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Toys Entertainment Games

Nintendo Blocking Counterfeit Game Machines 170

Posted by Zonk from the old-games-still-have-owners dept.
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.
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Nintendo Blocking Counterfeit Game Machines More

Nintendo Blocking Counterfeit Game Machines

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  • Sighting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tina Russell ( 589416 ) <tinarussell386@NosPam.yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @04:31PM (#10704371) Homepage
    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.)

    • Re:Sighting (Score:2, Informative)

      by siegesama ( 450116 )
      Had something similar in the local mall by me, as well. They would only take cash at the stand. If you wanted to use credit card, you had to go to a neighboring stand (apparently run by the same people) which was selling unrelated junk. Sketchy, but the ROMs all apppear about right. *whistles*

      • Re:Sighting (Score:3, Informative)

        by bhtooefr ( 649901 )
        http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/ has a NES portable based on one of these. Yes, they're all quite shady. Many come with a lightgun. They're based on a NES-on-a-chip (yes, there's actually a chip that does everything that every chip in the original NES does). Some have (Famicom) cartridge ports (if you want to run US carts, get an adaptor - http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=159&pro d ucts_id=171 is one that I've heard is good), and if not, there's always wiring a US cartridge port to the board
    • I am familiar with these devices, having bought about 10 of them three years ago on a trip to Taiwan. I gave them out as Christmas presents when I came home. They were very inexpensive in Taiwan. Even a model with two controllers and a light gun was less than $20. The games play the same as they do on a real Nintendo but the controllers don't work well and don't last long. That is both frustrating and expected I guess.

      When I say some for sale in a mall kiosk in the USA I went up to the young man that

    • Re:Sighting (Score:3, Interesting)

      by patternjuggler ( 738978 )
      I actually tried reporting it to Nintendo, because I was kind of pissed off out how obviously illegal it was. There weren't any price tags on the packaging, and I think the boxes themselves did not show pictures of Nintendo games, but with the kiosks running SMB and Contra it's pretty obvious what was going on. The other thing was that not only are ripping off Nintendo, but also the customer because they are charging $50-$60 for a flimsy piece of crap found for $5 or $10 online.
    • Yeah, there was one at my mall too... it was a neat gizmo, but I laughed out loud when I saw that the analog stick on the n64 knockoff pad was just for show.

      I was half tempted to buy one because it looked like it had a good layout of games and the second gamepad+gun gave it a featureset that gave those Atari things a run for thier money (especially at $50CAN), but the damn thing looked so fragile and stupid.

  • For copyright issues (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Student_Tech ( 66719 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @04:33PM (#10704395) Journal
    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.

  • Legal (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wouldn't these be legal to buy, if I owned the NES version? Carrying around a controller size machine is much easier than 50+ NES carts

    Plus, you don't have to blow in the damn cartridge to get the games to work.

    • Re:Legal (Score:4, Informative)

      by j0nb0y ( 107699 ) <jonboy300@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @04:36PM (#10704433) Homepage
      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."

    • Re:Legal (Score:3, Informative)

      by FLAGGR ( 800770 )
      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)

      • Re:Legal (Score:2, Insightful)

        by TLSPRWR ( 711680 )
        "Theft is theft, at least admit it"

        I thought it was copyright infringement... Oh wait, that's just music.
    • "Wouldn't these be legal to buy,"

      It'd be legal for you to own but not for the other person to accept your money for it, let alone distribute it. And that doesn't take into account Nintendo's IP on the N64 controller design (how can you argue that it's not unique?).

      And if you knowingly go through the deal anyway, some lawyer-types could start saying words like "aiding" and "abetting."

      If they sold some hardware that you could put into a modified (genuine) N64 controller shell, with blank chips that you'd
    • nope, but i suppose a hand held device which would copy a cart onto an empty flash drive so you could manually dump your carts into it *may* be legal so long as the code on the chip to play the games is not copied from an NES

  • Nothing to see here move along. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @04:39PM (#10704462)
    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.
    • It's worse than just one or two Nintendo first-party games. From the ones of these I've seen they appear to be running an emulator (the menu system looks nearly identical to NesterDC) with a nearly full library of NES titles. The ones in my local mall were nearly constantly hooked into a TV with Contra loaded into them, but sometimes Castlevania or other third-party titles.
      • 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.
        • I was only hazarding my guess in my post; I didn't make that aparent though. Thanks for clearing it up. I never really got a close enough look at one of the things, when I walked past it always looked just like the NesterDC menu to me. Aparently most of the games in the menu are fakes too, from what others are saying.
          • Well, if something says "76000 in 1", divide by 1000 to get the actual number. If you do get one, from what I've heard, don't play games above 76, because the mods made to them make it buggy.

