I always thought Tengen Tetris looked better. Anyway Tengen had the easiest time circumventing the lock out chip because they stole the code from the patent office and copied the lockout chip.
@@SuperHamsterGaming Tengen Tetris looks very much like the arcade game. I should also add that Tengen's Alien Syndrome was actually a lot of fun. At least I thought it was.
There's a reason those Quattro games remind you of old PC games. The Dizzy games were huge on the 8 and 16 bit computers. Plus that Robin Hood game was the one by the Oliver Twins, another big deal in the home computer scene. Impossible Mission is also commonly talked about in any discussion of the 80s computers. Probably plenty of others in this video that I didn't spot, too. Edit: I forgot to add that the Dizzy games were also Oliver Twins games. The way I phrased it made it seem like JUST Robin Hood was.
@@BigOleWords Probably an attempt to crack the American market. While a mix of computers from Amstrad, Sinclair, Commodore, and Atari ruled the roost in Europe, American gaming at the time was very much centred on the NES. It probably helps that the NES' CPU was based on the 6502. If an 8 bit computer didn't have a Zilog Z80 in it, it probably had a 6502 derivative, so it was very much a known quantity to the European scene.
I never remember seeing these in any stores as a kid, but my local rental place had a ton of them, especially Tengen. I was always confused why some cartridges were black when I would rent them. I remember renting Alien Syndrome the most. That was a fun game. Great video, I have really been enjoying your channel since I discovered it.
Many of these were sold mail order direct from shady companies with little understanding of the industry and fewer scruples. Remember having Krazy Kreatures and Ms. Pac-Man in my collection as a kid.
fun fact wisdom tree and color dreams are actually the same company they just had to rebrand after Nintendo demanded from game retailers not to carry color dreams games or else their supply of Nintendo games would be cut off because the games were not officially made with Nintendos approval
That, and Wisdom Tree focused primarily on making Christian-themed games, and even reskinned a few of their old Color Dreams titles, like how Menace Beach became Sunday Funday
@@BigOleWords Right, I believe it advised you to try the position that wouldn't zap the lockout first in case you were using a version of the NES that didn't have the lockout, as the lockout zapper might fry the console! The common assumption about it being an NTSC/PAL switch seems incorrect because Codemasters is known to have written a region detection into their software through some sort of cycle-counting routine at bootup, and many of their games will automatically correct their music speed for PAL or also the music pitch when DPCM bass is involved. Cosmic Spacehead even makes the player character move a lot faster in the action stages only on a PAL NES!
The switch on the camerica games is for what NES system you were using. If you're using the original console you switch it to "A" and if you're using the top loader, you switch to "B"
I think most of Camerica's games came out after. They were aware of the top loader though. They released an adapter for the game genie since it's not compatible with the top loader, which was very intentionally set up by Nintendo who hated the Game Genie.
This kind of content has been done for decades on youtube now. But something about yours is great. I can tell you write a script. The video is tight and doesn't waste our time. But your style is conversational. I really like it. Good job.
on those gold/silver carts the switch on the back was their way around the lock out chip. if you put it in while on position a and the game wouldn't load (flashing red light on the news) then you're supposed to pull the game and flip the switch to position b and then it should work.
I learned in the last couple of years that the NES Tetris has a 2 player mode hidden away. It's unfinished, but playable if you unlock it with the game genie. I thought I knew most obscure secrets from that era, but that was a nice discovery.
Dizzy games are really good. Codemasters had a fine reputation for Microcomputers/PC in the UK. Bear in mind, the original versions for C64, ZX Spectrum were £2.99 or less, (a solid pocket money amount in the '80s). Their NES stuff looks similar to their Amiga/ST games. MiG 29 deserves better than that trashed cartridge, it's like NES Top Gun, but better.
A couple times you called these unlicensed games bootlegs, but they really are not. Bootlegs are just things like unauthorized reproductions, true copyright infringement where someone sells someone elses game, those are bootlegs. These unlicensed are legit games programed by legit companies. The tengen ones however do have a bootleg 10nes security chip. They did not reverse engineer it, they stole the code and just produced eexact clones or the chip. They got caught. They called up a copyright office and simply requested a copy of th source code for Nintendo's security chip, and they handed it tom atari!! Then thsy just made chips exactly the same.
I hear ya and specific to the NES that is absolutely the correct distinction: unlicensed games are original games that weren't official releases and bootlegs were official games that were modified or hacked in some way. I just use the words "knockoff" and "bootleg" here because that's pretty much how I'd colloquially describe any discount/low quality brand of something.
I always thought Tengen, since they were straight up just Atari Games Co., had designed their NES cart molds after those slimmer Atari 2600 carts that had the same slanted top for the end labels. Their NES port of Alien Syndrome is, embarrassingly, so much better than SEGA's own home version on the Master System.
I grew up playing the Tengen Tetris and it was really good, the music was awesome, the versus mode was really fun and I have many fond memories about it. Also the story behind it is quite interesting, there was some kind of legal battle between Nintendo and Tengen for the Tetris license, both thought they had the rights so both made their own game, it's crazy.
Tengen games were actually made by Atari. Most of them are not bootlegged, but actually software Atari owned, or licensed from others such as Namco and Sega. The one that was pirated was Tetris, as Robert Stein (Andromeda software) had a license (and a sub license to Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte) for home computer systems from ELORG which handled the international licensing of products from the Russian Academy of Sciences, where Tetris was created. Elorg had not licensed Tetris yet for use on game consoles or Arcade Games, and yet Mirrorsoft illegally sub-licensed Tetris to Atari (distributed using the Tengen brand). Atari then sold the Japanese Console rights illegally to Bullet Proof Software. This was found out when Henk Rogers (Bullet Proof Software) went to ELORG to license the rights for handheld games and more specifically Game Boy. Little did Henk Rogers know that Elorg would be meeting with Robert Stein and Kevin Maxwell from Mirrorsoft that day. Elorg confronted Robert Stein and Kevin Maxwell about selling the rights to Atari illegally and added a clause that specifically took away the console rights that Robert Stein claimed he had illegally. He later allowed Robert Stein to get the arcade rights. Then Elorg signed a deal with Henk Rogers to license the handheld rights and they asked Henk Rogers to make an offer on the console rights. Henk Rogers called Nintendo and they were estatic and sent Rogers back to Moscow to represent them and make the offer. Nintendo signed that deal and after acquiring exclusive console rights, sued Atari and Tengen, and the court ordered Tengen Tetris removed from shelves, and said Nintendo had the rights to the game on consoles.
