In Europe Konami didn't use the Ultra brand but the Palcom brand instead. What's strange is that in Europe Castlevania and Castlevania II were published under the Konami label but Castlevania III under the Palcom label.

When I read the title I thought this would be a video about how Konami bypassed the lockout to secretly publish unlicensed games, but I was very wrong! Forming a 2nd company to release more games honestly was a genius move!

I was gaming as a child when the NES was current. Everybody knew, at the time, that Ultra was actually Konami. The pause jingle sound is the same for both "brands". And Konami was the absolute best NES publisher, better than Nintendo. Their games still hold up.

I think Konami had a good relationship with Nintendo and it was all probably a formality so other companies didn't feel like they were the only company getting special treatment. You should have mentioned that in PAL regions the alternative company was called Palcom and they released some games like Parodius and Road Fighter which weren't released in the US as well as Crackout which was a Famicom Disc System game in Japan.

the answer is simple. back then Nintendo would only allow 5 games a year from developers so that they wouldnt be just sole company putting out games

Now I want "DMV Line: The Game"

There's this European company Palcom Software which is quite similar. They operated from 1989 to 1993. Palcom Software had released games on the SNES. Just like Ultra Games, Palcom Software was also created by Konami to allow more than 5 games per year. Acclaim Entertainment created the Flying Edge and Arena Entertainment labels in order to release games on Sega consoles as a loophole to Nintendo's exclusivity deal.

Fun fact: inputting the "Konami Code" on the title screen of TMNT II: The Arcade Game will give you 30 extra lives just like it did for Contra, and LifeForce. But it wouldn't do anything special if used on TMNT or TMNT III: The Manhattan Project

Great video Pojr. Fun Fact: Konami wasn't the only company to do this. Acclaim used LJN. Would love to see a future video about Tengen. Great title could be: How Atari Made The First UNLICENSED Games For The NES.

I’m surprised Nintendo approved Ultra Games as a third party developer. Didn’t anyone at Nintendo noticed the address and phone number of Ultra Games is the same as Konami?!😂

5:59 _"Hot Flash"_ sounds like a menopausal super-villain who really _really_ needs to see the manager

Seeing as Konami had the TMNT license, the expenses for setting up Ultra Games were negligible, they made their money back in spades.

Rollergames didn't have characters exactly, it had teams. I'm not sure the team member ever changes, but it was supposed to represent teams from the show.

What does POJR mean/stand for? Additionally, great work in choice of topics and execution. Cheers!

What Nintendo did back then is illegal today. They basically monopolized the devs with really strict contracts, which is why the other 8 bit competition did do so well (outside of the Gaming computers of the EU which in the UK outsold the Nintendo Entertainment System, as the NES was seen as a "Rich kid's toy" due to the prices.) Imagine if they, Microsoft, Sony did that today.. [Metaphorical] heads would be rolling in the legal battlegrounds.

konami and nintendo were so tight knit by the time the NES released in america im pretty sure nintendo advised them to open up a seperate publishing house shell company.

TMNT receives harsh criticism because it has platforming issues (and literal bugs in the case of the underwater section) that make it much more frustrating and unforgiving to play than it needs to be. Not "angry reviewers".

Back when I was a kid I used to think that Ultra games were just like the "extreme" line of games by Konami, just like how back in the 1990s there were always "extreme" versions of snacks. Or kind of like how Lexus is upgraded Toyota and Genesis is upgraded Hyundai...in my idiotic adolescence I thought that Ultra was like the luxury line of Konami titles.

Dude, you must be researching day and night. Nice work, my man!!

This is funny considering that Nintendo STOLE Donkey Kong and then went to court to remove the rights from the original creator. This was one of Nintendo's first moves in the video game space. Nintendo knew what they were willing to do to other creators to maintain their rights, and I think that's why they are overprotective of their brands and characters.

Konami's excellent port of Gyruss -- which I had as a kid -- was also an Ultra-branded release for North America. An image of the Konami-branded Famicom release is shown in the video.

Fun fact: Konami using the Ultra Games branding as a trademark in the USA not only loophole Nintendo's policy, it also prevent Nintendo from trademarking that name for their 64-Bit console. For those who don't know before the N64 was a thing worldwide, it originally was going to be called the Nintendo Ultra 64 for NA and EU and the Famicom Ultra 64 for Japan but because Nintendo can't use the Ultra name in NA due to Konami's holding a trademark of that they just change it to the vaguely named N64 for all regions.

