Where the hell is Tengen?

Where the hell is Tengen
By: Father Sqwirl

Tengen. No other word sparks so much conversation and controversy in N.E.S. collecting as it does. Have you ever sat down and wondered what void they disappeared into. I have and I was determined to find out. So my journey began.

I started to scour the net for any info at all on Tengen. The search engines returned nothing except links to NES World and TSR’s site, but I knew the information they had to offer. It wasn’t until looking closely at my site that I found a good lead, so I thought. There it was right on my front page in the gauntlet-esque intro. ©®1985Atari Games !@#!@#. At this point I though, “wow this is going to be a really simple thing to accomplish”. I was wrong. Hasbro gladly returned my email rather promptly with contact information of someone they thought could help me. I proceeded to fax that department because I get faxes for free and it wasn’t a local or 800 call(see bottom of article for fax). About 5 days later I receive a call from someone in that department(Don’t remember his name sadly). He passed on the bad news to me that he would love to answer those questions but Hasbro doesn’t own the rights to the Tengen name, Midway does. I thanked him for taking the time to look at my questions and hung up. It kind of sucked but it set me on another path to fulfill my article.

Now the search began for Midway info. My first move was to look at their site to find some info. First of all I pity anyone who goes to their site to try to get assistance cause there is nothing there. I found an email that was supposedly for company info and I sent the fax document to them. About an hour later I got a mailer daemon returned message saying that email address is no longer valid, Damn. I proceed to look over the site again and came upon a tech support number. I decided to give it a whirl. The first guy I got on the phone with was a complete asshole. He was saying things like I don’t think I’m qualified to answer your questions. Then he mumbled something about going back and asking some of his co-workers if they knew anything. A few minutes later he comes back and tells me I need to speak with a fellow named Andrew but unfortunately he was out of his office. I was forwarded to his voice mail system and left a message and I’m hoping he will call me back because it is 5PM eastern time on the 14th and as you know all articles were supposed to be in by midnight yesterday. As of now I’m sending this off to OSG and if I do hear from the guy by midnight tonight I will forward the revised edition to him. My conclusion right now as to why Tengen kind of disappeared is the people who own them now are assholes. Well I hope you enjoyed this shoddy piece of journalism and look forward to next month where I will hopefully be getting some info out of Kemco. Peace till next time,

Father Sqwirl

---------------------------------------Begin Fax Document to Hasbro------------------------------------

TO: Whomever it may concern
FROM: Erik Closson (powerpadXX@home.com)
DATE: June 5, 2000
SUBJECT: Questions on the Tengen Division of Atari

Hi, I recently contacted Hasbro Customer Support concerning some questions about the Tengen Division of Atari and I got a reply directing me to your department. My customer number is 593787. I’m a writer for a small independent Nintendo Entertainment System newsletter and I’m writing a feature on Tengen for our first issue. I have only a few questions to ask and I would be grateful if you could answer them.

Where is Tengen today? I haven’t been able to dig much of anything up on the net about where Tengen is or has gone since the N.E.S. days. In the case that Tengen is no longer around what led to its departure from the video game market? Or if Tengen is still around what projects have they recently done or are in the process of completing?
Why were the first three officially licensed games (Gauntlet, Pac-Man, and R.B.I. Baseball) re-released in the ever so familiar black unlicensed case?
As I’m sure you know there are a few prototype carts that have leaked out into collector’s hands. Including Airball, Cyberball, Hard Drivin’, License to Kill, Police Academy, and Xybots. Why were these games never released. Do any other prototype carts exist that were either destroyed, Erased, in storage somewhere, or just haven’t found their way into collector’s hands yet?
Tengen’s carts, out of all the unlicensed carts, seem to work amazingly well in the N.E.S. deck where most unlicensed cart designs were rather shoddy. Did a good bit of development time go into making the cart design or was it just luck of the draw that they worked well?
Do you think that Tengen’s history would have been any different if the whole Tetris issue had not arose?

That is all the questions I have. I thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully answer a few of the questions. You can fax me back at (509) 461-XXXX, Telephone at (412)881-XXXX, or E-Mail at powerpadXX@home.com. Once again thanks for you time.

Erik Closson
Writer, PaNESian Press (http://panesianpress.arjika.com)

Contact information changed to prevent some crazy NES kids from harassing me.

---------------------------------------------End Fax Document to Hasbro------------------------------

Go Home