page_title: Nintendo Entertainment System
section_title: Hardware clones
hierarchical_section_title: Nintendo Entertainment System / Hardware / Hardware clones
caption_attribution_description: An FC Twin, a clone system made by Yobo. Commonly sold in independent gaming stores, the FC Twin is a hardware emulator that allows you to play original Super Nintendo and NES game cartridges. The FC Twin sells for less than original, second-hand hardware, making it easy for people to get into retro gaming or replace broken consoles. There are a variety of clone systems made by Yobo, usually emulating NES, Super NES and Genesis consoles. This particular console is modeled to look like the revised Super Nintendo and comes with controllers that handle exactly like the Super Nintendo's.
context_page_description: The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. Nintendo first released it in Japan as as the Family Computer, commonly known as the Famicom, in 1983. The NES, a remodelled version, was released internationally in the following years.
  The NES featured a number of groundbreaking games, such as the platform game Super Mario Bros, the action-adventure game The Legend of Zelda and the action game Metroid. As one of the best-selling gaming consoles of its time, the NES helped revitalize the US video game industry following the video game crash of 1983. With the NES, Nintendo introduced a now-standard business model of licensing third-party developers, authorizing them to produce and distribute games for Nintendo's platform. It had been preceded by Nintendo's first home video game console, the Color TV-Game, and was succeeded by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
context_section_description: A thriving market of unlicensed NES hardware clones emerged during the climax of the console's popularity. Initially, such clones were popular in markets where Nintendo issued a legitimate version of the console long time after unlicensed hardware. In particular, the Dendy (Russian: Де́нди), an unlicensed hardware clone produced in Taiwan and sold in the former Soviet Union, emerged as the most popular video game console of its time in that setting and it enjoyed a degree of fame roughly equivalent to that experienced by the NES/Famicom in North America and Japan. A range of Famicom clones was marketed in Argentina during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the name of "Family Game", resembling the original hardware design. The Micro Genius (Simplified Chinese: 小天才) was marketed in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the Famicom; and in Central Europe, especially Poland, the Pegasus was available. Since 1989, there were many Brazilian clones of NES, and the very popular Phantom System (with hardware superior to the original console) caught the attention of Nintendo itself.
  The unlicensed clone market has flourished following Nintendo's discontinuation of the NES. Some of the more exotic of these resulting systems surpass the functionality of the original hardware, such as a portable system with a color LCD (PocketFami). Others have been produced for certain specialized markets, such as a rather primitive personal computer with a keyboard and basic word processing software. These unauthorized clones have been helped by the invention of the so-called NES-on-a-chip.
  As was the case with unlicensed games, Nintendo has typically gone to the courts to prohibit the manufacture and sale of unlicensed cloned hardware. Many of the clone vendors have included built-in copies of licensed Nintendo software, which constitutes copyright infringement in most countries.
  Although most hardware clones were not produced under license by Nintendo, certain companies were granted licenses to produce NES-compatible devices. The Sharp Corporation produced at least two such clones: the Twin Famicom and the SHARP 19SC111 television. The Twin Famicom is compatible with both Famicom cartridges and Famicom Disk System disks. Like the Famicom, it is red and black and has hardwired controllers, but has a different case design. The SHARP 19SC111 television includes a built-in Famicom. A similar licensing deal was reached with Hyundai Electronics, who licensed the system under the name Comboy in the South Korean market. This deal with Hyundai was made necessary because of the South Korean government's wide ban on all Japanese "cultural products", which remained in effect until 1998 and ensured that the only way Japanese products could legally enter the South Korean market was through licensing to a third-party (non-Japanese) distributor (see also Japan–Korea disputes). In India, the system was sold under the name Samurai and assembled locally under license from kits due to policies that banned imports of electronics.
caption: Pirated clones of NES hardware remained in production for many years after the original had been discontinued. Some clones play cartridges from multiple systems, such as this FC Twin that plays NES and SNES games.
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