Hey POJR, I was a kid in the 80s and I remember this pretty well. I could be wrong, but as a kid the perception that I had was that Ultra was like a prestige brand of Konami. You could kind of tell that Ultra and Konami had a relationship, somehow. There were telltale signs in the art direction and in particular the music. It felt to me like Ultra's branding was reserved the the special titles that were extra-good. Games like TMNT, it wasn't that Konami thought that the TMNT brand was powerful enough by itself that it didn't "need" the Konami name behind it in order for it to sell; it was that they were signifying that TMNT was SO special that it was getting published under the Ultra Games label. Think of it like Lexus and Toyota, or Lincoln and Ford. The 5 games/year limit was a real thing, though. But I didn't learn about that until sometime after. I think that came out during the anti-trust lawsuit against Nintendo for their monopoly practices during the NES era.

Are you familiar with the NES Konami game _Laser Invasion_ ? Hidden in the game's code is legal info that reveals that Konami of America was originally going to release the game under their Ultra subsidiary. Anyway, good video. I do wish that you could have went into more detail of the other games developed by Konami but published by Ultra Games like _Metal Gear_ , _Snake's Revenge_ , and _Mission: Impossible_ .

I'm glad Nintendo chilled out after the NES, I mean come on dude you can only make games for our console and that's it. That's messed up

8:24 I think I might know the reason. If I'm not mistaken on the NES itself the game was released by Konami so they changed the name back to Nemesis when they released it under their other company name ultra on the Game Boy to try to make it look more distinct and maybe prevent Nintendo from noticing

It was Nintendo's response to all the shovelware that killed gaming in America during Atari's day. It seems draconian today, but back then there really was a need to ensure quality so consumers in America didn't feel burned again like they did during the video game crash of the 80s

The other theory I've heard for the Ultra Games branding is they're generally games that appeal to American sensibilities already. Metal Gear, Ninja Turtles, Skate or Die, and even stuff like Defender of the Crown and Pirates, whereas games that were core Konami, or a bit 'weirder' to Americans were Konami. But I don't even think that's perfect either.

cool video but you need to put a de-esser on your dialogue track. the sibilance is painful!

Awesome channel Pojr. Subbed

Even tho I already knew this, it still bothers me that I have a copy of Nemesis for gameboy with the Ultra label while my Nemesis 2 copy has the Konami label. I know there is a release of the first game under the Konami label that was released in Germany tho, so I might have to grab it because of my stupid OCD.

Despite Nintendo's rules, they still released games for the 7800!

Charging 40$ for a pair of flip flops from an unknown channel is pretty crazy.

I wonder how Nintendo didn't get wise to this? I mean it's glaringly obvious what they did.

Thank You.

Acclaim pulled a similar trick, releasing additional games under the LJN label. It was slightly different, since LJN was originally a separate company and only became part of Acclaim after an acquisition, but they used it in much the same way, publishing additional titles beyond Nintendo's limits and licensed titles under the label. Those games were generally lower quality than Konami's though.

Entertaining and informative video. 👍 Some of these things I already knew but thanks to this video I know even more.

Legally Konami met the Rules setting up a new company. If Nintendo had sued, they would have to admit unfair contracts and being questioned in court. That something the big N didn’t want to happen

5:10 "But sometimes it gets some hates because of angry reviewers" I understood that reference.

Please, PLEASE, consider a sibilance reduction plugin for your audio mix. The words ending in "S" are very harsh on the listener's ears. Especially true when we are listening through headphones. I don't mean to critique such things, but I really think this change would go a long way to improve the production of your videos. Thanks.

By today's standards, the practices of limiting games the way Nintendo did on the NES seems overly strict and abusive. But given the quality of games on consoles before the NES, it was very much needed. Companies had to bring their best 5 games. Rather than flood the market with cheap games. I would point out that despite the limits, the NES Library was the most extensive of any console, even those that came after. Its not something I would agree with a console company doing today, since the market doesn't require it now. But it was a necessary evil that encouraged video game companies to up their game, if you'll forgive the pun.

