NES Works 147: After Burner
Added 2025-06-25 12:01:19 +0000 UTCSega? On my Nintendo?! It's more likely than you think.
Yes, long before Sega became a third-party publisher for GameCube, the company put a few of its hottest arcade titles on NES. Well, Sega didn't. Mostly it was Sunsoft, via Tengen. And since Tengen was involved, you probably only saw these adaptations at mom-and-pop retail and local, non-chain rental shops, like the dusty VHS rental section of your regular grocery store.
Nevertheless, we're talking 8-bit Sega games, and these Tengen releases were generally pretty strong! Even if you had to hunt them down actively to avoid Nintendo's legal ninjas. And given the stiff competition in store for Nintendo via the Genesis, these Tengen titles became more interesting in hindsight...
Comments
Every time I make that mistake, I think, "Oh, I need to get it right next time." And every next time I get it muddled again. I don't know what's wrong with me. Pathetic.
Jeremy Parish
2025-06-25 18:26:54 +0000 UTCSomething I was wondering about. It seems to be a recurring thing when Tengen comes up in the videos; you always seem to say that they were a label used by Atari Corp. to publish on rival hardware, but most sources claim it was a brand used by Atari Games for their home division; presumably to get around potential trademark disputes; and the newspaper clipping around the two minute mark does say that Games is the one embroiled in the lawsuit.
Niall Somerville
2025-06-25 18:15:01 +0000 UTCGreat observations on Sunsoft's console-specific strategy as well as the more arcade-centric Tengen carts that appeared at the non-chain rental shops. I remember seeing Tengen's carts but not renting them, as I didn't want to "waste" my rental on a looping, score-chasing arcade game. The follies of youth.
Marcus Trapp
2025-06-25 14:38:13 +0000 UTC
