Jeremy Parish

NES Works #053: The Tengen trio (Patreon)

Published:

2019-09-25 13:00:04

Imported:

2026-06

Tags:

nes nes works tengen

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Sometimes, in the course of creating a chronological survey of old video games, one must inevitably Fudge It. This is one such case: I know at least one of these games shipped in 1987 in the U.S., but despite putting quite a bit of effort into pinning down the particulars, precisely when and how many remains a mystery. I've checked as many online resources as I could stomach, and even attempted to sort things out by poking around old games magazines of the time—not that many existed in the U.S. in 1987. So I decided to just drop these games here and say, "Close enough."

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Gauntlet - Pac-Man - R.B.I. Baseball retrospective: Tengen trio | NES Works #053

We take a side excursion into a nebulous place in NES history: Tengen's licensed trio of games from 1987. Or is it 1988? It's hard to say, because there's no firm record of when these games originally shipped. It's always tough to pin down exact American release dates for NES games, since Nintendo of America only officially cites release months... but what happens when Nintendo refuses to acknowledge the existence of a game altogether for political reasons? That's the conundrum that surrounds the first three games released by Atari spinoff Tengen under license by Nintendo—before they went rogue.