1. Nobody who paid any attention was confused about Ultra being Konami. This wasn't a secret. 2. Nintendo was completely fine with this "loophole". They didn't have to license Ultra. The reason why other companies couldn't set up their own Ultra was because Nintendo didn't allow it. 3. Still, companies frequently licensed games to other publishers to release in the US. Galaga was released by Bandai, for example. 4. The decision to release on Ultra or Konami was sometimes based on a franchise, but they also had to consider which label had open slots on which platform.

Nice video composition, and nice distillation of the story of why Nintendo went the way they did with game licensing for the NES. And this is the first time I've heard of the 5 game per year publishing limit, so thanks for that! Also, yeah, Fall Of The Foot Clan was outrageously easy considering how brutal the original TMNT NES game was. Playing Fall Of The Foot Clan feels like playing a modern game on Very Easy mode: You just get into the rhythm and go through the motions and you'll beat it in less than an hour. And maybe that was even intentional: While NES games were meant to keep you engaged for hours and hours on your couch honing your skills, maybe even way back in the late '80s and early '90s, developers felt that pocket games were best enjoyed for shorter bursts on your lunch break or while waiting for a bus or train.

I used to think the 5 games a year rule was a bit harsh on Nintendos side but I now know that coming out of the video game crash of the 80s that they were looking after their product and making sure only quality was being released and not quantity. Konami had to work around it because they were producing hit after hit. Not every publisher can say the same during this time period.

Roller games feels al little slippery in the controls because you're on roller skates.

The whole idea of Ultra was Nintendo's idea. Konami asked for an exception to the 5 games a year cap Nintendo gave their licenses and they said no. However, they said, there's nothing stopping you from obtaining a second license. The whole thing was written about in "Game Over" and there was nothing nefarious about it. Just good business for both companies.

I was not ready for your hair. That's very neat hair! ^^ I did know about Ultra games being Konami but didn't know they were sneaky like that. Interesting stuff.

It makes sense why Nintendo ignored it since the restrictions was to prevent the appearance of a crash through a single visible company flooding the market. Konami and Ultra is perceived as different companies on the surface and that was good enough.

I don't watch much VG content. But when I do, it's POJR! Your content is good, well-edited, and well-narrated.

7:02 also I'm curious are you using ROMs or are you actually using the cartridge itself

You know, I've seen the Ultra Games logo but I never picked up on it before. All the games under that brand I have played, I already knew were Konami so it never even occurred to me that they had been rebranded.

Maybe some of these releases got the Ultra Games monicker because of the limit of 5 games Nintendo imposed. You'll have to see each game release date to see if Nemesis (for exemple) was a late year release, so they had to use a ultra games slot since all other konami-branded titles were already used.

"If you're a developer." Shows a video editor.. LOL! That was great! And very good video...

Bypassing regulations using shell companies: a tale as old as time.

Something to consider for gameboy games is that when you were playing on a real gameboy back in the day, you were limited by battery life, lighting, and whatever situation you were able to play in as a kid. You really needed a game that you could potentially beat on a car ride to grandma's house. And the early games did not have battery backed up save, just passwords which could be annoying. I had both TMNT and Nemesis as a kid and I liked being able to jump into any level without entering a password.

It's worth mentioning that RollerGames, the TV show, was way different from the video game. There was no skating through jungles or jumping over pits, it was just a souped-up roller derby with a figure eight track instead of an oval. There _was_ an alligator pit in the first episode though. Still has theatrics though as the show had a sort of wrestling style kayfabe to it. There was an arcade version of RollerGames that emulated the show's format better. Fitting considering, like any arcade game, it was designed to be played for a few minutes at a time while the NES version was made to be more of an adventure. Considering the show only lasted for one season, it got quite a bit of merchandising. Besides the two games, there was also a pinball table, a CD album containing the theme songs used in the show, a magazine, and action figures!

11:42 yeah I was going to say how can you sue someone for making another company. Unless it's written in the contract that you can't make games for any other company. Then I feel like there is kind of a way around that where you have someone else open up the company then have the developers work both companies

Of all remastered games ever made, the arcade version needs to be done.

I like your content! Consider yourself subscribed and I'm looking forward to more videos in the future 😅 I do have a question though. What music was used in the outro? It sounds like it's from a snes game, but I can't figure it out for the life of me

I'm so excited to have found this channel. Great watch! Subscribed.

