Does the name mean anything to you? Ultra Games? It’s probably between little and nothing if you were born after 1992, and if you were born in Japan or European territory even less. However, those initials were transcendental in carrying out a brilliant plan to break one of the biggest limitations of a Nintendo that had conquered more than half of the video game market and that dictated the new rules of the industry. A masterstroke, free of penalties and perpetrated by the best Konami.
Let’s put it into context just a little: in the first half of the 80s, the video game industry in the United States was hanging by a very thin thread. In Europe we were experiencing a creative fever thanks to microcomputers and in Japan the Famicom, Nintendo’s original 8-bit console, was sweeping the board. That success of the Big N was supported by both its own titles and the best of titans such as Enix, Bandai or Konami, among others, and which, to a significant extent, had gradually adapted to the tastes and interests of Japanese gamers.
After the international success of Donkey Kong and the Game & Watch, Nintendo took the step and adapted its home console to the West. First in the United States and later in Europe and PAL territory. However, even in those cases it had to be extremely cautious in American territory: it took note of the failures of Atari and other systems and went extremely protectionist both with its technology and with its licenses to ensure the quality and satisfaction of its players. In fact, Nintendo was much more protectionist than it is now.
The success of the NES beyond the gold seal: quality, fun and exclusivity
If as a company you wanted to publish your games for the NES (through legal channels) you had to pass a series of filters on the part of Nintendo: in addition to passing certain quality standards – which were tested in the offices of the Big N – which were rewarded with the famous gold seal, other reasonable criteria also had to be met, such as localizing the content, starting with the language, and even accommodating the difficulty.
The origin of this is simple: they wanted to avoid the rapid devaluation of the Atari brand by unwaveringly associating concepts like quality, fun and exclusivity the Nintendo logo, both through its console and its games. Including games produced by third parties.
This initiative also applied to first-party games, mind you: Nintendo pulled a mind-blowing stunt to get a sequel to Super Mario Bros. and several changes had to be made to the first The Legend of Zelda games, but it also had to be selective when studying what and when the Japanese blockbusters were released in order to have more than reasonable control of the calendar. In the case of third parties such as Namco, Capcom or Konami, there was also an additional restriction.
To avoid market saturation, Nintendo not only controlled the number of cartridges (or Game Paks) produced and distributed, but also introduced a limit that today we would consider unreasonable: in addition to passing quality controls, external companies They could only release a maximum of five games on the NES each year.
In other words, beyond limiting the growth potential of each studio or publisher, if Konami had released ten successful games in Japan that year, which it was, it would have to be very selective in choosing those that it believed would do best in the United States. But, as they say, once the law is made, the trap was set.
Ultra Games, or how Solid Snake sneaked onto the NES despite Nintendo’s restrictions
As we mentioned, Nintendo limited the number of titles that third parties could release on the NES to just five games. Not one more. However, not even the Big N can limit the number of third parties that exist, so Konami took a crazy, but brilliant initiative: created the company Ultra Games that, for practical purposes, it was a interposed company (commonly called a “shell company”) with which he was able to release more games than Nintendo allowed. And what games!
The first game to arrive on NES from Ultra Games was none other than the first Metal Gear, whose cover, title and format were exactly the same as the PAL version, although in the process the silver finishes of the boxes were lost and, logically, the Konami logo was replaced by a more generic one. Snake himself had managed to infiltrate on the Nintendo console in an impeccable manner. And that was just the start.
At first Metal Gear It was followed by the localized version of Contra which in the US was called Operation C (in PAL we knew it as Probotector) and in a staggered manner titles were published such as the original sequel to Metal Gear call Snake’s Revenge And coinciding with the phenomenon, the first Ninja Turtles games were released on the American NES and Game Boys. Needless to say, they were a huge success. So, did Nintendo think it was just another company? Konami’s move was no secret.
Press release on Konami letterhead to promote Ultra Games’ first Ninja Turtles game
Although Konami games were published without restrictions in Japan, Ultra Games served to diversify and double the number of annual launches specifically in the United States. The price to pay is the establishment of the brand itself, of course, but it must be taken into account that Konami at that time was not left behind with great games like Castlevania, the sports saga Track ‘n Field o GradiusAs Caesar or Napoleon said, divide and conquer.
And what was happening in PAL territory? Things are a little more complicated, given that in Europe video games tended to arrive with even more time than in the United States and in addition to a localization problem of its own, there were other logistical barriers to overcome. However, Konami also made a similar move by creating Palcom Software Limitedalthough it released almost all of its essential games under its own logo. In fact, Palcom lasted longer as a company than Ultra Games.
Why did Ultra Games disappear?
Beyond Metal Gear or the first games of Ninja Turtlesunder the Ultra Games logo, Konami itself launched titles in the United States such as Skate or Die!, the video game commemorating the 25th anniversary of Star Trekthe adaptation of the series Mission: Impossible and a good part of its sports catalogue like the late one Ultra Golfhis proposal for Ice Hockey Blades of Steel or the futuristic baseball of Base WarsIn other words, for an entire generation of gamers, Ultra Games was not just a shell company, but one that established its own legacy.
However, and this is important, despite being a subsidiary whose reason for being was to bypass the restrictions of NES and Game Boy, it also published the first games on other systems. Metal Gear and the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles both on DOS and on Commodore 64. Among other reasons, because the licenses were associated with its logo. And that was the case until the Beast’s Brain arrived in the West.
Ultra Games had plenty of reasons to exist in the late 80s and early 90s, but the gaming landscape took an interesting turn with the definitive consolidation of video games as a modern entertainment industry. In fact, Mega Drive and Turbografx 16 began to claim an ever-larger slice of the pie that until then had been mostly enjoyed by Nintendo, so it was time to continue promoting its three values, but to be less restrictive with Third Parties.
Taking advantage of the launch of the SNES, and seeing that it would not have any kind of backward compatibility with the NES and would have no less than three consoles on the market (including the Game Boy), the Big N decided to rethink the idea that publishers and developers only released five games per console each year. That no longer made sense and, by extension, the existence of Ultra Games as an intermediary company neither.
In fact, Ultra Games never published for Nintendo’s 16-bit and in the process, Konami began developing for a less restrictive SEGA several great games from its most celebrated series tailor-made for the Mega Drive, including Castlevania: The New Generation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist and even a highly celebrated Sunset Riders that came before its SNES equivalent.
Logically, Ultra Games could not be closed from one day to the next. Before all those Mega Drive releases, in March 1992, the last two Ultra Games games for Game Boy were released: the aforementioned Ultra Golf y World Circuit Seriesthe Formula 1 game that in Europe we would know as The Spirit of F-1. Palcom, Konami’s PAL bet, lasted longer releasing games until the end of 1993 and even reaching SNES with Pop’n TwinBee and the Nintendo version of Sunset Riders.
Was the jump from Ultra Games to Konami worth it? In the summer of 1992, the Ninja Turtles would sweep the SNES with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, displaying the brand new Konami logo on the box and screens, being one of the most commercially successful games of the company worldwide. In fact, the Konami logo was already present on that console with its brand new Super Castlevania IV. And we will not deny it, that now there was no limit of games not only benefited Konami, but to all the players of the time.
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