Wanted: Information on Tengen company

[Atari Scorpio]

Looking for any information on the company Tengen. I see alot of prototype and company photos of atari and atari games but nothing on Tengen. Anyone know where I could find such info and pictures?

[Uzumaki]

You're probably not looking in the right place. After Warner Bros sold off Atari at fire sale, Atari was divided into arcade and home divisions. Now arcade games couldn't be made for non Atari branded home consoles but Atari wanted some for (back then) Nintendo NES, so they got around the restriction by creating a new company Tengen to sell arcade ports to home consoles. Tengen made several games fore NES and some for Genesis and a few other but then Tengen closed down.

 

A number of protos that exists are for NES, some magazine ad may even show a few unreleased games like Police Academy, Xybots, and such.

 

Tengen has gotten in hot water a few times with Nintendo. The most famous is probably the Tetris issue. Tengen and Nintendo wanted to get USA rights but Tengen did it wrong by getting the right only from Europe distributor, while Nintendo went all the way to Russia. Since Nintendo got the right direct from the game creator, and European company didn't have any rights to sell outside Europe, Nintendo won and Tengen was forced to recall the games.

 

Tengen also got into tiff over the lockout chip but IIRC court ruled in favor of Tengen because the info was open and anyone could make lockout chip clones.

 

I still think Tengen version of Tetris is better than Nintendo, especially with 2 players support that Nintendo didn't have.

[8th lutz]

Tengen was bought by Time Warner interactive and the Tengen name nolonger existed as a result, but owned the rights to the games. Time Warner Interactive was bought by midway games.

Edited October 29, 2007 by 8th lutz

[Gregory DG]

Time Warner Interactive was bought by Widway games.

Widway? Interesting misspelling.

[+FujiSkunk]

Tengen was bought by Time Warner interactive and the Tengen name nolonger existed as a result, but owned the rights to the games. Time Warner Interactive was bought by midway games.

 

Not entirely accurate.

 

As Uzumaki explained, Atari was split into two companies following the video game crash and resulting fire sale in 1984. The companies were Atari Corp., which retained the home computer and console divisions, and Atari Games, which retained the arcade game division. Shortly afterward, Atari Games decided they also wanted a piece of the home gaming business. However, at least according to the story I've heard, Atari Games and Atari Corp. had a non-compete agreement. So, to get around the non-compete, Atari Games formed a new company to handle home gaming. That company was Tengen.

 

Tengen lasted into the early '90s, making games for everything from the NES to the Genesis, including several home computers. Afterward, Tengen was quietly folded back into Atari Games, at which point the company was bought by Time Warner to become Time Warner Interactve, and later by Midway to become Midway Games West.

 

The Tetris debacle is arguably the most interesting chapter of Tengen's history. I have a write-up on it that I can point to if anyone's interested, just as soon as I fix the web site it's on.

Edited October 29, 2007 by skunkworx

[carmel_andrews]

Re the tetris issue...I remember seeing a bbc2 program about the whole thing

 

Just to point out, nintendo were not involved directly, one of their 'licensees', namely bullet proof software was acting on behalf of nintendo (bullet proof did the gameboy version of tetris)

 

It all goes back to a little british software publisher/distributor called andromeda softare and the bloke that was running it, robert stein...he saw the game whilst visiting eastern europe (hungary if i recall) and met with the programmer Alexey Pazhitnov and wanted to licence the game for play in western europe...they obviously made some sort of deal and andromeda licenced out the rights to Robert Maxwell's 'Mirrorsoft' (the games publishing division of mirror group newspapers)

 

Apparently the story goes that Robert stein only acquired the computer gaming rights (which is why versions were seen on the speecy, c64, amstrad etc) hence the problem regarding Tengen's NES version of tetris...as mirrorsoft sold certain rights (which they didn't have) to atari games and tengen

[riffraff]

Yeah, pretty much what everyone else said. Add the fact that when Midway bought TWI/Atari Games/Tengen they laid off over half of the employees (almost everyone involved with home game development ) and kept most on the coin-op side. That was a fun place to work. Not many jobs these days let you bring your personal coin-ops into your cubicle. It's too bad they made too many games like Rise of the Robots.

[jboypacman]

I hate Rise of the Robots! A dark chapter in robot fighting games indeed.

[rolenta]

What was not mentioned in this post was that a controlling interest in Atari Games was sold to Namco in 1985. In 1986 Namco sold the company to several of its employees. It was this groupthat started Tengen.