The image you used for the 10NES is not the 10NES. You used a picture of the CIC in the Super Nintendo.

we used to get so many games because it was relatively cheap to develop them.. today's business model is not great as these studios think they're making movies instead of games, they forget its about gameplay and not about hiring voice actors and having the latest graphics. Its supposed to be challenging and fun, not just put you on rails so you can move through a storyline. So they spend millions of dollars developing games, and they can't take any risks anymore. Especially the big north american companies.

A female character named Hot Flash in a video game would not be acceptable in 2024. Feminists would accuse Konami of being misogynist and poking fun at a menopause side effect. But back in the late 1980s the world was a different place. Roller Games was one of my favorite NES titles. I used Hot Flash more than the other characters. In fact, there are some stages you cannot complete without her jumping capabilities.

Konami wouldn't be the only company to do that. Acclaim did same when they released some of their NES game under the LJN brand

They probably used that another name because Gradius was pretty firmly established as a Konami series by 1990.

Great to see yet another post! It looks like you’re gaining a pretty good following.

It’s been so long now, I don’t even care why or how they did what they did. I absolutely adored all the TMNT games back then as well as others. Good on them for finding a loophole, otherwise, we’d have missed out on some great games!

Side note: can we take second to appreciate how developers pushed the Gameboy graphics wise? The difference between Super Mario Land and Contra Operation C is night and day.

Nintendo was shrewd with policies, buy these helped gaming make a comeback in the USA, and solidified Nintendo's position as the company synonymous with fun family games.

A reason that 5 game rule was abolished is that by that time, Sega came out with the Genesis/Mega Drive, which became the first real competition that Nintendo had. Sega began getting more aggressive, and had some of their own good games in Sonic and Echo. Something else Sega did was to allow devs to create games with more mature themes and content, something Nintendo wasn't doing and continued to restrict even after they relaxed the 5 game rule. That meant that third parties just could go to Sega and have just as much success as they would have with Nintendo's consoles. Thus, Nintendo seemly had to make sure devs were happy now instead of trying to get a monopoly.

Aren't you the singer for taking back sunday? ✋ .. I kid. 😊

Konami wasn't the only company to do this. Acclaim published games under LJN, a toy company they owned.

Part of Gameboy TMNT's Replay value comes from trying to find the "Mini-Games/Special-Stages" without a Strategy guide or magazine.

I could be wrong but it seems like the only possible answer. The reason why Konami released some “top tier” games under the Ultra brand was to boost quarterly earnings for the company. Konami and Ultra might have been “separate” companies so to help finance their operations, Konami would send a great game to Ultra so that both companies could be financially independent.

TMNT the Arcade Game was one of the best games on the NES. Not a very long game but it was fun to play. I built an arcade stick controller for my NES. Made an already amazing game even better.

5:37 Big brain energy here.

I would have liked to see an animated TV special or novel based on the TMNT The Arcade Game (on NES). It could flesh out the story and might explain why Shredder decided to lure the Turtles in by staging an arson attack on Channel 6, to try to score a media victory against them and having one of his mutants kidnap April O'Neil. PS. I wondered why the TMNT don't have other TV stations in New York to turn to. April is not the only reporter the Turtles can befriend to help them against the Shredder and Dimension X and earn the city's trust.

They made the limit to prevent shovelware. Konami didn't produce garbage, so they didn't mind them circumventing the rules.

Fall of the foot clan was the first Gameboy game I got! I played the crap out of it. Gyruss was one of my favorite NES games.

Good vid my dude, you'll hit 100k by the end of the year for sure.

5:57 the Manhattan Project why do I not remember that game. To be fair though back in the day I don't think I knew what the Manhattan Project was

Can I ask what software you use to make these videos? Do you have a blog or anything talking about it?

What i am more curious about is when did Nintendo decide to change the license and if it was done to generate more sales for the Super Nintendo?

3:32 I wonder if that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is on the Cowabunga collection I think there's like 15 games on there again I could be wrong but there is a lot of old games on there

it's amazing how corporations are largely just an imaginary concept applied to different actions a group of people take.

Thanks for putting in the research! I was always interested in why this was the case and now I know! Awesome! Great work!

