Tengen (company)

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Tengen
Image:Tengen logo.jpeg
Fate Shut down by Time Warner Interactive
Founded 1987
Defunct 1993
Location Milpitas, California
Industry Console video games
Former Parent Atari Games (1984-2003)

Tengen was a video game publisher and developer that was created by arcade game manufacturer Atari Games. Atari had been split into two distinct companies. Atari Corporation was responsible for computer and console games and hardware, and owned the rights to the "Atari" brand for these domains. Atari Games was formed from Atari's arcade division, and were able to use the "Atari" name on arcade releases, but not console or computer games. When Atari Games wanted to enter the console game market, they needed to create a new label that did not use the "Atari" name. The new subsidiary was dubbed "Tengen", which in the Japanese game Go refers to the central point of the board (the word "Atari" comes from the same game).

Tengen unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with Nintendo for a less restrictive license (Nintendo restricted their licensees to releasing only five games per year, and required their games to be NES-exclusive for two years). Nintendo was not interested, so Tengen agreed to their standard license in December 1987. In 1988, Tengen released their first (and only) three cartridges licensed through Nintendo - RBI Baseball, Pac-Man and Gauntlet. Meanwhile, Tengen secretly worked to bypass Nintendo's lock-out chip called 10NES that gave them control over which games were published for the NES. While numerous manufacturers managed to override this chip by zapping it with a voltage spike, Tengen engineers feared this could potentially damage NES consoles and expose them to unnecessary liability. Instead they chose to reverse engineer the chip and decipher the code required to unlock it. However, the engineers were unable to do so, and the launch date for their first batch of games was rapidly approaching.

In desperation, Tengen turned to the United States Copyright Office. Their lawyers contacted the government office to request a copy of the Nintendo lock-out program, claiming they needed it for potential litigation against Nintendo. Once obtained, they used the program to create their own chip that would unlock the NES. When Tengen launched the unlicensed versions of their games, Nintendo immediately sued Tengen for copyright and patent infringement. In the initial phases of trial, the court sided with Nintendo, but the sides settled before the matter was fully resolved.

Tengen faced another court challenge with Nintendo in 1989 in copyright controversy over Tetris. Tengen lost this suit as well and was forced to recall what was estimated to be hundreds of thousands of unsold cartridges (having sold only about 50,000). (See Tetris for more.) [1]

Despite their problems with Nintendo, Tengen went on to produce games for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, Sega CD, Atari Lynx and NEC Turbo Grafx-16. They also published games for home computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST. They were best known for their ports of popular Atari arcade games, including Klax, Hard Drivin', STUN Runner, and Paperboy, though they published many other titles, as well. In 1993, after Time Warner bought a controlling stake in Atari Games, the Tengen name was discontinued and home games were now released under the "Time Warner Interactive" (TWI) brand.

[edit] NES games

This is a list of the unlicensed games made by Tengen for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Three games were manufactured as both licensed and unlicensed, as indicated below.

Tengen's unlicensed NES game cartridges do not come in the universally recognizable semi-square grey shape regular Nintendo licensed games come in, but instead are rounded and matte-black, more resembling the original Atari cartridges.

[edit] References

  1. ^ COMPANY NEWS; Atari Is Blocked From Selling Game. nytimes.com (June 22, 1989).

[edit] External links