The True BEST Unlicensed Game Company

When you hear about unlicensed games, Tengen is usually the first company people think of. Their titles came in these black cartridges and were not authorized by Nintendo. But how good was Tengen at programming games? Were they just as bad as the other unlicensed game companies, or did they actually know what they were doing?

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Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
0:50 Atari Games
1:51 Nintendo’s Licensing Policy
2:53 Unlicensed Games
5:24 Why Tengen Stands Out
6:08 Shinobi
7:13 Fantasy Zone
8:13 Pac-Man
9:03 Rolling Thunder
9:53 Pac-Mania
10:45 Ms Pac-Man
12:17 Hard Drivin’
12:44 Legal Issues

84LENS, 霍天赐, A frame in motion, Ahmet Akpolat, Andrew Hanson, Anna Hinckel, Anvar Tushakov, Artem Podrez, Caleb Oquendo, Cottonbro, Cristian Dina, Curtis Adams, DAV Grup 1, David McBee, Distill, Drones Scot, Edward Jenner, EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA, Ekrulila, Evgenia Kirpichnikova, Free Videos, George Morina, Glen McBride, Henry, Hirsh Philippe, Hugh Mitton, Italo Melo, Jack Sparrow, Jose Carlos, Joseph Redfield, Kampus Production, Kamrul Chowdhury, Karolina Grabowska, Kelly, Kindel Media, Ksenia Chernaya, Magda Ehlers, MART PRODUCTION, Mikhail Nilov, Miguel Á. Padriñán, Mike B, Monstera, Nazim Zafri, Nicole Michalou, olia danilevich, Pavel Danilyuk, Pete Wales, pickarick, Pixabay, Polina Tankilevitch, Pressmaster, Produtora Midtrack, Rafael Moura, RDNE Stock project, Ricky Esquivel, RODNAE Productions, Ron Lach, Ruvim Miksanskiy, Sam Lastres, Sora Shimazaki, Steve B, Thirdman,Tiger Lily, Tima Miroshnichenko, Timo Volz, Tom Fisk, Tony Schnagl, Vlada Karpovich, Yan Krukov, Yaroslav Shuraev

#tengen #nintendo #retrogaming

[UltimatePerfection]

Speaking of Tengen, there's a reason why Tengen's version of Tetris is almost guaranteed to show up on multicarts (usually under the name of Tetris II) and Nintendo's seldom is found there. It's just that superior.

[ravensmadhouse]

At least Tengen was welcomed with Open Arms by SEGA, when it came to games made for the Genesis/Mega Drive.

[FeralInferno]

The biggest problem with Tengen carts was that they got a little stuck in your NES.

[greenmachine]

The fact that Hard Drivin' is actually running on NES hardware in any form is amazing to see

[plaztik]

Back in the NES era when I was a kid, they brought a lot of games over to Nintendo’s platform that wouldn’t have been there otherwise so I never really hated Tangen. They gave us Shinobi afterburner and several other Sega franchises that would’ve never arrived as well as the best version of Tetris.

[JoeyJJ]

The NES Hard Drivin is really impressive. I loved their port of Ms.Pac Man

[starleaf-luna]

the "Pac-Man ghosts are slightly discoloured", because they probably thought those were the closest colours to the original. the NES palette only has you pick from 64 colours (from which some are duplicates of black, plus one darker-than-black colour that makes the signal go haywire on CRTs), and not using RGB for extra fluid colour picking.

[blakegriplingph]

Funny enough, Tengen had the last laugh as their Rabbit CIC clone formed the basis for open-source clones of the CIC/10NES due to the presence of a debug feature which aided reverse engineering efforts.

[nahumgardner]

Is it Wednesday already? I've been here since you had just under 5K subs, it's crazy how big the channel has gotten.

[mguymario]

Tegen did return a bit and has officially licensed games on the SNES and Genesis/MD

[aaronmilic]

It's interesting now to look back at Tengen. As a kid/consumer I thought they were special and made top notch games and were sort of elite, especially with the black cartridges. They were usually more expensive too here where I live. Plus they had Pac-Man. Wild to know the truth now. But no love for RBI Baseball? I have likely clocked more hours on that game than any other, with the possible exception of RBI 2. I felt of all sports, Baseball was meant for the NES.

[fco]

This was a video I really wanted to see happening tengen is a company that was always a mystery for me

also congrats I noticed in just a week your channel grew fast your content is really addictive and entertaining to watch

[RickSFfan]

Great video, as always.

Surprised you didn't include the Tetris story also. Tengen made an excellent port of the arcade Tetris, but Nintendo got them there also. Turns out while Atari bought the arcade rights to the game, they didn't buy the home console rights, so Nintendo did and made what is even to this day considered the gold standard Tetris game, the code was licensed and used even in Tetris Effect: Connected as "Classic Mode."

[turtlecatpurrz]

Tengen Tetris was a really good version of the game.

[riversarcadereview]

LOVED the Tengen Ms. Pac-Man as well as Tengen Tetris

[segahatty]

These guys made Magical Puzzle Poplis, probably one of the best Game Gear games out there.



...but bro did our boy Fantasy Zone dirty 😭😭

[SuperFnLagers-niif]

I had the Tengen Ms. Pac-Man for Sega Genesis. Still my favorite version.

[roberttractortaylor]

Hard Drivin'is a good game for it's era. I have it on Genesis/MD and sometimes I'll put it in my modded console with a Motorola 68010 at 12mhz and it plays much smoother and faster.

[dandastardly]

I feel like making unlicensed games with your license would not go over well with your licensor.

[RageyRage]

To be fair, Tengen wasn't any worse than some of the other games officially licensed for the system. I think they were hit or miss like most publishers and studios. Those first couple of generations were kinda like that. But I guess what I mean is that not every company was going to churn out quality like Capcom and Konami did in those days.

However. The hardware of these carts were usually bad, with my experiences.

But I remember that we(me and my friends) would kinda cringe about Tengen games because of how odd the carts looked. It just had the stigma from our ignorance, that all the games were just not good.

And truthfully, some of them didn't even work on our systems. The connectors on those carts were always notorious within my circle of friends, to not work on our systems, and I lived in a small neighborhood where the word would get out, so the Tengen games were always available, but nobody wanted to rent them at the rental store.

Years later, that kinda held true as I became a collector of old school games. I usually have trouble with any Tengen cart, whereas nothing else gives me trouble.

But hey, great video as always!