CIC (Nintendo)

The chip was designed in response to the North American video game crash of 1983, which was partially the result of a lack of both publishing and quality control; the idea was that by forcing third-party developers to have their games go through an approval process, Nintendo could stop shovelware from entering the market.

The electronic chip serves as a digital lock which can be opened by a key in the games,[3][4] designed to restrict the software that could be operated on the system.

[5] The chip was not present for the original Famicom in 1983, leading to a large number of unlicensed cartridges in the Asian market.

Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi said in 1986, "Atari collapsed because they gave too much freedom to third-party developers and the market was swamped with rubbish games.

Some unlicensed companies created circuits that used a voltage spike to shut off the CIC before it can perform the authentication checks.

[4] While Nintendo was the winner of the initial trial, before they could actually enforce the ruling they would need to have the patent hold up under scrutiny, as well as address Tengen's antitrust claims.

Alternatively the aforementioned method of using a licensed game's CIC chip was possible, as it was used in the SNES version of Super Noah’s Ark 3D.