 | AVE Quality Unlicensed Games |
In the year of 1990, an american company named Macronix developed and patented a ROM technology. This was good for making Nintendo games and such. Nintendo did not want to use Macronix's ROMs since they were not a japenese company. Richard Frick decided to start a company named American Video Entertainment which used the ROMs from Macronix. He also realized that it would be easy to make unlicensed Nintendo games and that they would not cost as much money.
American Video Entertainment(AVE) didn't produce their own games. They mostly bought the rights from Sachen, an Asia video game market. Two of the first games to be released by AVE were Pyramid & Puzzle. AVE really cared about the quality of their games. They rejected many a game that didn't meet up to their standards.
American Video Entertainment was one of the few companies to have a good reputation with retailers. Apparently, most people didn't complain about their games. Nintendo got upset with the unlicensed game companies, so they started altering the lock out chips on their systems. They would produce afew, and then change the chip ever so slightly on the next 1000 or so. Doing so caused greta problems with AVE. Retailers didn't like selling games that "may or may not" work on your system. AVE did a few things because of this. They first of all included a fill out from in their manuals. If you sent in in they would disable your lock-out chip and they would also give you a $5 savings on your next AVE game. Cool!
The other thing they did was they sued Nintendo for Antitrust. AVE settled this with Nintendo under an order of secrecy, and as a result Nintendo sued AVE. I'm not sure, but I think AVE lost this one too.
Losing two court cases was part of the reason why AVE went out. Another reason was since the SuperNES and Genesis were released, NES sales dropped. With possible incompatibilies retailers also didn't sell AVE games. AVE went out and their protos/games/and everything else of theirs was sold off and stuck in dumpsters. What a shame. Anyways AVE released several games. They are:
Never Released AVE Games Were:
Richard Frick - Founder Phil Mikkelson - Art Fred Hoot - Quality Michael Crick - Dudes With Attitude & Trolls on Treasure Island Martin Gee - Art
