Game History- Written Opinion Challenge Era 1986-1994: Legal Cases

There has always been a person who sues other people and go to court. In the video game industry, this really started rising after Nintendo became the powerhouse of the game world. These cases have been over names, ideas, and even theft or graphics and code. A famous case is over a game called Karate Champ and World Karate Championship.

Data East v. Epyx. It was pretty crazy how many elements Epyx actually took from Karate Champ. Back when we first started getting these games, they were small. Few things were in a game compared to modern games. So when the two games were compared, they found 15 similarities between them. It’s like Epyx just took Data East’s game and changed the name. It was even released on the same platform, the Commodore 64! So, what happened? The court when in favor of Epyx. The judge stated, “The only parts of the game the could be protected by a copyright were the areas in which Data East made creative contributions.” Which the only areas was the scoreboard and backgrounds; the two games had very different backgrounds. The decision by the court would impact future decisions by Data East, which would come around with Capcom taking them to court over Street Fighter II and Data East’s Fighter History. Again, similar happening in the games, but this time around, Data East won the case. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs. 368-371)

In a 1989 case, Nintendo was actually in court against all fifty states and as well as Washington D.C. The Tramiels (who founded Commodore and Atari) accused Nintendo of shutting the Atari Corporation out of the market and filed a 500 million dollar suit. They got accused from a number of things, including: price fixing, shutting out competitors, overregulating licensees, and bullying retailers. At the end of it all Nintendo gave out 5 dollar coupons towards their next game cartridge to everybody who bought the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) between the dates if June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990. This resulted in less than 5 million dollars in discounts. They also had to pay the states and Washington D.C 1.75 million dollars for administrative costs and 3 million dollars for other uses.  In October if 1990, Nintendo announced that all of it’s licensees were free to make their own cartridges and put them on other consoles. (The Ultimate History of Video Games, pgs. 389-390)

References:

The Ultimate History of Video Games, Steven L. Kent, 2001