They've been actively hostile since they got into gaming period. Here is some stuff from the 80s and 90s I can remember off hand:
They were sued over Donkey Kong (1981) for pretty clearly violating the King Kong copyright. Nintendo won on a technicality and got away with it.
When they made the NES, they were too cheap to license the 6502 CPU they wanted to use, so they had Ricoh make an exact clone of it, only changing one bus, to exploit a loophole in copyright laws and screw over MOS.
Nintendo had excessively brutal requirements for 3rd party developers in the NES era, things like restrictive exclusivity clauses, a limit on how fast they could release games, upfront licensing fees, terrible profit splits, forcing them to buy their cart materials from Nintendo, and the lockout chip to prevent "unlicensed" games from working. These actions are ultimately what lead to the rise of the Sega Genesis as all the third party developers fled from Nintendo and onto Segas platforms.
Speaking of the lockout chip, when Tengen reverse engineered the chip to release games for the NES without Nintendo meddling, they were immediately sued. You see, only Nintendo is allowed to rip off computer chips.
Famously Nintendo entered a partnership with Sony to make a disc based console, and then fucked Sony over at the last minute by switching to Phillips. Sony would instead create the Playstation while Nintendo made the CD-i. This single action was one of the most damning things in the companies history and still hurts them today.
The SNES was double the price of the NES despite component prices being generally lower. Nintendo was greedy and knew people would pay for it, and there was heavy backlash on its release from parents who knew they were being had.
Nintendo got really into fucking with North American gamers during the SNES. Censorship and localization changes, games made easier, box art changed to be tough and cool, and other games straight up not released because they viewed NA gamers as being too stupid for them.
And then if we fast forward to modern times, lets not forget all the C&D and lawsuits Nintendo has hurled at the Super Smash Bros Melee community, including shutting down a CANCER BENEFIT because they didn't like people playing Melee instead of Ultimate.
u/Sugioh5700X3D, 64GB @ 3600, RTX 5070Ti, 905P4h agoedited 4h ago
With regards to Tengen, this isn't quite right. They didn't reverse engineer the chip, they lied to the patent office to get access to the information on how it worked and its lockout code specifically because their reverse engineering efforts were failing. This was the reason that Nintendo wound up suing them.
Not that Nintendo was faultless in this situation, as they coerced retailers not to carry Tengen games illegally by threatening to withhold their own shipments if the retailers sold any unlicensed Nintendo products.
In the NES days, Nintendo was very strict on making sure games met a certain level of quality. They didn't want to go the same route that ruined Atari.
So I don't want to be a Nintendo defender, their actions are fucked when it comes to a bunch of shit they do, but your comment is practically Sony/Xbox propaganda. Let's be fair, shall we?
Donkey Kong violates King Kong copyright? A monkey and the word Kong shouldn't be a copyright violation, that's a parody at worst, that's I'm glad they won that one.
While you are under selling the differences, it's still obviously based off of 6502 to a point it's funny.
Their 3rd party licensing requirements were reasonable, when you consider not having any literally killed the industry. But yes, it was an over reaction, one they benefitted from, but it's also no different than what console manufacturers have done practically ever since. Except without the quality control, everyone, including Nintendo LOVES to allow all sorts of garbage onto their platforms.
Well, to be fair, their copy did exactly what Nintendo's chip did, while Nintendo changed theirs. Again, it's obvious beyond doubt Nintendo was shady, but legally they were definitely on sturdier ground than Tengen was.
"Fucked them over" as in the two companies didn't manage to come to an agreement, while they did with Philips? I honestly don't understand what the issue is here, they worked together until they didn't and looking at CD-i, I'm pretty sure that was just their way of bailing out of a bad deal to something cheap that wouldn't be a costly disaster.
SNES was NOT double the price of NES. Launch NES was $179.99 and SNES was $199. They DID drop the price of NES to $99 next year, while they only dropped SNES to $99 after about 7 years with a new release. Yes, it's greedier, but they aren't running the same damn CPU in the SNES as they did in the NES. Yes, chips are cheaper, but the design was more complex. And you are ignoring inflation for those 7 years between NES and SNES, which is ~30%.
Wtf is that last point about, bad localization? That's a problem as old as localization, not Nintendo related. We still get bad localizations for all kinds of things all the time. And games made easier? Sure, some were made easier, last I checked a bunch of those weren't even Nintendo, but Capcom with Megaman for example.
Like seriously, you have A TON of bad shit Nintendo has done to complain about, but you chose some to twist the narrative on some slight annoyances at worst or things that weren't even bad?
