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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.
They had them at my mall. That booth was pretty popular until it dissappeared without a trace... (they mostly hired immigrants who boasted to me about how it had "Nintendo, Sega, Atari..." It ranked a 105 on the Shade-o-meter.)
They didn't pull them just because they looked alike, they pulled them because they were running pirated copies of their games.
A friend of mine saw one last year saw no copyright acknoledgements on the box.
Well, I'm not sure if they'd be legal to buy, but it is illegal to sell, even if you only sell to people "who already have a legal copy."
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
The article states that Nintendo is slapping down a company that is pirating its older inventory. You know those controllers that you plug into the A/V that let you play a few simple games? Some company decided to put Mario and Donkey Kong in theirs without paying Nintendo any money. Of course, Nintendo is going to be upset.
There was one of these kiosks in my local mall as of Saturday night, everytime I walked past it I wondered how long it was going to take them to be sued into submission.
If Nintendo would make something like this, only with higher quality parts (the controllers on these things felt horrible and were obviously poorly made) I'm hard pressed to believe they wouldn't sell extremely well given the right price point. Then again, they're able to sell single games for twenty bucks apiece for the GBA...
How's my typing? Call 1-800-eta-shut
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
She thought it looked like a nice gift, they were charging "only" 59.99 for it. She brought it home, I said we were taking it back since they were illegal. Talk about a huge hassle to get them to take it back.
I told them that the games weren't licensed. They said sure they are. I asked why Nintendo's logo wasn't on the box. They said I don't know. I kept insisting that I wanted my money back NOW.
Eventually the guy calls his manager and talks to him on the phone for a couple of minutes. Then he wants me to talk to him. I gave the manager the same spiel, threatened to go to the police. The retail monkey got back on the phone again.
Then he loads up Super Mario Brothers, which says Copyright Nintendo on the title screen. He tries to use this as proof that they are legal. I almost came unglued. The second retail monkey comes over and I explain to him that it's even unopened/unused, and it's illegal.
Then this guy calls the manager, but it was to ask how to do a refund on the credit card machine.
Stay away...stay far away.
In the Mall Of America at first they had one, then they had 2 of the stands selling the shady consoles.
Very shady - I could tell instantly they were a not authorize game machines.
The booths at the mall usually sold these multi game machines and also a video table tennis game.
On the machine themselves - no where on them had a mail address, UPC, or any copyright notices. The imaging on the packaging looked like some 80's rip off. I could swear half the images were directly stolen from toy ads from the 80's.
They sold multiple models of the Nintendo system including a deluxe model with gun and two controllers. Base models had just one controller or two. They all had random amount of games usually hovering in the 16,000 listed on the box.
AS someone else commented those are 16,000 in 1 type machines so about 60 games were usable. Games vary from Super Mario Brothers to contra to other games that never made it to us. But most of the games are hack or variations that does nothing to game play or skip you a few levels or instantly crash the game.
Price - no where written or shown on the booth is the price. So you know you can price them down.
I've heard some people get it for 65.00 if you say the right words 40.00.
One other thing that makes it interesting is that the machine had the ability to handle Nintendo 8 bit cartridges. Mind you Asian / Japanese cartridges, not us, but if you had a converter it would still work.
Also the controller had the analog Nintendo 64 stick on it but it was glued into place. So you can't actually use the joystick in the games.
But happy they are closed down.... Though it would be nice if Nintendo made a 20 in 1 like that unlike the $20.00 game boy advance carts....
Urgh, the ROM argument. No, that does not make it legal. They're selling someone elses product to you, without paying or having the permission of the owners.
(and btw that argument doesn't hold true for ROM's either, no matter what some emulation site says. Theft is theft, at least admit it)
A relative bought me one of those systems. An N64-looking controller, along with a Sega Genesis-looking controller and a small pistol lightgun.
The name of the system? I don't know. It had one name on the box, another on its side, and the system itself had a different name completely.
The N64 controller had a slot which allowed you to play expansions...turns out that the slot was for Famicom games, which meant that it wasn't meant for American audiences really.
Also the thousands of games weren't really thousands of games. They were maybe 60 games, listed thousands of times by different variations on their names.
But that was not what irked me the most. What irked me the post was the game they called Pacman. It was actually a Mappy Land clone, which was weird because Mappy Land was one of the games listed! I want my Pac-man!!!
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
"Theft is theft, at least admit it"
I thought it was copyright infringement... Oh wait, that's just music.
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)
Back when I was in grade 6, my Mom ordered one of these of The Shopping Network for us for Christmas. Damn thing would just cause the Nintendo to do a reset each time. IIRC, the cartiridge came with a note saying that the Action 52 would have to reset 4 or 5 times before it would start working. The casing was also clear plastic, and you could see that some of the circuits were wasting away and corroding. We sent it back and got another one, but it didn't work either. What a crappy waste of money...I should download that ROM though, always wondered how bad it really was.
I can't spell ripburger
A "friend" bought me one of these for my birthday. A few minutes after I plugged it in, I noticed it was getting a little warm. I kept playing, though, and the next thing I know the thing was on fire, and molten plastic was eating into my flesh. Then the silicon chips exploded, sending a thousand razor sharp flechettes into my eyes and face. I AM WRITING THIS FROM THE HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM. I DO NOT HAVE LONG TO LIVE. PLEASE, IF YOU WANT TO SAVE SOMEONE'S LIFE, DO NOT BUY THESE ILLEGAL PIRATE GAME CONTROLLERS!!
