Were they in the right?

In a parallel dimension

>>3223482
Unlicensed software is unlicensed software. Atari was salty af for blowing their chance to distribute the Famicom in the US and wanted a piece of the action. Tengen Tetris and Fantasy Zone are worth playing though.

>>3223754
>Atari was salty af for blowing their chance to distribute the Famicom in the US

Atari wanted to release the Famicom in the US???

>>3223874
Nintendo actually approached them and asked if they would do it. Atari couldn't get their shit together and didn't realize what a huge thing they had in front of them, so Nintendo said 'whatever dudes we'll do it ourselves'. Paraphrasing.

>>3223482
>mfw wondering as a kid why RBI baseball cart looked so weird

>>3223754
>Unlicensed software is unlicensed software.
And?

>>3223482
What happened?

>>3224114
Answering OP's question; no, they weren't in the right. They weren't authorized to make NES software. Nintendo knew that having no control over software killed the market prior ro their entry. Atari was trying to pull the same shit that ruined them and Nintendo wasn't having it, not to mention that Atari 'reverse engineered' the 10NES lockout chip by stealing patents.

>>3224095
Thank goodness too. Why would you want help from the company who was partially responsible for the US marketing problems in the first place?

>>3223754
I love Tengen Tetris but their Fantasy Zone was a joke compared to the Sunsoft version.

File: tengen17.jpg (233KB, 350x636px) Image search: [Google]

233KB, 350x636px

>>3223754
>>3223874
>>3224095
>>3224218
You guys do know that the Atari in charge of Tengen was not the same one who were making the consoles? Their arcade division split up after the Tramiels bought the console division, hence why Tengen was formed in the first place.

It's a shame that Tengen and Nintendo never solved their differences amicably, since they were a pretty based company. Their Japanese division used to put awesome developer's commentaries in their manuas.

>>3224126
>stealing patents

you mean
>legally obtaining the specs for said patents by subversive measures

>>3224238
Still not legal, I mean they lost in court after all.

>The courts found that Atari had infringed Nintendo's copyright by creating verbatim and substantially similar copies of the protected elements of the 10NES chip. Atari was unsuccessful in claiming that such copying was fair use, or that Nintendo had misused its copyright.

>>3223482
Yeah I think they kinda had a good argument up until they pulled the lockout chip shenanigans

Yes

>tetris.png

>>3224126
>>3224238
>>3224287
>>3224304
The worst part is they didn't even need to see the patent: the work was already done. They probably could've flown under Nintendo's radar a lot easier if it weren't for that.

>tsr: Well, what were the conditions that you had to satisfy if you wanted to be a licensee of Nintendo?
>EL: There was a lot of exclusivity involved, and being a company where we were trying to port our games to every platform... that's not our business model. And Nintendo is jerking us around with all sorts of stuff, they say "Oh sorry, you can't have your quota this Christmas," or it was delayed, and so on. They did that to everybody, probably except themselves. So then we decided to reverse engineer the lockout chip. Unfortunately there was a fiasco; one of our lawyers went to the patent office and actually sent a copy of the stuff [Nintendo's patents] to Atari. And whether or not we actually looked at it, we basically were tainted.
>tsr: Yeah, Game Over painted Tengen as basically stealing the patents for the lockout chip.
>EL: The trouble was it was already done before we saw it. We had already done the Rabbit chip long before we had seen it. So it's already done, and we see this and we're like "Oh shit". (laughs)
>tsr: So you know for a fact the Rabbit was 100% original?
>EL: Yeah. I walked into the lab and they were reverse engineering the chip, and I asked what they were doing and they said "Don't ask". (laughs) So I know the company was doing it, and I knew the people involved doing it.
>tsr: Was this a major undertaking, the engineering?
>EL: It was basically three people. And they were certainly looking at the chip, let's put it that way. I'm sure they did a lot more that I didn't see. Tweaking the signals, seeing what comes out, that kind of stuff. And I was working on the FC at the time. We had reverse engineered the Famicom and I was already developing on it.

idk but their version is worse than the official nes release

>>3225683
Sounds like BS, I read the actual court desicion last nite (girlfriend is in law school) and the desicion states that portions of Rabbit's code base were blatantly jacked from the 10NES. Including portions that Nintendo had already removed from their code and modified. It proved they had the documents for awhile, and definitely obtained them intentionally.