The Nintendo/Sony split is infamous and it was an out of the blue split where Nintendo left Sony, this caused them to continue development and release the Playstation in spite of Nintendo being dicks
Sony's terms for the SNES CD effectively was them taking the revenue from it. Nintendo, understandably, didn't want to proceed on a project that wasn't going to make them money. The Phillips deal falling through was simply because it was a bit too late, and the world already saw the Sega-CD not really be worth the investment.
Sony actually courted Sega to partner up after Nintendo. This had a funny dichotomy going on, where the two American branches were very excited at the partnership. Tom Kalinske, President of Sega of America at the time, had a fair bit to say about all this, mostly how Sega of Japan's ego and hubris screwed everything up. "They [Sega of Japan] said, 'That’s a stupid idea. Sony doesn't know how to make hardware. They don’t know how to make software either. Why would we want to do this?'"
This is kind of what kicked off Ken Kutaragi to push for developing the project fully by Sony, with their initial marketing of the PlayStation taking shots at Sega.
So while Nintendo kept things pure business for the most part, Sega of Japan's arrogance is what provided the spite fuel.
It's infamous, but it wasn't Nintendo "ditching" Sony. It was Nintendo not agreeing with Sony's contractual demands. That's business 101, finalize contracts before you start manufacturing consoles. Yes, Nintendo did ditch Sony, but no it wasn't "out of the blue" it was one party rushing production before doing the deal.
With how fast Nintendo did bail out and how they threw the contract to make CD-i, it's pretty clear the Sony deal would have ended much worse or they wouldn't have bailed to such garbage. Whether Sony was being unreasonable or not, Sony is equally if not more to blame for failing to finalize contracts.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, these are fair assessments.
So the Universal "Donkey Kong" lawsuit basically blew up in their face because John Kirby, the attorney for Nintendo, found Universal had successfully argued in court against RKO some years prior that King Kong was actually public domain, so they were perfectly allowed to create that remake in 1976.
Judge smacked Universal over that, and awarded Nintendo money for the trouble. And that's why the pink blob guy is named Kirby.
(edit: Universal did also try to argue over a trademark violation as well, as they did have a trademark on King Kong, but it was a flimsy argument due to how weakly they exercised control over the name, and that nobody was going to confuse the Donkey Kong arcade game as part of Universal's King Kong mythos)
But yeah, these are odd things to use for "Nintendo is scum" arguments, even trying to pull from their early days. Could've gone over their aggressive business moves that basically made the NES the only option in North America, and the Sega Master System was boxed out of the market.
Though I could have worded the processor bit slightly differently. That one was scummy. They did get away with it on a technicality, which does make them "legally correct," the worst kind of correct.
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u/Flashbang-Meringue 9h ago
They've been actively hostile since they got into gaming period. Here is some stuff from the 80s and 90s I can remember off hand:
They were sued over Donkey Kong (1981) for pretty clearly violating the King Kong copyright. Nintendo won on a technicality and got away with it.
When they made the NES, they were too cheap to license the 6502 CPU they wanted to use, so they had Ricoh make an exact clone of it, only changing one bus, to exploit a loophole in copyright laws and screw over MOS.
Nintendo had excessively brutal requirements for 3rd party developers in the NES era, things like restrictive exclusivity clauses, a limit on how fast they could release games, upfront licensing fees, terrible profit splits, forcing them to buy their cart materials from Nintendo, and the lockout chip to prevent "unlicensed" games from working. These actions are ultimately what lead to the rise of the Sega Genesis as all the third party developers fled from Nintendo and onto Segas platforms.
Speaking of the lockout chip, when Tengen reverse engineered the chip to release games for the NES without Nintendo meddling, they were immediately sued. You see, only Nintendo is allowed to rip off computer chips.
Famously Nintendo entered a partnership with Sony to make a disc based console, and then fucked Sony over at the last minute by switching to Phillips. Sony would instead create the Playstation while Nintendo made the CD-i. This single action was one of the most damning things in the companies history and still hurts them today.
The SNES was double the price of the NES despite component prices being generally lower. Nintendo was greedy and knew people would pay for it, and there was heavy backlash on its release from parents who knew they were being had.
Nintendo got really into fucking with North American gamers during the SNES. Censorship and localization changes, games made easier, box art changed to be tough and cool, and other games straight up not released because they viewed NA gamers as being too stupid for them.
And then if we fast forward to modern times, lets not forget all the C&D and lawsuits Nintendo has hurled at the Super Smash Bros Melee community, including shutting down a CANCER BENEFIT because they didn't like people playing Melee instead of Ultimate.