This Day in History: Nintendo Wages War on Pirates

On this day in 1990, Nintendo announced its international campaign against software piracy, filing lawsuits in both the U.S. in Canada to stop the sale of counterfeit games for its Nintendo Entertainment System.

Piracy had always been a thorn in Nintendo's side, and while it had gone after bootlegers in the past, it had never done so with such fury. Not only did Nintendo file a number of lawsuits on this day, it also very clearly announced its intention to further sue anyone else it caught importing, renting or selling the bootleg games.

"What's happening here is an outrageous theft of Nintendo's valuable intellectual property rights," said Nintendo legend Howard Lincoln in a press release.

"Crooks in the Far East have made verbatim copies of legitimate Nintendo video games and have packaged these counterfeits in multiple game cartridges," he continued. "We intend to protect the enormous investment made by this company and its authorized developers in creating popular Nintendo video games. We also want to protect our players for whom the word Nintendo means quality and value. To that end, we plan to sue video rental outlets, retailers, distributors and importers who deal in counterfeit Nintendo software. We will sue counterfeiters and their customers wherever they are located. We have committed and the necessary resources to do so."

The most popular form of counterfeit cartridges were those that housed multiple games, usually from early in the system's life. Super Mario Bros. 3 was also a popular target for bootleggers, as there was a delay of well over one year in-between its introduction in Japan and release in the United States.

"Nintendo is working closely with U.S. Customs inspectors at ports of entry around the country to ban the importation of these counterfeit cartridges and to seize and destroy any incoming shipments," said Lincoln. "We greatly appreciate the assistance and close cooperation Nintendo has received from U.S. Customs."

Days earlier, a Taiwanese couple was famously arrested for immigrating bootleg NES games after a dramatic sting operation orchestrated by Nintendo and the U.S. Customs that involved the hidden cameras, microphones and $10,000 in marked money. But that's Another Day in History.

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I remember the illegal cartridges with 20 to 50 titles, though I never knew where anyore got them from. Once (1995), I borrowed a '40in1' GameBoy cartridge which amazed me at howmany of the crappier titles (none of the Mario games or even Tetris) were on one cartridge.