Watching your videos is like hearing an awesome local band and wondering why they aren’t main stream yet. Consistently entertaining, also I laughed so hard at the squid sucking that guy off comment.
Make your own end labels, or literally even just a tiny number sticker on it and place a printed out key poster on your wall with the correlating game to each number
Neat video, I didn't know about a lot of these! Minor nitpick though: Tengen(Atari) famously did not reverse engineer a lockout chip. They flat out stole the design in an underhanded way. They filed a lawsuit against Nintendo for something out other, possibly this is the one where they claimed Nintendo was a monopoly because they were the only ones making Nintendo games. Of course they lost. But they didn't intend to win. Instead, their intent was to get the technical data for how the 10NES lockout chip worked entered into court as evidence visible to both parties. They then used that data to manufacture their own exact duplicates of the chips for their games. The subsequent lawsuit by Nintendo proved they copied and didn't reverse engineer because, iirc, it included the same byte for byte data, including features never used, as well as exactly duplicating inefficiencies and coding errors. That's the lawsuit that forced Tengen to stop selling their games because it was copyright infringement. Other companies with titles that bypassed the lockout chip using other methods, such as shocking it, overloading it, or using a piggyback system like the Game Genie that used a licensed game's chip were all legal to sell. However, resellers likely wouldn't carry them because Nintendo would threaten not to sell licensed games to them or sell them at so near msrp that the reseller couldn't make money.
Unlicensed != bootleg. Bootleg refers to illegal unauthorized copies. Unlicensed simply means the developers didn't want to accept Nintendo's licensing fees / restrictions. Nothing illegal about that - despite what the Nintendo Fan Club wanted you to believe.
I hear ya and specific to the NES that is absolutely the correct distinction: unlicensed games are original games that weren't official releases and bootlegs were official games that were modified or hacked in some way. I just use the words "knockoff" and "bootleg" here because that's pretty much how I'd colloquially describe any discount/low quality brand of something.
01:03 Hadn't seen this since I was 7 or 8, or thought about it in a quarter of a century, but just seeing it here returned the entire memory. That was the exact label on one of the multicarts I had for a couple of weeks, as a trade borrow with someone from school.
Unlicensed games are different than bootlegs sort of. At least those still count as part of the library. Bootlegs are usually cheaply made and may or may not play well. Bootlegs are often used to rip people off too
Funny Thing: Wisdom Tree was Color Dreams, it Retextured every Graphics and change their Color Dreams Games to be Wisdom Tree, and They import every Game to the Christian Book Store in US.
No one seems to know 100% what the switch does on Camerica games besides that it has to do with the system lockout chip. There were different variations over the years so some worked better with A and some with B. I don't believe it's a NTSC/PAL thing like many people thought. Camerica made the best unlicensed games on the system IMO. None of them are great but some are pretty good. Bee 52 being my favorite. It's basically Choplifter but with a bee. Tengen games are borderline unlicensed because I think most of them were ports of Famicom games.
5:55 THAT'S IT!!! That's the one! I've been trying to remember the name of the games on that cartridge for you don't even know how long! Thanks sooo friggin' much for pointing that out in my last comment on the other video!
Aww, Bible Adventures wasn't THAT bad. Noah's Ark can be a little repetitive, but it's kind of neat. David and Goliath was pretty hard, I think I only beat it with luck. The baby Moses one... you've gotta give them credit for making a version of Baby Mario where the enemy soldiers try to throw Baby Moses into the river. That'd be M rated for sure today.
I like Bubble Bath Babes. Mine is a repro but it does have a nice box. Color Dreams became Wisdom Tree, which still exists. These days they release their games for PC. I have a repro of a completed but unreleased Color Dreams game called Escape from Atlantis. There's currently a copy on eBay in a standard NES cartridge, green in color. Mine is in an actual Color Dreams cart. The switch on the bottom of Camerica carts crashes the 10NES chip by simply connecting the negative supply to the cart edge. This is not needed in the top loader (Model 2) as it has no 10NES chip (to reduce manufacturing costs). This also makes the NTSC top loader better able to handle PAL carts as well.
2:37 - if it hasn't been pointed out to you already (since this video is one year and one day old), Ms. Pac-Man is actually different between the Tengen unlicensed release and the Namco licensed release.
I had Ultimate Stuntman, MIG-29 and Afterburner as a kid, I had a lot of fun with those for the most part. Ultimate Stuntman got difficult at a certain point.
The only unlicensed NES game I ever played was Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator. It was a side scroller that was basically an advertisement for the pest control company Western Exterminator
Great video! Thanks for covering some of these unlicensed games! I remember we had a few Sachen games as a kid, and had to use a region converter to get them to run on our PAL NES. My favorite game was "Rockball", a really good top down puzzle game with 2 player co-op. Second fav was "Super Pang", a really good NES port of the arcade game! We also owned "Little Red Hood" but these days we don't speak much of that game.... hah
Man that is a whole other level of both PAL exclusives and unlicensed games. I’ve never heard of Rockball but Super Pang looks awesome, kind of a Buster Bros style game.
@@BigOleWords Indeed a whole treasure chest of stuff waiting right there! Sachen also have a few other great titles, a worthy mention would be "Silver Eagle".
I remember purchasing and owning Tengen Gauntlet. It was pretty cool that it worked, and that funky black case was strange. I had a friend who owned Joshua, and for some reason I found that game to be pretty fun.
This camerica games have an a/b switch because they work by essentially zapping the 10NES chip. A or b changes the voltage of the zap if I remember correctly.
I remember the good old days of rentals. When you could go into the corner and find random NES the place randomly found. Sometimes you’d get drawn to a game for how different it was. You had no idea back then what it was till you played it. Often I’d just play it anyways. Even if it wasn’t good I’d know. Found a lot of great games this was, like Crystalis! Only of the very few times I took a game back was … Robodemons 😵 I not only took it back, but I told them it was so bad they really should take it off the shelf. There I was, ten years old, pleading with the manager that it wasn’t worth their time renting that garbage!! Now … we’ll I wouldn’t pay much but I got a new collection I’m working on. It has personal memories and I guess it has that going for it! Still fun seeing someone talk about it (did notice you not actually playing it lol) 😎 Anyways, awesome video!
