 | Camerica & Codemasters Partners in Unlicensedness |
In October 1986, two brothers David and Richard Darling founded Codemasters, a software publisher in the UK. David and Richard were creating software for the Spectrum, Amiga, and Commodore 64 computers.
Sometime around 1988 an american company named Camerica surfaced around the Northbrook Illinois area. They prouced a wireless joystick controller, which Nintendo claimed was infringing on their NES Advantage patent. Camerica lost the courtcase and I guess they tried to be more careful with what they produced.
Sometime in the 88-90 time frame, Camerica teams up with Codemasters to publish the Game Genie enhancer in North America. Nintendo sues Camerica over the release of Game Genie...and Nintendo lost the courtcase in Canada. They did stop the release of Game Genie in America by one year though--and the US release was by Galoob and not Camerica. I believe Camerica needed the cash after their last battle so they sold the rights.
Camerica managed to produce a few of these, and they then went under before anything big happened with it. Codemasters managed to produce a few more Aladdin Deck Enhancer units, before they moved on with other projects.
In 1994, Codemasters produced the last official Dizzy game, a sad day for us gamers. Codemasters have now moved onto other games, mostly racing sims and stuff like that. Micro Machines was released on N64 about a year ago or so. This about closes the chapter with Codemasters. They now have an official license from Nintedo but alas they don't produce the good games any more.
Games Codemasters/Camerica released/planned on the Nintendo system:
Around 1992, Camerica showed their newest product to the media. This was the Aladdin Deck Enhancer, which was basically a half cart. There were multiple carts about the size of a Genesis cart which you plugged into the main Aladdin hardware. The two combined formed a Nintendo cart which you would enter into the NES console.
