The Nintendo Seal of Quality
Hoping to avoid the glut of unlicensed products sullying retail shelves like they did during the previous generation of console games, Nintendo has instituted its own seal of quality. It places it on officially licensed games and products that meet the high standards of the company. In other words, if you see something for sale that is compatible with the NES, but doesn’t have this seal, it’s not guaranteed to work and/or hasn’t met Nintendo’s testing standards.
Nintendo’s own words on the subject:
Look for this seal on all software and accessories for your Nintendo Entertainment System. It represents Nintendo’s commitment to bring you only the highest quality products. Items not carrying this seal have not been approved by Nintendo, and are not guaranteed to meet our standards of excellence in workmanship, reliability and most of all, entertainment value.
The NES isn’t even available nationwide yet, so it will probably be quite a long time before any unauthorized products make it to store shelves. That’s assuming the NES is a success. We should know how the test went come Christmas.
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
I hope that this means that they won’t allow low quality games to be released for the system. The Atari 2600 had so many terrible, almost unplayable or downright broken games… yes, I am looking at you, E.T.!
Pac-Man is another offender on the 2600. It’s too early to say, but if the NES is as successful as the 2600 was, then I think we’re bound to get some duds mixed in with the hits. So far I haven’t come across any on the NES that are horribly broken, but some are definitely more fun than others. We will continue to review more games as they come out.