>>3226068
This. There was redundant code in the rabbit chip that was later removed from the 10nes program, if Atari had actually reverse engineered the chip rather than copying the program entirely it wouldn't have been there.

>all these patent apologists ITT

The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

>>3226673
The idea that I can pour years of my life into designing something only to have a bulk manufacturer in China take the idea, assemble millions of copies, and sell it for profit is also pretty sad. Sadly, there's no middle ground.

Maybe someday someone will find a way to split the difference on conceptual and software patenting where developers of such things can be compensated without holding a deathgrip on the entire line of thought.

>>3223482
It was Nintendo's system. Atari stole their copyrighted software. They did something crummy and deserved the lawsuit. Nintendo made a business mistake by not having enough cheap cartridges. If Atari had cracked the software themselves it would have been OK. Selling and making the games would have been okay if they hadn't stolen the lockout software. If Atari was so great they should have made a non-shit console.

>>3223482
Can't say I'm a big fan of Nintendo's policies so yeah. They sound like early homebrewers.

Did Namco ever got into trouble with Nintendo for licensing their properties to Tengen? They were still a third-party publisher for Famicom games back in that period.

>>3226068
>>3226662
>I know better than a Tengen programmer

>>3226068
>girlfriend is in law school
And if she wasn't you'd be incapable of reading it? How can the opinion of anyone so sad have any value? How can the opinion of anyone in a relationship with anyone so sad have any value?

>>3228085
No need to get triggered now just because someone's getting laid.

>>3228098
>getting laid by your imaginary lawyer girlfriend

>>3228085
I mentioned it because she has access to these specialized law search engines, I had her look up the case and send me the PDF of the actual decision. I read the wikipedia article obviously, but I wanted real, un-filtered information.

>>3228317
So you need your gf to google for you. Even more sad. Just google for "975 F.2d 832" and you can find it on your own kiddo.

>>3228387
I'm having a hard time even comprehending how triggered you are right now.

>>3228414
You're having a hard time comprehending a lot of things sport.

>>3223482
They were right, and the GC and WiiU are proof.

Walled gardens are for shitters.

>>3225683
> all that damage control

File: badass.jpg (17KB, 190x265px) Image search: [Google]

17KB, 190x265px

>>3223482
Weeaboo here.

Tengen is pronounced "Te - n - ge - n", where the "ge" sounds like "get", and not "generate"

:D

More seriously, they did some underhanded stuff reverse engineer the NES10 chip (they didn't, but requested patent documentation saying that had to check for infringment). At least they made an honest to god counterfeit instead of Wisdom Tree that literally zapped your NES with a voltage spike to fuck the NES10 and disable the region lockout.

The whole point why Tengen existed was for Namco to get around Nintendo's bullshit rule of only so many games per licensee per year. On one hand, Nintendo's strict quality standards is why they have had so many great games over the years. On the other, some developers were pumping out some really fun games.

To that point, Tengen Tetris and Gauntlet are fucking awesome even today.

I forgive them. They had cool carts, the history is interesting, they stuck it to the man and his bullshit lockout chip, and made some of the best games on the system while they were at it. They're ok in my book.

>>3230717
>The whole point why Tengen existed was for Namco to get around Nintendo's bullshit rule of only so many games per licensee per year. On one hand, Nintendo's strict quality standards is why they have had so many great games over the years. On the other, some developers were pumping out some really fun games.
I thought Tengen only published Namco's stuff because they had no U.S. division at the time, so they had to license out their games to Atari Games. Namco Hometek wouldn't be formed until around the early 90's.

>>3230725
I totally fucked that up. I was thinking about Ultra, which was a shell for Konami. My bad. Totally disregard that paragraph.