I had RBI Baseball Tengen back in the day. Remember it being odd as far as cartridges go compared to my other cartridges. Preferred playing Bases Loaded though. RBI had real teams and players but disliked the game play in comparison.
I used to have some of those Quattro games by codemasters for my Amstrad CPC 464 back in the day. I used to love all the Dizzy games as well, Treasure Island Dizzy was one of my favorites and in my opinion they are massively under rated especially by you guys from the U.S.
I loved Bible Adventures. It was so strange and surreal an idea, but for me it was just a fun little collector platformer. I’d just play the Noah part over and over. I was lucky to have a dad who was friends with the Radio Shack owner (and in small town Safeway USA early 90’s Radio Shack was everything), I even had that 50 games in one bootleg, it was s solid light grey cart with a Tetrisy-type sticker on it. Most of the games on it were kinda crappy, but a few weren’t bad at all. And yeah, Tengen Tetris all day 😊
Actually the place to look if you want quality in unlicensed stuff is unlicensed joysticks. Beeshu was originally seeking a license and made The Jazz for right handed players and they ripped off bottle to the advantage for left handers. Then they redesigned it and turned it into the Beeshu super stick which is ambidextrous. They're seeking licensing and never got it mainly because Nintendo refused any game that allowed right-hand stick play (or at least apparently that's what it seems to me). There was finally a license version when the FTC stepped in and said Nintendo cannot refuse a license because it allows right-handed play. They're looking for any reason other than the one that was picked for to deny licensing and Beeshu passed the quality checks and we're willing to pay the license, as demonstrated by license Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx 16 versions of the superstick.
I really enjoy your videos, your perspective is spot on. I'm not an NES collector your commentary makes it easy to understand why it's so fun. I'm looking forward to more 👏🙌💯
It is very different it has lives you use the A button to Hard drop and Down to turn the pieces the music is different and there is Sooo much more about the game that is weird and interesting but because the controls are weird if you are used to regular versions of Tetris then it will be a bit hard to play
Tengen Tetris actually plays different. Like, the best tetris players in the world have discussed the minor differences in how it's programmed and what that means for ultra top level play.
I think Captain Comic was unbeatable. There was a jump you had to make to progress the game, but you could never get across it. Either that, or 10 year old me just never figured out what to do to beat it.
Man, we used to love renting the unlicensed games. The cartridges were so different, and there were some gems. We had some Tengen, but we’d rent Bee 52, Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu, and Death Race to name a few. I really enjoyed them!
@@BigOleWords Man, I always thought Death Race was so underrated. The thing I’ve never seen anyone discuss is what I think is the best part or the game-when you run out of time. I’d run out of time on purpose just for the mad panic to see if you could make the exit before the missiles got you.
I enjoyed playing Captain Comic when I was young, but always wondered why it was more challenging to get the game started. I have the light blue cartridge. It was a fun game, with primitive physics controls, and I never got past 3 or so levels in. I only recently saw the ending by watching a complete walkthrough on TH-cam. Yes, as others have suggested, this was a DOS game that was ported to NES. I think it is one of the better of the unlicensed games because it already existed and had some popularity.
did u know that u can use the konami code in tengen tetris? pause the game and do the konami code. the block will change to a vertical/horizontal block. this will only work once per level.
I remember when I started to collect for the NES and asking myself did I want to go for unlicensed also? I couldn’t decide so I played them to see if they were decent. Well almost 20 years later and I have have Tetris only so 😂 but to each their own. Great video and I do gotta say spiritual warrior is a fun game. It’s playable and I enjoyed playing it also
@@BigOleWords I’m the same way, I have a couple I need also but having to pay over $500 for a nes game I need just doesn’t seem like a responsible thing to do 😂 so currently I’m at a stand still in my collection.
I got a lot of nostalgia from this video. I was listening it to it in the background while dicking around in my office and twice had to focus on the video because the music slapped me in the memories. Apparently Tengen Tetris and Wally Bear both had super memorable music.
My family had all the Wisdom Tree games when I was a kid, they were sold at Christian book stores. Another one worth a shot for laughs is Bible Buffet, a board game with multiplayer (turn based). Was funny that some of the games had bible trivia questions you needed the game manual to read the questions
A chunk of the Camerica games, including one Dizzy game not on a full cart like those ones, were also released for the Aladdin Deck Enhancer. Essentially a half cart that contained the hardware for the bypass chip that you then plugged the half cart with the game on it in to. They were sold cheaper, because it cost them less to produce.
In Poland, games from Codemasters were also popular, they were released on single cartridges and compilations, they were called golden 4 and golden 5, they could be purchased separately or were added to the console, on golden 4 there were such games as: go dizzy go, super robin hood, boomerang kid (this is the only game that was not sold on a single cartridge) and soccer simulator golden 5 had the following games: micro machnies, ultimate stuntman, big nose the caveman, big nose freaks out, the fantastic adventure of dizzy 4 was released in a cardboard box with a plastic insert 5 was released in a plastic box with Polish and English manuals individual games were released in cardboard boxes with a plastic insert and a poster today these editions are very rare I managed to buy 4 at a relatively good price.
With the Tengen carts, only R.B.I. Baseball, Pac-Man, and Gauntlet have licensed carts by Tengen. This is because Tengen started off as a Nintendo licensee until they got tired of Nintendo’s rules, which is when they started making their own unlicensed cartridges. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s licensed cartridge was released by Mindscape, not Tengen, though there is no difference between the games otherwise, and the licensed Tetris cartridge was made by Nintendo themselves, and that one is completely different from Tengen’s Tetris, which is loosely based on Atari Games’s arcade Tetris arcade game. Tengen was, in fact, Atari Games, rebranded since they couldn’t use the Atari name in the consumer market. Tengen and Nintendo were embroiled in a lawsuit over Tetris because Nintendo had the rights to manufacture Tetris carts for the NES, while Tengen was led to believe they had the rights when in fact they were sold bogus rights from a third party company with no affiliation to Elorg, who owned the Tetris trademark. Nintendo won the case, but all Tengen had to do was pull their game off the market and destroy the cartridges that hadn’t been sold already, while the company that sold them the bogus rights had to reimburse Nintendo’s court costs and their lost sales due to the amount of carts Tengen’s Tetris sold during its brief time on store shelves. As for Camerica’s carts, as I understand it, the switch on the back was to get the carts to work on various regions. NTSC consoles used position A and PAL used position B I think, same with the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.
