CIC (Nintendo)#10NES

The 10NES system is a lock-out systemU.S. Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit. "[http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1015.htm Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc.]." Digital Law Online. Accessed on April 19, 2006. designed for the North American and European versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game console. The electronic chip serves as a digital lock which can be opened by a key in the games,{{Cite patent|country=US|number=5004232|title=Computer game cartridge security circuit|status=patent|assign1=Macronix, Inc.|inventor1-last=Wong|inventor1-first=John J.|inventor2-last=Lui|inventor2-first=Paul S.}}Patent Arcade "[http://www.patentarcade.com/2005/08/case-atari-v-nintendo-nd-cal-1993-cp.html Case: Atari v. Nintendo (N.D. Cal. 1993) [C,P] Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. 30 U.S.P.Q.2d 1401 (N.D. Cal. 1993) (Atari II)]." Accessed on July 12, 2006 designed to restrict the software that could be operated on the system.{{Cite patent|country=US|number=4799635|title=System for determining authenticity of an external memory used in an information processing apparatus|status=patent|assign1=Nintendo Co., Ltd.|inventor1-last=Nakagawa|inventor1-first=Katsuya}}

The chip was not present for the original Famicom in 1983, leading to a large number of unlicensed cartridges in the Asian market.{{cite news |last=Ramirez |first=Anthony |date=December 21, 1989 |title=The Games Played For Nintendo's Sales |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/21/business/the-games-played-for-nintendo-s-sales.html?pagewanted=all |access-date=March 31, 2022}} They were, however, added for international variants as a response to the 1983 video game crash in North America,{{cite journal |last=O'Donnell |first=Casey |date=2011 |title=The Nintendo Entertainment System and the 10NES Chip: Carving the Video Game Industry in Silicon |journal=Games and Culture |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=83–100 |doi=10.1177/1555412010377319 |s2cid=53358125}} partially caused by an oversaturated market of console games due to lack of publishing control. 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."{{cite news|last=Takiff|first=Jonathan|title=Video Games Gain In Japan, Are Due For Assault On U.S.|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=QBhcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MlUNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2846,1271636|accessdate=10 April 2012|newspaper=The Vindicator|date=June 20, 1986|page=2}} By requiring the presence of the 10NES in a game cartridge, Nintendo prevented third-party developers from producing games without Nintendo's approval, and provided the company with licensing fees, a practice it had already established earlier with Famicom games.

The system consists of two parts: a Sharp 4-bit SM590{{cite web |url=http://hackmii.com/2010/01/the-weird-and-wonderful-cic/ |title=The weird and wonderful CIC |last=Segher |date=January 17, 2010 |website=Hackmii |access-date=May 18, 2010}}{{cite book |url=http://bitsavers.org/components/sharp/_dataBooks/1990_Sharp_Microcomputers_Data_Book.pdf |title=Sharp Microcomputers Data Book |date=September 1990 |pages=26–34 |access-date=May 8, 2017}} microcontroller in the console (the "lock") that checks the inserted cartridge for authentication, and a matching chip in the game cartridge (the "key") that gives the code upon demand. If the cartridge does not successfully provide the authentication, then the CIC repeatedly resets the CPU at a frequency of 1 Hz.{{cite web |url=https://wiki.nesdev.org/w/index.php/CIC_lockout_chip |title=CIC lockout chip |website=nesdev.org}} This causes the television and power LED to blink at the same 1 Hz rate and prevents the game from being playable.

The program used in the NES CIC is called 10NES and was patented under {{US patent|4799635}}. The source code is copyrighted; only Nintendo can produce the authorization chips. The patent covering the 10NES expired on January 24, 2006, although the copyright is still in effect for exact clones.

{{See also|Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of America Inc.}}

Some unlicensed companies created circuits that used a voltage spike to shut off the CIC before it can perform the authentication checks.{{Cite web |title=Color Dreams Lockout Chip Stunner |url=https://www.romhacking.net/documents/552/ |access-date=March 31, 2022 |website=Romhacking.net}}{{cite book |last=Sheff |first=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_N5FzzD3hsC |title=Game Over |publisher=Random House |year=1993 |isbn=0-679-40469-4 |location=New York |author-link=David Sheff |access-date=March 31, 2022}}{{rp|286}}