            Basically, you can believe any number below about 150, so divide by 10 until you get to a reasonable number.
            • We've got one of these vendors in the mall. When asked what the 76000 referred to, he said it referred to the total number of levels in all the games. Admittedly, he may have been talking out of his ass...

              I will admit that I'm tempted to grab one of these things were it not for that I have no idea how hardy/fragile they are, let alone the legalities. Well, and of course I'll probably get it online where it's cheaper.

    • At computer shows I used to see those with advertised as like "1500 games" basically they'd run like 20 different variants of Super Mario Brothers and 20 different varients of Duck Hunt, so on and so on until they hit their number. I should have bought one when they were still available.

      I don't care if it's illegal, all the better. I'm boycotting Nintendo anyway.

      LK
      • The problem is not the legality of it, on a consumer point of view.

        As posted above, the problem is that they're selling you an 8$ device at 60-70$ prices, just a bit less than a console.

        I wouldn't want to be the kid whoose dad buy one of those thinking he'll save a buck or two. Scam scam scam.
  • 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...

    • Re:saw one of these (Score:3, Interesting)

      by harrkev ( 623093 )
      Nintendo is not likely to do this...

      First, this would eat away at the sales of their other more profitable products. Second, they only own the rights to their own games, and could not include ones from Namco, Konami, and all of the others without getting a legion of lawyers involved.

      Too bad, though, Getting the old nintendo classics legally for around $40 or so would be awesome.

    • "If Nintendo would make something like this,"

      They do, they just won't sell it outside of China.

      Of course, with so many willing to pay $20 for re-releases of NES games for the GBA, why should they bother? I'm still expecting an iQue-like online service to be a killer ap for either the DS or the upcoming "Revolution," however.
      • Besides, we both know what the Nintendo model released here would be: $50, 5 games, one gamepad. Meanwhile, the knockoff is $50CAN, oodles of games, and gamepad, gun, and zapper.

        If it doesn't have a second pad, its just masturbation.

  • Copyrights and fruadulent marketing (Score:4, Informative)

    by Xistic ( 536149 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @04:48PM (#10704561) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

      You mean Action 52 [somethingawful.com]??
      • 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 sh

        • 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.

          Since it wasn't licensed by Nintendo, it didn't have a lockout chip in it (which would normally chatter with a similar chip in the console and stop it from constantly resetting). Instead, it used some messed up hardware (usually consisting of a -5V charge pump) to literally try and stun the console's lockout chip i

    • If it is like most other pirate consoles sold worldwide then your old NES carts can easily be made to work on it. The bulk of these consoles use the Famicon pin layout which is only different from the NES if I remember correctly by a couple of swapped pins. I do know that some Hong Kong import companies sell adapters for a couple of bucks that make the swap though.

      They were selling these in my area too. If it was an officially licensed product I'd get one for myself and probably several as gifts. But t
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • These would have been excellent little things to send in surprise care packages for the guys and gals serving overseas. Gotta imagine how much they'd love getting them, even if they don't have a lot of tv sets to plug into, just for the nostalgia factor. They're cheaper than Game Boys+games, too...
  • I've seen these at the mall, supersales in exibition halls, and swap meets. I never liked them much, not because they were pirated, but becuase they felt like cheap PoS.
  • I was thinking about getting one to play with at work maybe set it up lke an arcade machine.

    They were still in the two malls I go to last I checked. I even asked the guy one day if the roms were legit. He said they were licensed. I said "Um Sure I bet." And continued to play excite bike for a while.
  • One of these kiosks has just sprung up in the mega-mall around where I work. At lunch time I played on one, and I must say it was probably the worst controller I have ever touched. And they had the nerve to ask $79.99 for it. Hah!

    I showed my friends the article, I think we might just pose as NOA and shut em down :)
    • If you want one, and you can't find one cheap (or at all), epowerplayer.com (from someone's rat out to Nintendo e-mail) has them for $40 + $5 S&H.

