LANNY'S MEANINGLESS RANTS VOLUME 1:
THE STRONG ARM OF NINTENDO
-------------------------------------------------------------
It seems every site I go to,
every scener I chat with, every message board I frequent,
all have a negative view of Nintendo of America, and their
licensing (and unlicensing) policy in general. Everywhere
i look, printed in Nintendo Power, manuals, all have strong
stances on copyright infringement, piracy, and unlicensed
games. Nintendo paints a very strong view of unlicensed games
as bad or harmful to the system, saying they will void warranties
and generally blow up your house. But the real question is,
why do we question this? And should we question this?
Unlicensed games enjoyed a relatively
short run in the NES life span. As far as i know, none were
released before 1990. Color Dreams and Tengen were two of
the pioneers of unlicensed games. Tengen started out as a
licensed company, and then cut off ties with Nintendo after
a production dispute. They reverse engineered the NES lockout
chip, and WHAM, copyright infringement suit. Was this morally
right? Perhaps. Did Tengen infringe on a copyright? The answer
is yes. Color Dreams used a different method to defeat the
lockout chip which was adopted by quite a few different companies
later on. However, the Nintendo Seal of Quality held strong,
as even with low game prices, Color Dreams games were of low
quality and the reputation of the company became so bad that
they had to spawn another name (Bunch Games) to have a chance
of getting their products to retail.
Other companies were successful. Camerica
was obviously one of the most prominent. Nintendo tried to
take out Camerica's Game Genie accessory as it had tried with
several other companies. However, Camerica beat the system.
First in Canada, and later in the USA, they were permitted
to distribute the Game Genie without any worries of getting
sued. They had seemingly won, but later on went out of business.
And was the quality as good? Shockingly, no. I know for a
fact that the Game Genie, and other Camerica games such as
Quattro Sports and Quattro Adventure have been tested on my
NES and none work. The games use a different method of displaying
black color that is incompatible with my TV. Surprisingly,
Nintendo's claims of inferior compatibility come true.
So, are the NES lockout chip and the
seal of quality, and licensing and lawsuits and other supposedly
monopolistic tactics wrong? No, of course not! The music,
computer, and entertainment industry have been using similar
tactics for years. There are new technologies being invented
every year to discourage piracy and inferior quality products.
There are ways of preventing non-Sony games from working in
Playstation and Playstation 2 systems. Macrovision prevents
DVD movies from being recorded onto tape. Anti-piracy algorithms
like Safedisc, Laserlok, and SecuROM are used in computer
games to prevent copying. The SDMI technique being established
will prevent piracy of music from being copied in the future.
Nintendo is a company. The goal of a company is to fill a
need, while attaining as much profit as possible. Unlicensed
and pirated games cause millions of dollars of losses in the
digital world each year. So, shouldn't we owe at least some
debt of gratitude to Nintendo to providing people all around
the world endless hours of enjoyment?
As a final note, I'd like to challenge
all true players of the NES. Take your unlicensed games, and
sell them to a collector. Let it sit in someone's basement,
closet, etc. Take every unlicensed game you have, and trade
it for Metroid. Trade it for Zelda. Trade it for Crystalis.
Trade it for Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Super Mario Brothers,
Mega Man. Hell if you feel inclined, trade it for Hydlide,
Deadly Towers, or a plush doll of that god damned dog from
Duck Hunt. Or take the money, go out, make intelligent choices
about which games to buy for Nintendo's latest system, whatever
it may be. There's good games out there for every Nintendo
system. They gave us pure gaming goodness since 1985. We gamers
are a selfish bunch, it's time to begin giving back.