I remember seeing these exact game systems being sold out of a courtyard kiosk just before this past Christmas at the Northridge mall here in LA. This extremely bored-looking guy with a beard was sitting on the kiosk stool playing the demo system to drum up interest. I asked him how much and he said $50.
I tried the other demo system on the side of the cart. Yes, the controller & system were 1 unit with this CHEAP looking PCB board with contacts sticking out of the back. It looked like what it probably was, a ROM chip, only instead of a plastic housing like a real console cartridge, the chip was loosely wrapped with a folded piece of notebook paper. Riiiiggght.
The system when booted up displayed list of "games" you could play on it, and it was not a short list, about 20-30 games listed on each page, and you could scroll down thru a couple pages of games, so the thing was loaded. Near the top was listed a "Teletubbies" game, which I chose so my daughter could watch me play it. The game was the NES version of Mario Brothers (not SuperMario, the original one) but with the sprites edited so instead of Luigi and Mario, you get Dipsy and Tinky-Winky! Eh-Oh...
I remember very clearly what happened next. I was so proud of my little discovery, I turned to my wife and said "It's like it's got an emulator inside and just using a bunch of NES ROMs!" And the guy manning the booth set his controller down, got off his stool, and walked off into the crowd without looking back. At first I thought maybe he took a restroom break, but we hung out at that booth for about an hour, me trying the various games, while my wife watched my daughted play on the nearby kids toys. The guy never came back and no came to replace him. After that we went to the Apple Store to play Nemo, and GameSpot, and even after that the cashier never returned. He just abandoned the cart and probably drove all the way to the state line!
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
This attempt to make these devices not exist won't work. At best, it might remove this one product from the market, and another two will spring up to replace it.
The allure of easy money and the fact there's a starved market mean these things are here to stay. It's no different than the illegal TV market. How many illegal cable descramblers have been discovered in the past few years?
And, just a while ago, thousands of people got letters in the mail saying DirecTV is going to sue them for pirating satellite TV. And there's still thousands of others doing it.
These markets don't collapse under the court of law. In fact, as the law makes the products increasingly illegal, the market for them increases. Yeah, that's odd, but look at the situation:
- Legal pirate device -- Easy to come by, near infinite supply, commodity pricing.
- Semi-legal pirate device (shady, not yet busted) -- Harder to come by, smaller supply, prices are driven up
- Illegal pirate device -- Really tough to come by, very tight supply, prices go very high
- VERY Illegal pirate device (active prosecution) -- Extremely tough to come by, rare supply, prices have to compensate dealer for risk of jail time
So, we go from a $40 pirate device, to a $1000 pirate device in no time. The funny thing is, in the end the people doing the illegal activities *benefit* from increased prosecution. It means they can raise prices. So long as they don't get caught, they make a killing scalping consumers.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Your wife buys you a crappy controller with 76 nintendo games on it that are freely available online via P2P. She spends $60 on it and it's a surprise for you.
Do you a) tell your wife she bought a stupid thing that's completely worthless, but you appreciate the thought or b) point out that it's a con and say "you know, there are some things I'll pirate online, but we probably shouldn't support the industry."
In the first case she chose a bad thing for you through ignorance. It's like you're disappointed in her. In the second, she was conned. She can feel righteously angry at the vendor. They're equally true.
B is much kinder, and there's really nothing wrong with it. It's the spin I'd use, and it's *certainly* what I'd use when lambasting the clerk for a return.
Dear assmonkey,
I did not throw a fit to my wife first of all. You see, my wife and I have this thing where we talk about stuff, without being angry at each other. I told her I appreciated it, and explained to her that it was a bootleg product. She was surprised and a little upset that she had been taken. I know it's hard to understand how a successful normal relationship works, since you've probably never even talked to a woman. That's alright though. You'll get there someday.
X
When I say some for sale in a mall kiosk in the USA I went up to the young man that was selling them. I asked how they were able to import what was clearly a pirate device. He said, "If I'm selling it then it must be legal!" I told him that he clearly didn't know what he was talking about and he got angry with me. He was even madder when I told him in earshot of potential customers that what he was selling for $59.99 was available in Taiwan for $8.00.
Lasers Controlled Games!
They loaded up Contra. I, like all of you, I assume, remember the Konami code. I went to enter it....
The guy says, "No, watch this!" HE HOLDS B AND START and I get 30 lives.
I walked away scared.
I feel no obligation in complying with laws that arn't in sync with my own moral code.
As far as I'm concerned trademark law & copyright law should be treated & enforced no differently than Patent law. Meaning Nintendo's only recourse should be to use the civil court system to sue the makers, sellers & end-users of products that break their copyrights or use their trademarks. Copyright law should not be the business of the criminal court & if copyright holders want to prevent end-users from buying & using products that break their copyrights, it's only recourse should be to sue each end-user individually.
So while the corporate world's lobbyists & the US govt have been using their influence to get govts arround the world put copyright provisions in their criminal law codes (a process that's been going on in one form or another since WWII), I'll make my protest by feeling no obligation to comply with copyright laws. As such if you have some hangup over your woman's game controller, I'm quite happy to take it (or maybe her) off your hands.
Sould have picked up a few when I saw them at my mall. They were nifty little things. Most of what was sold was old games that you can't really get here anymore (some being the key word here). I'm kind of sad that they got closed down so fast. But then again these people really didn't have the snap that a classic Korean game counterfiters has. When they pirate something they make it look like art.