A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia (such as HES games) came in the form of a dongle that would be connected to a licensed cartridge, in order to use that cartridge's CIC lockout chip for authentication.{{Cite web |last=Nielsen |first=Martin |date=February 3, 2006 |title=Home Entertainment Suppliers |url=http://www.nesworld.com/hes.php |access-date=March 31, 2022 |website=NES World}} This method also worked on the SNES and was utilized by Super Noah's Ark 3D.{{Cite web |last=Matulef |first=Jeffrey |date=January 14, 2014 |title=Unlicensed SNES game Super 3D Noah's Ark to be reprinted |url=https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-unlicensed-snes-game-super-3d-noahs-ark-to-be-reprinted |access-date=September 8, 2021 |website=Eurogamer}}

Tengen (Atari Games's NES games subsidiary) took a different tactic: the corporation obtained a description of the code in the lockout chip from the United States Copyright Office by claiming that it was required to defend against present infringement claims in a legal case.{{cite journal | last= Linhoff | first= Joe | title = Video Games and Reverse Engineering: Before and After the Digital Millennium Copyright Act | journal = Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law | volume = 3 | date = 2004 | pages = 209–237 }} Tengen then used these documents to design their Rabbit chip, which duplicated the function of the 10NES. Nintendo sued Tengen for these actions. The court found that Tengen did not violate the copyright for copying the portion of code necessary to defeat the protection with current NES consoles, but did violate the copyright for copying portions of the code not being used in the communication between the chip and console. Tengen had copied this code in its entirety because future console releases could have been engineered to pick up the discrepancy. On the initial claim, the court sided with Nintendo on the issue of patent infringement, but noted that Nintendo's patent would likely be deemed obvious as it was basically {{US patent|4736419}} with the addition of a reset pin, which was at the time already commonplace in the world of electronics. An eight-person jury later found that Atari did infringe. 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. Before this occurred, the sides settled.

A small company called RetroZone, the first company to publish games on the NES in over a decade, uses a multi-region lockout chip for NTSC, PAL A, and PAL B called the Ciclone which was created by reverse engineering Tengen's Rabbit chip. It will allow games to be played in more than one region. It is intended to make the games playable on older hardware that uses the 10NES lockout chip and the two other regions, although the top-loading NES does not use a lockout chip. The Ciclone chip is the first lockout chip to be developed after the patent for the 10NES had expired.{{Cite book |last1=Swalwell |first1=Melanie |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9CIlDwAAQBAJ&q=RetroZone%2520ciclone&pg=PA120 |title=Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandom, Archives |last2=Ndalianis |first2=Angela |last3=Stuckey |first3=Helen |date=2017-03-03 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-317-19191-9 |language=en}} Since then, there have been a few other open source implementations to allow the general public to reproduce multi-region CICs on AVR microcontrollers.{{Cite web |title=Adding lock-out chip to a Famicom to NES adapter (import adapter mod) |url=http://www.dbwbp.com/index.php/repair/4-adding-cic-to-famicom-to-nes-adapter-import-adapter-mod |access-date=2022-04-01 |website=www.dbwbp.com |language=en-gb}}

Because the 10NES in the model NES-001 occasionally fails to authenticate legal cartridges, a common modification is to disable the chip entirely by cutting pin 4 on the NES-001's internal 10NES lockout chip.{{Cite book |last1=Grand |first1=Joe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h_yJNav8tuMC&q=nes%2520lockout%2520pin%25204&pg=PA315 |title=Game Console Hacking: Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Game Boy, Atari and Sega |last2=Yarusso |first2=Albert |date=2004-11-12 |publisher=Elsevier |isbn=978-0-08-053231-8 |language=en}}

Towards the end of the SNES lifespan, the CIC was cloned and used in pirate games. 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.

Image:CIC F411A 01.jpg|CIC chip on SFC mainboard
(F411)

Image:D411 01.jpg|CIC chip on SFC cartridge
(D411)

• Regional lockout
• Lockout chip
• Trusted Platform Module

{{reflist|30em}}

{{More footnotes|date=October 2008}}

• Kevin Horton. "[http://www.kevtris.org/mappers/lockout/ The Infamous Lockout Chip]." Accessed on August 22, 2010.
• "[http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/el/el.html Ed Logg (Atari) interview]" discussing Tengen lock chip
• [http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=37 Ciclone lockout chip] Information from [http://www.retrousb.com/ RetroZone]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20081011094628/http://home.freeuk.net/markk/Consoles/NES_Lockout.txt Disabling the NES "Lockout Chip] ( 2009-04-29) (rev. 0.5 26-Dec-97)
• [https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9797 Source code to compatible key]

{{Nintendo Entertainment System}}

{{Nintendo hardware|NES}}

Category:Hardware restrictions

Category:Nintendo chips

Category:Nintendo Entertainment System