 video. :\
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franknine · 2022-04 · Reference
There's another episode from Gaming Historian specifically for Tengen: [VIDEO] It talks about how Atari abuses the copyright system to gain access to Nintendo’s protection system source code.
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yosefjaved1 · 2022-04 · Reference
Atari actually got the code illegally from the copyright office. Here's a video discussing that portion - [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Gaming Historian, played through YouTube.

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