Thumbs up to Konami for figuring out how to bypass Nintendo's nonsense policy.. 👍

12:42 kind of crazy if you think about it because Nintendo is very evil. But if both companies are bringing in money why stop it I just didn't know that there was an arcade Ninja Turtles game for the Nintendo I really wish I knew that back when I was a kid

I remember when Konami was starting to get ready to move from Illinois to California and they gave us all a heap of unopened games from the warehouse including a giant stack of whatever Ultra games were wanted. I thought it was Christmas.

Nintendo and its investors were initially weary of releasing a home video game console because of the great video game crash. Home video games were at the time considered a passing fad and the fear of the Nintendo's failure was real. The Atari 2600 had been incredibly successful but Atari's market share seemed to evaporate overnight. The downfall of the Atari 2600 was due to developers flooding the market with cheap low quality games. Many of which were clones of other games but slightly changed. Consumers are only interested in so many different versions of Pacman. Meanwhile competitors to the 2600 like the Coleco Vision and Intellivision diluted the market and made the problem of too many bad games worse. Retailers ended up with shelves flooded with terrible games and after a while people started to return them. Retailers concluded that video games had been a fad and dumped the product range, although in reality it was just due to over saturation. Contrary to popular belief ET for the 2600 wasn't the direct cause of the video game crash, it was just the most egregious example of the problem. This is why the NES was released as the Famicom in Japan. It was intended to double as a Family Computer hence the name Famicom. The idea being that Nintendo could do something else with it if the games didn't sell. By the time they decided to release the NES in North America and Europe they new it was going to be a success and dropped the idea of it doubling as a personal computer. The Seal of Quality and tight licensing rules served to both ensure the Nintendo titles met minimal quality standards and to line Nintendo's pockets with licensing fees. Nintendo knew full well that Konami was using Ultra games to get around their rules, they just didn't care because Konami was consistently releasing good quality titles so releasing more than 5 games a year didn't matter. If they had released licensed games on par with LJN they probably would have had a word with them.

In the US it wasn't hard, in fact due to the case Atari vs Activision and the fallout from it that was a significant factor for the crash In 1983. It left all consoles vulnerable since then. Now Nintendo was smarter in the encryption locks to avoid having the same issue that Atari faced . Which has been a standard for all consoles since including updating the method for the locks. Another thing regarding what consoles did and still do, in getting a game tested it costs thousands of dollars for each test. In fact COD2:BRO almost was scrapped because it almost didn't get past the QA testing for online by Activision. In addition, Nintendo didn't allow a single company to publish 5 games a year. Due to what happened with Atari and the oversaturated market of their games. Nintendo only allowed 5 games each year to be released for the console when it was released. Later that might've increased but initially it was kept down for the console not for each publisher.

Ultra Games was created by Konami to bypass Nintendo's license rule. 13 minutes reduced to however long it takes you to read.

I suspect it's the opposite today of why Nintendo has so much "shovelware" for the Switch.

Then Konami bit Nintendo in the ass and made a trademark claim on the Ultra 64, forcing them to drop the "Ultra". I always thought it was Konami getting the last laugh, but the way you put it, I don't know now. Nintendo turned a blind eye in the past, so maybe the decent thing would have been for Konami to let Nintendo have it. It's not like they were even using it anymore.

Nintendo was hundreds times better than atari. Nintendos policies made their own content better

Konami also produced under PALCOM in Europe, which saw games like Contra (with the name Probotector - and literally being Robocop) being released under Konami for the NES and PALCOM on the GameBoy. So theoretically, if Konami wanted to, they could have released at least 15 games in one year if they really wanted to, because Konami released their five games in both the U.S. and Europe under Konami, but used ULTRA in the U.S. and PALCOM in Europe, where they could have flooded the market.

I remember playing these games as a kid with my friends. .. Best of times. I think they were meant to be impossible, we had so much fun trying to beat them. If you think about it.... it was more fun to lose and keep trying than to just get a participation trophy.

Maybe sometimes they had to throw things under the ultra brand because they ran out of their five game a year allotment for Nintendo and still had plenty of good games they wanted to put out....

Ultra Games in North America, Palcom in Europe. Both were labels from Konami

I hate to be that guy, but I need to say this. I want to watch your videos. They're right up my alley, but you need to seriously nerf sentences that end with 'S'. The loud and drawn out S at the end of sentences triggers the crap out of my misphonia. It's almost like listening to cobra commander narrating a video.