In its quest to avoid shovelware and guarantee a minimum quality bar, Nintendo enforced a particularly aggressive licensing scheme for its NES console, backed by a protection chip called the CIC. As expected, some developers refused to accept the Japanese giant's terms and explored different ways to 'jump over' the CIC. One of the most extreme methods used voltage spikes to disable the protection for a few seconds, effectively attacking the console.
Long story short: In the early 1980s, the video game market in the United States was the Wild West. Anyone could release a game, or alternatively, a console. The consequence? A saturated market, dreadful games, cartridges abandoned in the desert, and public rejection. Fast forward to October 1985, Nintendo launched its "Nintendo Entertainment System", rescuing the US market from absolute darkness... and establishing a set of quite harsh rules.
An Electrifying Solution to Nintendo's Anti-Piracy Chip
MattKC reviews those rules: pre-approval of the game by Nintendo, a minimum purchase of 10,000 cartridges (with Nintendo as the only supplier, obviously), a 24-month exclusivity guarantee on its console, and a maximum of five new releases per year. How did Nintendo enforce these rules? Among other things, with its 10NES system and CIC chips—one in the console and one in each cartridge. For smaller companies, these conditions were a nightmare, but they found a way to escape Nintendo, at least for a while: bombarding the CIC with voltage spikes.
The operation of the NES10/CIC is quite simple: if both chips cannot complete the authentication process, the console resets automatically and tries again. If the CIC is not present in the cartridge, the console gets stuck in a reset loop, preventing startup. However, the US company Color Dreams discovered that by sending the exact voltage pulse (with direct access through the cartridge pins), the CIC could be taken out of commission for a few seconds—enough time for the game to load.
On some cartridges, the message "Starting Machine Please Wait" served to mask that process, while others warned users to wait "up to 9 flashes on the television". Color Dreams' action wasn't illegal, but Nintendo didn't sit idly by—its strategy was to threaten distributors: if they were caught selling unlicensed games, they would lose access to all official titles. Where did Color Dreams end up? Selling religious games in Christian bookstores under the name Wisdom Tree.
