25 Nintendo CIC and Clones
Back in the late Seventies, there was a manufacturer of home television videogames known as Atari. Atari’s consoles had some great games from Atari, and from dozens of fly-by-night companies they also had some shitty ones. By 1983, the latter had saturated the market, resulting in a market crash and Atari dumping well over half a million cartridges in a New Mexico landfill. Not only did Atari’s reputation suffer for these bad games, but as they were simply ROM chips on a circuit board, Atari was often paid no licensing fees for these crummy third-party games.
As Nintendo prepared for their 1985 launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the North American market, they needed a way to avoid the same fate. ...
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