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Lets have a chat about the 2 different R.B.I. Baseball cartridges... Gray & Black!
(A thread)
> The gray RBI cart was the 1st & licensed by Nintendo. There were many hoops to jump through to get a game licensed for use on the NES. Nintendo had strict regulations.
(A thread)
> The gray RBI cart was the 1st & licensed by Nintendo. There were many hoops to jump through to get a game licensed for use on the NES. Nintendo had strict regulations.
The primary stipulations were as follows. A game had to be submitted to Nintendo for approval. There was a minimum number of copies that had to be produced, & Nintendo limited the amount of games a company could release each year.
Nintendo developed a cartridge security chip(10-NES) that communicated w/ a program inside the NES. This allowed Nintendo to control the market & prevented unlicensed games from working in a NES. In 1988 a shortage of cartridge chips adversely affected sales for gaming companies.
Tengen (an Atari Subsidiary) through nefarious efforts stole the 10-NES code & came up w/ a work around for the security chip. Tengen ultimately made unlicensed (black) cartridges that worked in a NES. Atari then sued Nintendo for anti-trust violations in December of 1988.
Atari also accused Nintendo of an illusion of a " chip shortage" in order to keep supply low and prices high. Nintendo counter-sued over the unlicensed games & for Tengen unlawfully obtaining their lockout system information (10-NES).
Nintendo threatened action against customers (stores) that sold unlicensed games & the court initially ruled against Tengen. Tengen had to remove licensed & unlicensed items from the market. An appeal however delayed that order & Tengen continued to sell both versions.
Eventually after a 4 year court case, the court ruled in Nintendo's favor & all games were removed from the market. For the whole story see this video by @GamingHistorian.