The reason those Tengen cartridges work so much better than the other third party cartridges because they straight up cloned Nintendo's lockout chip after getting their hands on the documentation Also they made a Gameboy version of that Exodus game
Exodus is actually a fairly fun puzzle adventure game sort of hybrid. There is also a Gameboy version called Joshua: Battle of Jericho that is the same premise and also pretty good for an unlicensed game. I wouldn't call either my favorite games on their respective platforms but they were good enough to get some repeat play growing up.
We had a copy of Bible Adventures (the blue cartridge version) when I was a kid. I had no idea it was an unlicensed game until I was watching your Zelda clones video the the other day, though. I don't remember where my parents picked it up, either. I remember playing the Noah story, and I could get all the daytime animals fine but trying to get the leopards at night was pretty much always the end of my game.
Back in 88 I was given something weird. A two parts game cartridge which I was told to never split. Today I know it was a famicom 100in1 with a NES converter. And it worked and the games were 85% crap but few good ones like Excitebike.
I live in Taiwan, which may be the NES (or, rather, Famicom) bootleg capital of the world. Taiwanese Famiclones supplied the developing world with Nintendo's hit console where they were either unaffordable or unavailable. And there are loads of Taiwanese bootleg Famicom games, some of which aren't bad, including some surprising ports of SNES games. Many are extremely rare and quite expensive these days.
Those warnings on the back of Camerica carts (do not get wet, no direct sunlight, etc) look like directions for a Mogwai 😅👍 Great vid! Would you consider addressing pros and cons on various multi carts sometime?
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
For a look at one of the better Unlicensed NES games check out my review of Spiritual Warfare: th-cam.com/video/iwI4jzWBP68/w-d-xo.html
I always thought Tengen Tetris looked better. Anyway Tengen had the easiest time circumventing the lock out chip because they stole the code from the patent office and copied the lockout chip.
@@SuperHamsterGaming Tengen Tetris looks very much like the arcade game. I should also add that Tengen's Alien Syndrome was actually a lot of fun. At least I thought it was.
The switch on the back was to bypass the NES' lockout chip depending on what revision meant switching between them.
Yeah they later improved their NES10 knock off chip, so later copies of Micro Machines don't have the switch on the back.
There's a reason those Quattro games remind you of old PC games. The Dizzy games were huge on the 8 and 16 bit computers. Plus that Robin Hood game was the one by the Oliver Twins, another big deal in the home computer scene. Impossible Mission is also commonly talked about in any discussion of the 80s computers. Probably plenty of others in this video that I didn't spot, too.
Edit: I forgot to add that the Dizzy games were also Oliver Twins games. The way I phrased it made it seem like JUST Robin Hood was.
That’s kinda my impression of all the code masters titles is that they were meant for older PCs but ported to the NES for some reason.
@@BigOleWords Probably an attempt to crack the American market. While a mix of computers from Amstrad, Sinclair, Commodore, and Atari ruled the roost in Europe, American gaming at the time was very much centred on the NES. It probably helps that the NES' CPU was based on the 6502. If an 8 bit computer didn't have a Zilog Z80 in it, it probably had a 6502 derivative, so it was very much a known quantity to the European scene.
came here to make this comment, see you already got there. 👍
I never remember seeing these in any stores as a kid, but my local rental place had a ton of them, especially Tengen. I was always confused why some cartridges were black when I would rent them. I remember renting Alien Syndrome the most. That was a fun game. Great video, I have really been enjoying your channel since I discovered it.
Hey thanks! And yeah these are the epitome of rental store traps. At least a couple of the Tengens are decent…ish.
Some of them were sold on The Home Shopping Network
Many of these were sold mail order direct from shady companies with little understanding of the industry and fewer scruples. Remember having Krazy Kreatures and Ms. Pac-Man in my collection as a kid.
fun fact wisdom tree and color dreams are actually the same company they just had to rebrand after Nintendo demanded from game retailers not to carry color dreams games or else their supply of Nintendo games would be cut off because the games were not officially made with Nintendos approval
That, and Wisdom Tree focused primarily on making Christian-themed games, and even reskinned a few of their old Color Dreams titles, like how Menace Beach became Sunday Funday
@HylianFox3 Exactly. As Wisdom Tree, the games were sold at Christian book stores, who didn't care aboyt or sell official Nintendo games.
The Camerica position A and B switch was used to toggle the lockout stun on and off. This got the cartridge around the NES lockout chip
So if you didn’t switch positions it wouldn’t override the lockout?
I believe the switch was for getting the cart to work in both the NA and European systems
@@BigOleWords Right, I believe it advised you to try the position that wouldn't zap the lockout first in case you were using a version of the NES that didn't have the lockout, as the lockout zapper might fry the console!
The common assumption about it being an NTSC/PAL switch seems incorrect because Codemasters is known to have written a region detection into their software through some sort of cycle-counting routine at bootup, and many of their games will automatically correct their music speed for PAL or also the music pitch when DPCM bass is involved. Cosmic Spacehead even makes the player character move a lot faster in the action stages only on a PAL NES!
Calling Color a Dinosaur a "game" is certainly bold.
And I had Tengen Tetris when I was a kid and I can confirm 2 player mode was pure mayhem.
Yeah, it’s more of an experience ;)
Oh man, I always hated it when I rented an NES game and it wasn't rewound.
Haha the worst!
The switch on the camerica games is for what NES system you were using. If you're using the original console you switch it to "A" and if you're using the top loader, you switch to "B"
Hmmmm I don't know. Wouldn't most of these games have been released before the Top Loader came out?
I think most of Camerica's games came out after. They were aware of the top loader though. They released an adapter for the game genie since it's not compatible with the top loader, which was very intentionally set up by Nintendo who hated the Game Genie.
I always heard B was for the Euro kits. The top loader didn't use the 10NES lockout chip, iirc, so wouldn't need the toggle anyway.
The moment I saw the Code Masters logo on the quattro carts, I thought “Yep, these are British games”.