      $80 is ridiculous, $65 only if the ROM is in a Famicart in the controller (no hacking, then).
    • They're $29.99 here.
  • I hope that they can get them out of malls here in Canada too. Those things are such utter crap.

  • My wife bought one! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xaqar ( 112761 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @05:22PM (#10704959)
    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.

    • Re:My wife bought one! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @07:41PM (#10706223)
      I said we were taking it back since they were illegal

      Oh my god. You have got to be the most square person I have ever heard of.
      • Nintendo deserves it. [slashdot.org]
      • 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

      • Re:My wife bought one! (Score:2, Informative)

        by g051051 ( 71145 )
        I think this guy did the right thing. It was illegal, and he didn't want to be a party to a crime. His wife probably wouldn't have bought it if she knew it was illegal. I've seen these things in the malls, but never bought one because of obvious copyright violations.

        However, I have purchased most of the Jakks Pacific licensed game units. Itt's a great idea, as long as you don't break the law.

    • I'll take it off your hands (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DABANSHEE ( 154661 ) on Friday November 12, 2004 @06:30AM (#10796688)
      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.

      • ... 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.

        Not if you ask me...

        They should go after the creators and publishers of the infringing works, not the people who buy them. The purchaser, provided that he or she has not commissioned the work, is neither violating the copyright nor causing it to be violated. The creator and publisher, on the other hand, are likely profiting from t

    • Most of us dumped a bazillion dollars into nes games back then. Did you happen to own all the games that were on that device?

  • Mall Of America had 2 of them (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

  • Shady names too (Score:2, Interesting)

    by PigeonGB ( 515576 )
    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 t
  • I've seen these kiosks and was wondering how they licensed all those Nintendo games. Now I know, they just took them!
  • I played one of these at a mall, it had something like 75,000(?) games. Don't know how that works, but I played Duck Hunt with the light pistol there for ten minutes or so. Also, it cost $65 if I remeber correctly.

  • Letter I wrote to NOA Legal: (Score:5, Informative)

    by muel ( 132794 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @06:37PM (#10705701)
    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)
    • Didn't you learn from the Brady Bunch? No one likes a tattle-tale. And when you tattle on others you are really tattling on your self.
  • My wife bought one of these, and not only are these things illegal, they are crap. The controls are ridiculously stiff. Perhaps it could be soldered to a real NES controller, but why bother when I've got a real NES downstairs? I've played it a few times, but would gladly trade it for a PC running a decent emulator any day. I think there's around 40 actual games, lots of clones, and not many of them actually fun to play.

  • I got one for my birthday (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @07:40PM (#10706218)
    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 can't believe that people would do such a thing!

    >>Goes back to plaing SNES ROMS
  • Too bad. I could've made an uber Beowulf cluster out of 'em!

  • Northridge, CA Mall had them (Score:5, Funny)

    by iankerickson ( 116267 ) on Tuesday November 02, 2004 @10:01PM (#10706898) Homepage
    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!

  • Wasted effort (Score:2, Insightful)

    by shepd ( 155729 )
    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 satell

  • In the know we call them "Famiclones"... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These things are often referred to as Famiclones (Famicom clones) and dodgy peoples have been spitting these things out not long after the original Famicom itself appeared. Google for "Famiclone" and read all about it, the top site has over 240 variants. If you must have one then don't pay big $$$ for these, there is no telling how much bootleg 8bit Nintendo stuff has been spewed forth in the last 2 decades...
  • Hell, they were selling them on one of the home shopping channels! My wife bought me one for my birthday last year.

    They're actually not too bad; some fun games on them. But they are obviously hack jobs; one game labled as "Super Mario Brothers" was in actuality one of those hacked versions of SMB with Mario running around naked. Check those ROM's guys!
  • They have something on the informercial programs on TV here in australia called "arcade action" which looks like one of these things although instead of being a controller sized unit, its a larger unit that looks more like a traditional console.
    In any case, its highly unlikely that the games on this thing are endorsed by Nintendo, Namco, Konami, Atari, Capcom or whoever else.

  • I saw one. It was scary. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tuxedobob ( 582913 ) * <tuxedobob@[ ].com ['mac' in gap]> on Friday November 05, 2004 @05:35PM (#10738473)
    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.
  • 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.

  • There are stores offering them for play and sale in New York, on 14th street between 5th and 6th avenue.

    Every morning I walk past and see someone playing Mario Bros. or Contra.

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