By 1984,
Atari, Inc. had been split into two distinct companies.
Atari Corporation was responsible for computer and console games and hardware and owned the rights to the Atari brand for these domains. Atari Games was formed from Atari, Inc.'s
arcade division, and were able to use the Atari name on arcade releases but not on console or computer games. When Atari Games wanted to enter the console game market, it needed to create a new label that did not use the Atari name. The new subsidiary was dubbed
Tengen, which in the Japanese nomenclature of the board game
Go refers to the central point of the board (the word "Atari" comes from the same game). At the time,
Nintendo restricted their licensees to releasing only five games per year, mandated that Nintendo handle
cartridge manufacturing, and required their games to be NES-exclusive for two years. Atari Games tried to negotiate for a less restrictive license to produce games for the
Nintendo Entertainment System; Nintendo refused, so in December 1987, Atari Games agreed to Nintendo's standard licensing terms. Tengen was incorporated on December 21 of that year. In 1988, Tengen released its first and only three games licensed by Nintendo:
R.B.I. Baseball,
Pac-Man, and
Gauntlet. Meanwhile, Tengen secretly worked to bypass Nintendo's
lock-out chip called
10NES that prevented unlicensed NES games from running. While numerous manufacturers managed to override this chip by zapping it with a
voltage spike, Tengen engineers feared this could potentially damage NES consoles and expose them to unnecessary liability, and so they started development on a
chip they called Rabbit. The other problem was that Nintendo made frequent modifications to the NES to prevent this technique from working. Instead, Tengen chose to
reverse engineer the chip and decipher the code required to unlock it. However, the engineers were unable to do so, and the launch date for its first batch of games was rapidly approaching. Tengen announced that it was going to release its own cartridges in December 1988. When Tengen launched the unlicensed versions of its games, Nintendo immediately
sued Tengen for copyright and patent infringement. This began a series of lawsuits between the companies which would not be settled until 1994. Tengen faced another court challenge with Nintendo in 1989 in copyright controversy over the two companies' NES versions of
Tetris. Tengen lost this suit as well, and was forced to recall what was estimated to be hundreds and thousands of unsold cartridges of its version of
Tetris (having sold only about 50,000 copies). Tengen went on to produce games for other systems, including the
Sega Genesis,
Master System,
Game Gear, and
TurboGrafx-16, and a few more, as well as publish a localized
Sega CD title. The company also licensed games for home computers such as the
Amiga and the
Atari ST, most of which were published by British company
Domark. It was best known for its ports of popular Atari arcade games, including
Klax, ''
Hard Drivin', STUN Runner, and Paperboy'', although it published many other titles as well. In 1994, with the lawsuit against Nintendo settled, and after
Time Warner re-acquired a controlling stake in Atari Games, Tengen was consolidated into
Time Warner Interactive.
Revival In 2024,
homebrew developer Jeff Silvers acquired the "Tengen" trademark to launch a new company called Tengen Games. The company's first game was
Zed and Zee, an 8-bit arcade-style action platformer for NES, Famicom, and Windows. ==NES games==