This kind of content has been done for decades on youtube now. But something about yours is great. I can tell you write a script. The video is tight and doesn't waste our time. But your style is conversational. I really like it. Good job.
Hey thanks so much! I try not to retread too many steps but some things are inevitable :)
on those gold/silver carts the switch on the back was their way around the lock out chip. if you put it in while on position a and the game wouldn't load (flashing red light on the news) then you're supposed to pull the game and flip the switch to position b and then it should work.
I learned in the last couple of years that the NES Tetris has a 2 player mode hidden away. It's unfinished, but playable if you unlock it with the game genie. I thought I knew most obscure secrets from that era, but that was a nice discovery.
That I did not know!! Neat! I'm sure there's a hack out there somewhere...
What's the code?
@@IrisGalaxis I don't know. I never tried it. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find.
@@iiqulo yes, it's ZAUAPPPA, found it :)
@@BigOleWords there is a 2p hack on RHDN, I'm not sure if it reuses the original 2p code though
Dizzy games are really good. Codemasters had a fine reputation for Microcomputers/PC in the UK. Bear in mind, the original versions for C64, ZX Spectrum were £2.99 or less, (a solid pocket money amount in the '80s). Their NES stuff looks similar to their Amiga/ST games. MiG 29 deserves better than that trashed cartridge, it's like NES Top Gun, but better.
My wife and I have been practicing on the 2- player unlicensed version of Blackjack in anticipation of our trip to the casino.
Hahaha that’s awesome
A couple times you called these unlicensed games bootlegs, but they really are not. Bootlegs are just things like unauthorized reproductions, true copyright infringement where someone sells someone elses game, those are bootlegs. These unlicensed are legit games programed by legit companies. The tengen ones however do have a bootleg 10nes security chip. They did not reverse engineer it, they stole the code and just produced eexact clones or the chip. They got caught. They called up a copyright office and simply requested a copy of th source code for Nintendo's security chip, and they handed it tom atari!! Then thsy just made chips exactly the same.
I hear ya and specific to the NES that is absolutely the correct distinction: unlicensed games are original games that weren't official releases and bootlegs were official games that were modified or hacked in some way. I just use the words "knockoff" and "bootleg" here because that's pretty much how I'd colloquially describe any discount/low quality brand of something.
Oddities like this is one of the reasons the NES will always be my favorite console. Nicely done man! Loved this.
I always thought Tengen, since they were straight up just Atari Games Co., had designed their NES cart molds after those slimmer Atari 2600 carts that had the same slanted top for the end labels. Their NES port of Alien Syndrome is, embarrassingly, so much better than SEGA's own home version on the Master System.
Huh that’s a good call, maybe they were going for Atari look but in NES size!
I loved Tengen's Alien Syndrome on the NES
Tengen was genius because they allowed you to play Sega and Atari titles on a Nintendo.
Tengen Tetris is the best. The dancing Russians alone is a competition in itself based on how many will dance if a player finishes a level.
I grew up playing the Tengen Tetris and it was really good, the music was awesome, the versus mode was really fun and I have many fond memories about it. Also the story behind it is quite interesting, there was some kind of legal battle between Nintendo and Tengen for the Tetris license, both thought they had the rights so both made their own game, it's crazy.
Tengen games were actually made by Atari. Most of them are not bootlegged, but actually software Atari owned, or licensed from others such as Namco and Sega.
The one that was pirated was Tetris, as Robert Stein (Andromeda software) had a license (and a sub license to Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte) for home computer systems from ELORG which handled the international licensing of products from the Russian Academy of Sciences, where Tetris was created. Elorg had not licensed Tetris yet for use on game consoles or Arcade Games, and yet Mirrorsoft illegally sub-licensed Tetris to Atari (distributed using the Tengen brand). Atari then sold the Japanese Console rights illegally to Bullet Proof Software. This was found out when Henk Rogers (Bullet Proof Software) went to ELORG to license the rights for handheld games and more specifically Game Boy. Little did Henk Rogers know that Elorg would be meeting with Robert Stein and Kevin Maxwell from Mirrorsoft that day. Elorg confronted Robert Stein and Kevin Maxwell about selling the rights to Atari illegally and added a clause that specifically took away the console rights that Robert Stein claimed he had illegally. He later allowed Robert Stein to get the arcade rights. Then Elorg signed a deal with Henk Rogers to license the handheld rights and they asked Henk Rogers to make an offer on the console rights. Henk Rogers called Nintendo and they were estatic and sent Rogers back to Moscow to represent them and make the offer. Nintendo signed that deal and after acquiring exclusive console rights, sued Atari and Tengen, and the court ordered Tengen Tetris removed from shelves, and said Nintendo had the rights to the game on consoles.
Watching your videos is like hearing an awesome local band and wondering why they aren’t main stream yet. Consistently entertaining, also I laughed so hard at the squid sucking that guy off comment.
Haha thanks so much :)
This channel helps me sleep at night. As of lately, I’ve been having bad anxiety. I put Big Ole Words and fall asleep. Him and AVGN are a blessing!
One of my new favorite channels. Keep up the great work dude
Thanks player!
I had chiller, sidewinder and little red hood 🙏🏽I think I bought them for 5 bucks each back in the day here in Australia 🤘🏾
That’s awesome. It’s seems like y’all got a whole mess of weird unlicensed titles there in Australia. I’ve been wanting Death Race forever.
You failed to mention that Tengen was Atari in disguise.
Make your own end labels, or literally even just a tiny number sticker on it and place a printed out key poster on your wall with the correlating game to each number
I like it!
That sounds like a good project for a Famicom collection...
I wouldn’t mind having Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu just for the name alone! Toobin is a pretty fun Tengen game. Great video as always!👊
That’s one I need to grab! I may not get deep into the unlicensed stuff, but I am trying to get all the Tengens at some point:)
Neat video, I didn't know about a lot of these! Minor nitpick though: Tengen(Atari) famously did not reverse engineer a lockout chip. They flat out stole the design in an underhanded way. They filed a lawsuit against Nintendo for something out other, possibly this is the one where they claimed Nintendo was a monopoly because they were the only ones making Nintendo games. Of course they lost. But they didn't intend to win. Instead, their intent was to get the technical data for how the 10NES lockout chip worked entered into court as evidence visible to both parties. They then used that data to manufacture their own exact duplicates of the chips for their games. The subsequent lawsuit by Nintendo proved they copied and didn't reverse engineer because, iirc, it included the same byte for byte data, including features never used, as well as exactly duplicating inefficiencies and coding errors. That's the lawsuit that forced Tengen to stop selling their games because it was copyright infringement.
