pany, hatched a plan. First, it
tricked the U.S. Patent Office
into giving up the internal specs
of the 10NES chip (Tengen
falsely claimed these specs fell
under a copyright dispute) and
used the stolen plans to make
their own chip copy called the
Rabbit.
Al mo s t si mu lt a ne ou sly, a
second gaming company—called
Color Dreams—discovered
another way to work around
the chip and installed its third-
party games with a circuit that
bypassed the 10NES with an
armed robber’s approach. At the
right moment, Color Dreams’s
chip would jolt the 10NES with
a brief zap of electricity, sneak-
ing past its fried defenses before
the chip could shut the bootleg
game down.The rewired Rabbit chip and
jolting circuits ushered in a
new wave of games that brought
sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll back
into American video games.
Soon there were NES games
with nudity (Peek-A-Boo Poker
and Hot Slots), a lcohol (Mas-
ter Chu and the Drunkard Hu),
and absolutely terrible game
mechanics, like the unfinished
Cheetahmen II and Little Red
Hood.
Today, retro-minded devel-
opers are still using these
workarounds to create new
games for the NES. “Cracking the
10NES [paved the way] so folks
like me could come along and
start making new NES games
again,” says Greg Caldwell, direc-
tor of Retrotainment Games.
Caldwell says he buys cartridgeFIVE NEW
NES TITLES
FILLED
WITH 8-BIT
GAMING
GREATNESS
hardware from a company that
custom-designed its own version
of Tengen’s Rabbit chip.
“I personally like the story
of the voltage spike, brute-force
method,” Caldwell says. But the
circuit-frying solution “isn’t
very elegant or practical today.”
Thirty-five years after the
console’s launch, Caldwell’s
newest mystery/adventure NES
game, Full Quiet, will arrive
later this year. And his studio
isn’t alone.
“The popularity of new NES
games is actually increasing
again. There’s certainly a move-
ment of digging into this retro
hardware, and seeing what you
can squeeze out of these old con-
soles,” Caldwell says. “These old
machines are the fossil record of
where we came from.”HAUNTED:
HALLOWEEN
’86 (2016) “It’s a
beat-’em-up hybrid
filled with kitschy
horror and a combat
system like nothing
you’d have seen on
the NES,” says game
designer Caldwell.
“We have the ben-
efit of another 30+
years of video game
history.”ROLLIE (TBD)
Rollie is a shot of
pure nostalgia. A
woodland-critter
Super Mario Bros.
with a touch of
Metroid movement.
That’s why you’re
dusting off your
NES in the first
place, right?MICRO MAGES
(2019) Grab three
friends and power
up your old NES
Four Score (the
console’s original
4-player adaptor)
for this delightful
dungeon crawler.
It’s a modern spin on
the classic platform-
er genre, filled with
the classic baddies:
goblins, skeletons,
traps, and snakes!DUNGEONS &
DOOMKNIGHTS
(TBD) A little bit
The Legend of
Zelda and a little
bit Castlevania,
this hack, slash,
and spellcasting
single-player game
has plenty of puns
and a giant axe.
What more do you
need?NESCAPE! (2019)
If you’re a fan of
deviously hard
puzzles, here’s the
retro game for
you. NEScape! is
modeled after the
ongoing modern
craze of escape
rooms and uses
your old, retrofitted
Super NES Mouse.CO
UR
TE
SY
CA
LD
WE
LL
(H
AL
LO
WE
EN
);^ C
OU
RT
ES
Y^ R
OL
LIE
;^ C
OU
RT
ES
Y^ M
OR
PH
CA
T^ G
AM
ES
(M
ICR
O);
CO
UR
TE
SY
AR
TIX
EN
TE
RT
AIN
ME
NT
(D
UN
GE
ON
S);
CO
UR
TE
SY
KH
AN
GA
ME
S^ (
NE
SC
AP
E!)
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