Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Blocking Counterfeit Game Machines
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo won a court case Monday which "prohibits retailers from selling products that look like Nintendo's game controllers from its older Nintendo 64 game console, which can be plugged directly into televisions to play games."" These were apparently being sold nation-wide in mall kiosks. Shady.
My 14 year old bother inlaw got one of these for a birthday a while back. It had a full version of Contra on it. The Konomi code even worked. There were also a handful of other Nintendo games I recognised. Of note was a topdown shooter that I had played alot when I was younger. Can't remember the name. Although in this bootleg version you couldn't collect powerups. They were letters if I recall.
The other thing was the port on the bottom that gave the impression that you could plug 8bit NES games into the controler. My other bother inlaw was douped into believing that it would work. The cartidges we tried fit perfectly.
Supposedly the controller came with 65000 games but there were only about 25 or so actual games. They were merely repeated over and over like the old 100-in-1 bootleg Nintendo cartridge that had serveral versions of the same games.
BASE Conflict for Quake 3
I saw one of these in a booth at a huge fair in Dallas and called information immediately to get Nintendo's legal department on the line. The nice lady gave me an email address, and when I got home, I drafted the following letter. Amazing how stupid the guy manning the booth was, by the way, as you'll see below...
To whom it may concern,
I was at the State Fair of Texas today in Dallas, and inside the fair are a variety of booths with local crafts and the like. One booth was a bit odd, however - it featured a video game system that plugs directly into a TV and features older, nostalgic games, much like the recently-popular Pac-Man joysticks and the like. This one was different, however -- it copied the N64 controller to a T, if done in a much cheaper fashion, so at first I thought it was the iQue that is currently being sold in China.
But it wasn't. This system featured over 7,000 NES ROMS in its memory: Perfectly-emulated copies of games like Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, Bubble Bobble.... I didn't even bother copying the list, because basically, every single NES game ever made was included in this controller. The controller, sold with a light gun peripheral, was sold for $40 a pop at the stand. I checked the box for any seal of approval from Nintendo, but all I could find was a Chinese copyright. Though I didn't write down that information, the guy behind the counter was foolish enough to hand me an information sheet with contact information for the responsible company, which I've copied below:
Super Joy III TV Game
Performance Marketing Co.
3861 Royal Troon Dr
Round Rock, TX 78664
512-244-7776
www.epowerplayer.com
The above website address actually includes all the information I listed and then some. This "Super Joy III" is some shady stuff, and as a dedicated Nintendo fan for many years, I am appalled to see such blatant disregard for Nintendo's copyrights in a for-profit product, so I called Nintendo of America on my cell phone and got this email address from the receptionist. I hope this is the correct contact information, and furthermore, that action is taken against this company's activity.
Please feel free to contact me with any further questions.
Thank you, (name and contact info removed)
No, it's not an emulator. The menus on those things are straight 6502 (or whatever the hell variant the NES used - same difference anyway) code. They use something called a "NES-on-a-chip". Part numbers I've heard are "NMOS 6582" (used in the Game Axe line), and the "NT6578" (used in at least those NES to SNES adaptors, and most likely everything with a blob-like chip for a CPU). It's a complete NES chipset on ONE chip.