Other companies with titles that bypassed the lockout chip using other methods, such as shocking it, overloading it, or using a piggyback system like the Game Genie that used a licensed game's chip were all legal to sell. However, resellers likely wouldn't carry them because Nintendo would threaten not to sell licensed games to them or sell them at so near msrp that the reseller couldn't make money.
My parents were convinced that if I brought one of these cartridges home that the FBI would come knocking on our door. I wish I was kidding.
Haha the message before vhs tapes had them spooked!
Just recently found the channel and loving it so far!
Hey thanks so much!
Unlicensed != bootleg.
Bootleg refers to illegal unauthorized copies. Unlicensed simply means the developers didn't want to accept Nintendo's licensing fees / restrictions. Nothing illegal about that - despite what the Nintendo Fan Club wanted you to believe.
I hear ya and specific to the NES that is absolutely the correct distinction: unlicensed games are original games that weren't official releases and bootlegs were official games that were modified or hacked in some way. I just use the words "knockoff" and "bootleg" here because that's pretty much how I'd colloquially describe any discount/low quality brand of something.
The one unlicensed game I had as a kid was The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy and I liked it quite a bit.
The only unlicensed games I like are the Tengen games. They were made by Atari who had experience in game design.
01:03 Hadn't seen this since I was 7 or 8, or thought about it in a quarter of a century, but just seeing it here returned the entire memory. That was the exact label on one of the multicarts I had for a couple of weeks, as a trade borrow with someone from school.
The weird cat one? My buddy brought it back from Serbia and so far I have not been able to get it to boot up. Any idea what's on it?!
Unlicensed games are different than bootlegs sort of. At least those still count as part of the library. Bootlegs are usually cheaply made and may or may not play well. Bootlegs are often used to rip people off too
Funny Thing:
Wisdom Tree was Color Dreams, it Retextured every Graphics and change their Color Dreams Games to be Wisdom Tree, and They import every Game to the Christian Book Store in US.
No one seems to know 100% what the switch does on Camerica games besides that it has to do with the system lockout chip. There were different variations over the years so some worked better with A and some with B. I don't believe it's a NTSC/PAL thing like many people thought.
Camerica made the best unlicensed games on the system IMO. None of them are great but some are pretty good. Bee 52 being my favorite. It's basically Choplifter but with a bee.
Tengen games are borderline unlicensed because I think most of them were ports of Famicom games.
Yeah I’m still unclear on the A and B thing. I’m not so sure on Bee 52, but maybe I’m just terrible at it!
5:55 THAT'S IT!!! That's the one! I've been trying to remember the name of the games on that cartridge for you don't even know how long! Thanks sooo friggin' much for pointing that out in my last comment on the other video!
That’s awesome! Glad I could help :)
Aww, Bible Adventures wasn't THAT bad. Noah's Ark can be a little repetitive, but it's kind of neat.
David and Goliath was pretty hard, I think I only beat it with luck.
The baby Moses one... you've gotta give them credit for making a version of Baby Mario where the enemy soldiers try to throw Baby Moses into the river. That'd be M rated for sure today.
Loved Noah's ark. Time to bring boxes down from the attic
as far as Tengen, i'd track down Rolling Thunder. i've always really liked the NES version.
I actually did pick it up after this video! Way fun.
That was the biggest thing I noticed too.
I like Bubble Bath Babes. Mine is a repro but it does have a nice box. Color Dreams became Wisdom Tree, which still exists. These days they release their games for PC. I have a repro of a completed but unreleased Color Dreams game called Escape from Atlantis. There's currently a copy on eBay in a standard NES cartridge, green in color. Mine is in an actual Color Dreams cart. The switch on the bottom of Camerica carts crashes the 10NES chip by simply connecting the negative supply to the cart edge. This is not needed in the top loader (Model 2) as it has no 10NES chip (to reduce manufacturing costs). This also makes the NTSC top loader better able to handle PAL carts as well.
2:37 - if it hasn't been pointed out to you already (since this video is one year and one day old), Ms. Pac-Man is actually different between the Tengen unlicensed release and the Namco licensed release.
Shout out to Alien Syndrome for being an unlicensed game that doesn't suck.
That’s for sure!
Aren't the A/B switches because in the UK there are two early model NES's? One from Nintendo and another manufactured by Mattel, I think?
I had Ultimate Stuntman, MIG-29 and Afterburner as a kid, I had a lot of fun with those for the most part. Ultimate Stuntman got difficult at a certain point.
The only unlicensed NES game I ever played was Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator. It was a side scroller that was basically an advertisement for the pest control company Western Exterminator
That ones not the worst!
That NES games collection ❤️ awesome
My pride and joy! Thanks :)
Great video! Thanks for covering some of these unlicensed games!
I remember we had a few Sachen games as a kid, and had to use a region converter to get them to run on our PAL NES. My favorite game was "Rockball", a really good top down puzzle game with 2 player co-op. Second fav was "Super Pang", a really good NES port of the arcade game! We also owned "Little Red Hood" but these days we don't speak much of that game.... hah
Man that is a whole other level of both PAL exclusives and unlicensed games. I’ve never heard of Rockball but Super Pang looks awesome, kind of a Buster Bros style game.
@@BigOleWords Indeed a whole treasure chest of stuff waiting right there! Sachen also have a few other great titles, a worthy mention would be "Silver Eagle".
@@skRapKlan Nice!
I remember purchasing and owning Tengen Gauntlet. It was pretty cool that it worked, and that funky black case was strange. I had a friend who owned Joshua, and for some reason I found that game to be pretty fun.
I still have a fondness for ol’ Gauntlet!
This camerica games have an a/b switch because they work by essentially zapping the 10NES chip. A or b changes the voltage of the zap if I remember correctly.
Your subs have doubled since I first watched/subbed- righteous!! Keep up the great work man🤘🤘
Haha thanks man I appreciate it!
