While shopping at a flea market not too
long ago with a friend we came across a vendor selling a strange
looking NES cartridge (the one in the picture above). Neither of us
had ever seen something that looked like it. The vendor thought it
was worth a lot of money so we decided to look into it. As it turns
out the cartridge was nothing more than a sample Camerica game: The
Ultimate Stuntman. One of only a handful of unlicensed games
published by Camerica.
Back in the late '80s, during the time
of the NES, Nintendo had a pretty onerous publishing license. They
restricted publishers to only 5 titles per year and they had to be
NES exclusive for two years. On top of that it could sometimes be
quite difficult for companies to actually get a hold of the
cartridges for their games because Nintendo had to produce them all.
Some publishers took this as a sign to start releasing unlicensed
games whereby they could produce they're own cartridges and release
them without permission from Nintendo. Camerica, of course, was one
of these publishers.
Built into every NES was a so-called
'lockout chip' preventing games from being played unless a
corresponding chip was present in the cartridge. To get around this
Camerica would send small voltage spikes to the lockout chip,
freezing the chip and allowing their games to be played on an
unmodified NES. Nintendo, not happy about this, sued Camerica
several times but lost in each case and was eventually ordered to pay
Camerica for damages.
Camerica released 15 NES games in total
mostly developed by Codemasters. All of them used Camerica's unique
catridge shape and were painted a shiny gold or silver colour not
unlike the the original Zelda and Zelda II carts. On the backside of
each game was a small switch that allowed the user to play the game
on an NTSC or PAL NES, essentially making them region-free.
During Camerica's brief run they also
produced an arcade style joystick for the NES with a very strange
triangular shape as well as a wireless controller. Their most
popular device though, was the Codemasters-developed Game Genie which
they were able to release in Canada due to their close relationship
with Codemasters. In America though, the Game Genie was sold by the
Galoob toy company.
Near the end of 1992 Camerica released
their final product: the Aladdin Deck Enhancer. It was basically a
cartridge cradle that housed game RAM and the lockout bypass
circuitry. Smaller cartridges would be placed into the cradle and
the whole thing would be placed into the NES. Camerica hoped that by
not having RAM and the bypass circuitry in every cartridge they would
be able to produce cheaper games. However by the time of its release
the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were already out so it never sold
very well. Eventually leading to the closure of Camerica.
Unfortunately for Camerica they were
one of the many companies that never made it out of the NES era. But
it's always interesting to learn something new about early gaming.
Thanks for reading.