Goodbye Nintendo Seal Of Quality...

[Ack]

Yeah, but who doesn't love seeing Hasselhoff hump a car on stage all night?

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I've yet to meet a person who doesn't so I'll have to agree with you, Ack.

[RadarScope1]

Actually those five screw games are actually Japanese Famicom PCB's placed into an official Famicom to NES adapter which Nintendo used to keep up supply when the NES first launched in the US.

Not all of the old 5 screw games are Famicom carts with adapters. Only first party Nintendo games that they were short of for that first Christmas are that way. Early gold Zelda carts were 5 screw before switching to 3 + tabs and then the later gray cart. There are some transition games too where they were 3 screw cases, but have the dimpled flathead screws as opposed to security ones. Some early third party games were 5 screw as well. Here are some that I have that I know for sure:

Deadly Towers
Gradius
Section Z
Skykid
Sqoon
Stinger
Trojan

But anyway, yeah the original intent was to keep the total garbage off the NES to avoid what happened to Atari and everyone else in the US. They figured if companies could only release 4 games per year, it would help keep shovelware away. Though I guess even that failed, Dragon Spirit is the only Bandai release I've played on NES that wasn't a flaming piece of crap.

Yup. Was going to say this but - beaten!

[pepharytheworm]

I am a little mixed on the sex and violence thing myself. My favorite games dont seem to have much sex or violence in them. Unless you consider jumping on goomba's violent. Then I am a serial killer for all the bugs I have killed of course I wouldnt jump on a turtle but I do love turtle soup. Do they really die when Mario jumps on them, in the cartoon they would just be flattened and walk away.

I dont think censorship by Nintendo ruined games for me as a kid. I just wanted to play. I could careless if there is a naked statue or sexual inuendo. I wouldnt get it anyway so it would just be lost on me so why does it need to be there. It seems like it only bothers adults. As an adult I am bothered now but who here if your mom told you they censored a game and you were 8 years old would really care?

[Limewater]

I can't confirm it, but if so, that's still a bit irrelevant to the point I was making (about shovelware x market power).

My memory of the issue comes from haven read "Game Over" like, six years ago, so I may be misrepresenting. I didn't really fully explain it, either.

Companies that did well, like Konami were allowed to have secondary labels to skirt the game cap. I do not believe that the crappier companies were allowed to. In the case of Konami with Ultra games, it meant they could put out more good games each year. In the case of Acclaim with LJN, they were able to put out a bunch of licensed games that generally weren't very good but still sold well.

This practice, along with the high costs of developing for the NES sort of inhibited shovelware. Though the NES still had its share of stinkers.