MILPITAS, Calif. -- Tengen Inc. announced Monday it has started manufacturing and selling its own Nintendo-compatible video game cartridges, starting with Pac-Man, Gauntlet and RBI Baseball.
The new U.S.-manufactured cartridges will be available at retail outlets immediately, Tengen said.
The new cartridges were developed because of Nintendo's inability to keep up with the huge demand for its video games, Tengen said.
'In the past, Nintendo was the only manufacturer of NES game cartidges,' Randy Broweleit, Tengen senior vice president of operations, said. 'The only way to market games for the NES format was to have Nintendo produce them. As a result, Nintendo had total control over the supply.'
Broweleit said 'both retailers and consumers became frustrated by the unavailability of some of our most popular titles.
The Tengen-produced cartridges will be the first independently made for use in the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Tengen will introduce four new titles at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 7: NES compatible versions of Atari Games arcade hits Super Sprint, Rolling Thunder and Vindicators; and Tetris, a game developed in the Soviet Union.
Tengen Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Atari Games Corp., said it will also enter the home computer game market this winter by introducing RBI Baseball, Blasteroids, Road Blasters and Rolling Thunder for use in all popular formats, including IBM, Apple and Commodore.