I remember the good old days of rentals. When you could go into the corner and find random NES the place randomly found. Sometimes you’d get drawn to a game for how different it was. You had no idea back then what it was till you played it. Often I’d just play it anyways. Even if it wasn’t good I’d know. Found a lot of great games this was, like Crystalis! Only of the very few times I took a game back was … Robodemons 😵 I not only took it back, but I told them it was so bad they really should take it off the shelf. There I was, ten years old, pleading with the manager that it wasn’t worth their time renting that garbage!!
Now … we’ll I wouldn’t pay much but I got a new collection I’m working on. It has personal memories and I guess it has that going for it! Still fun seeing someone talk about it (did notice you not actually playing it lol) 😎
Anyways, awesome video!
That’s awesome. I cannot imagine there disappointment of any child renting Robodemons, woof!
It is worth it just to hear the voice sample say "WOBODEMONS" on the title screen
I had RBI Baseball Tengen back in the day. Remember it being odd as far as cartridges go compared to my other cartridges. Preferred playing Bases Loaded though. RBI had real teams and players but disliked the game play in comparison.
Growing up in Pittsburgh in the 90s, we went to Giant Eagle instead of Kroger and they DID have a video game section. It was fantastic.
I used to have some of those Quattro games by codemasters for my Amstrad CPC 464 back in the day. I used to love all the Dizzy games as well, Treasure Island Dizzy was one of my favorites and in my opinion they are massively under rated especially by you guys from the U.S.
Yeah they are almost totally lost on us Americans!
I loved Bible Adventures. It was so strange and surreal an idea, but for me it was just a fun little collector platformer. I’d just play the Noah part over and over. I was lucky to have a dad who was friends with the Radio Shack owner (and in small town Safeway USA early 90’s Radio Shack was everything), I even had that 50 games in one bootleg, it was s solid light grey cart with a Tetrisy-type sticker on it. Most of the games on it were kinda crappy, but a few weren’t bad at all.
And yeah, Tengen Tetris all day 😊
Just found this channel. Seems underrated
Haha thanks I’ll take it!
@3:55 I'm just guessing here, but I'm wondering if it might be a PAL/NTSC switch?
If you cut the 4th pin on the 3193 chip on the console board it bypasses lockout check and removes blinking light syndrome
Actually the place to look if you want quality in unlicensed stuff is unlicensed joysticks. Beeshu was originally seeking a license and made The Jazz for right handed players and they ripped off bottle to the advantage for left handers.
Then they redesigned it and turned it into the Beeshu super stick which is ambidextrous.
They're seeking licensing and never got it mainly because Nintendo refused any game that allowed right-hand stick play (or at least apparently that's what it seems to me). There was finally a license version when the FTC stepped in and said Nintendo cannot refuse a license because it allows right-handed play. They're looking for any reason other than the one that was picked for to deny licensing and Beeshu passed the quality checks and we're willing to pay the license, as demonstrated by license Sega Genesis and Turbo Grafx 16 versions of the superstick.
Now that’s a world I know nothing about!
I actually owned MIG 29. I liked it more than Top Gun. At the time, I wasn't aware that MIG 29 was an unlicensed game.
Nice!
I really enjoy your videos, your perspective is spot on. I'm not an NES collector your commentary makes it easy to understand why it's so fun. I'm looking forward to more 👏🙌💯
That's a huge compliment. I kinda assume most folks who watch are big NES heads, but I love hearing that other people like them too ;)
I am VERY jealous of your Tengen Tetris I have regular NES Tetris and Tetris BPS on Famicom and I wish I could get all three
Ooooh I don’t know about the Famicom version, is it different gameplay wise?
It is very different it has lives you use the A button to Hard drop and Down to turn the pieces the music is different and there is Sooo much more about the game that is weird and interesting but because the controls are weird if you are used to regular versions of Tetris then it will be a bit hard to play
Tengen Tetris actually plays different. Like, the best tetris players in the world have discussed the minor differences in how it's programmed and what that means for ultra top level play.
I think that Captain Comic was a ms-dos game "port" to the NES
I remember having a floppy of it and the games look "close enough"
Love this! Thank you!
Also, that Moses game with the kick ass cover, I'd say that's like Legacy of the Wizard
Nice Bit Brigade shirt. I saw them play Metroid live. The drummer went so hard, he was a soaking mess when it was over! Super talented.
Hell yeah! I’ve seen Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden and both ruled.
I think Captain Comic was unbeatable. There was a jump you had to make to progress the game, but you could never get across it. Either that, or 10 year old me just never figured out what to do to beat it.
Man, we used to love renting the unlicensed games. The cartridges were so different, and there were some gems. We had some Tengen, but we’d rent Bee 52, Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu, and Death Race to name a few. I really enjoyed them!
Death Race is on my list!
@@BigOleWords Man, I always thought Death Race was so underrated. The thing I’ve never seen anyone discuss is what I think is the best part or the game-when you run out of time. I’d run out of time on purpose just for the mad panic to see if you could make the exit before the missiles got you.
I enjoyed playing Captain Comic when I was young, but always wondered why it was more challenging to get the game started. I have the light blue cartridge. It was a fun game, with primitive physics controls, and I never got past 3 or so levels in. I only recently saw the ending by watching a complete walkthrough on TH-cam. Yes, as others have suggested, this was a DOS game that was ported to NES. I think it is one of the better of the unlicensed games because it already existed and had some popularity.
I’m not sure I’ve really played it now that I think of it, but this comment makes me want to try!
I've played the DOS version...
did u know that u can use the konami code in tengen tetris? pause the game and do the konami code. the block will change to a vertical/horizontal block. this will only work once per level.
Did not know that!
I remember when I started to collect for the NES and asking myself did I want to go for unlicensed also? I couldn’t decide so I played them to see if they were decent. Well almost 20 years later and I have have Tetris only so 😂 but to each their own. Great video and I do gotta say spiritual warrior is a fun game. It’s playable and I enjoyed playing it also
Yeah it’s a tough call. The completionist in me wants them all but the gamer in me says no!
@@BigOleWords I’m the same way, I have a couple I need also but having to pay over $500 for a nes game I need just doesn’t seem like a responsible thing to do 😂 so currently I’m at a stand still in my collection.
I got a lot of nostalgia from this video. I was listening it to it in the background while dicking around in my office and twice had to focus on the video because the music slapped me in the memories. Apparently Tengen Tetris and Wally Bear both had super memorable music.
Hahaha Wally Bear gotcha? That’s awesome :)
Metal Fighter was a guilty pleasure of mine when I was a kid. I remember my lil sister liking watching the boss fights. haha
That is one I’ve never played! Maybe I’ll check it out…
Great video! Press here "sticker" is one of the weirdest things on any actual cartridges. Co-op tetris is fun as hell.
Thanks mane!
Metal Mech mention.....🤮
Looking forward to your Spiritual Warfare video.
My family had all the Wisdom Tree games when I was a kid, they were sold at Christian book stores. Another one worth a shot for laughs is Bible Buffet, a board game with multiplayer (turn based). Was funny that some of the games had bible trivia questions you needed the game manual to read the questions
Haha that’s pretty silly bu honestly not surprising!
A chunk of the Camerica games, including one Dizzy game not on a full cart like those ones, were also released for the Aladdin Deck Enhancer. Essentially a half cart that contained the hardware for the bypass chip that you then plugged the half cart with the game on it in to. They were sold cheaper, because it cost them less to produce.
Tengen’s RBI Baseball was quite fun. I always had a soft spot for baseball games on the NES though.
Same here, even the mediocre ones are pretty fun.
Man your wall of NES cartridges is impressive 😁
I love Chiller but didn't know about it until recently. This would have been so cool as a kid!
I would’ve been the kid no one was allowed to play with if I owned Chiller growing up!
I remember the tegen games and i do have robodemons still. Never knew it was unliscensed.
Haha I used to love Bible Adventures…throwing sheep? Fun as hell
That's odd how your Captain Comic label is inverted. I have both the blue and black cartridge versions of that game and both are right side up.
Wait really?! No way!
@@BigOleWords Yours must be the coveted upside-down variant. Better seal that bad boy in acrylic asap.
@@therealbitwars I'm on it ;)
Exodus and it's sequel (?) Joshua are clones of the PC game Boulder Dash. So they are puzzle type games
In Poland, games from Codemasters were also popular, they were released on single cartridges and compilations, they were called golden 4 and golden 5, they could be purchased separately or were added to the console, on golden 4 there were such games as: go dizzy go, super robin hood, boomerang kid (this is the only game that was not sold on a single cartridge) and soccer simulator golden 5 had the following games: micro machnies, ultimate stuntman, big nose the caveman, big nose freaks out, the fantastic adventure of dizzy 4 was released in a cardboard box with a plastic insert 5 was released in a plastic box with Polish and English manuals individual games were released in cardboard boxes with a plastic insert and a poster today these editions are very rare I managed to buy 4 at a relatively good price.
With the Tengen carts, only R.B.I. Baseball, Pac-Man, and Gauntlet have licensed carts by Tengen. This is because Tengen started off as a Nintendo licensee until they got tired of Nintendo’s rules, which is when they started making their own unlicensed cartridges. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s licensed cartridge was released by Mindscape, not Tengen, though there is no difference between the games otherwise, and the licensed Tetris cartridge was made by Nintendo themselves, and that one is completely different from Tengen’s Tetris, which is loosely based on Atari Games’s arcade Tetris arcade game. Tengen was, in fact, Atari Games, rebranded since they couldn’t use the Atari name in the consumer market. Tengen and Nintendo were embroiled in a lawsuit over Tetris because Nintendo had the rights to manufacture Tetris carts for the NES, while Tengen was led to believe they had the rights when in fact they were sold bogus rights from a third party company with no affiliation to Elorg, who owned the Tetris trademark. Nintendo won the case, but all Tengen had to do was pull their game off the market and destroy the cartridges that hadn’t been sold already, while the company that sold them the bogus rights had to reimburse Nintendo’s court costs and their lost sales due to the amount of carts Tengen’s Tetris sold during its brief time on store shelves. As for Camerica’s carts, as I understand it, the switch on the back was to get the carts to work on various regions. NTSC consoles used position A and PAL used position B I think, same with the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.
Tengen games are region locked so to play them on a PAL NES you need a unidaptor device.
Huh, did not realize that!
Micro Machines is a great game
Hell yeah it is!
The reason those Tengen cartridges work so much better than the other third party cartridges because they straight up cloned Nintendo's lockout chip after getting their hands on the documentation
Also they made a Gameboy version of that Exodus game
Game Boy Exodus?! No thanks!
Exodus is actually a fairly fun puzzle adventure game sort of hybrid. There is also a Gameboy version called Joshua: Battle of Jericho that is the same premise and also pretty good for an unlicensed game. I wouldn't call either my favorite games on their respective platforms but they were good enough to get some repeat play growing up.
I love rental stickers on carts. Makes me wonder how many kids tried to be that one game over a weekend
Same !
We had a copy of Bible Adventures (the blue cartridge version) when I was a kid. I had no idea it was an unlicensed game until I was watching your Zelda clones video the the other day, though. I don't remember where my parents picked it up, either. I remember playing the Noah story, and I could get all the daytime animals fine but trying to get the leopards at night was pretty much always the end of my game.
I don’t think you were alone there! I had a Gauntlet as a kid and I knew it looked weird but it never occurred to me that it wasn’t an official game.
The nes has a pretty substantial array of bootlegs and homebrews I have a few hundred in my collection
That is a lot of bootlegs!
Tengins Rolling Thunder was one of my Favorite NES carts
That's a fun one!
Back in 88 I was given something weird. A two parts game cartridge which I was told to never split. Today I know it was a famicom 100in1 with a NES converter. And it worked and the games were 85% crap but few good ones like Excitebike.
That’d make you the coolest kid around in 1988!
The Tengen version of Fantasy Zone is legit excellent if a little easy
I live in Taiwan, which may be the NES (or, rather, Famicom) bootleg capital of the world. Taiwanese Famiclones supplied the developing world with Nintendo's hit console where they were either unaffordable or unavailable. And there are loads of Taiwanese bootleg Famicom games, some of which aren't bad, including some surprising ports of SNES games.
Many are extremely rare and quite expensive these days.
Yeah I’m fascinated by the Famicom bootlegs and later unlicensed titles that came out of Taiwan. Really interesting
Those warnings on the back of Camerica carts (do not get wet, no direct sunlight, etc) look like directions for a Mogwai 😅👍
Great vid! Would you consider addressing pros and cons on various multi carts sometime?
I do have a few of those weird multi carts and it would be fun to comb through the engrish and bootlegs on them. One day :)