Bob’s Game has become quite the spectacle with its 100 day “protest” for a SDK kit from Nintendo and (tongue-in-cheek?) holiday greeting to Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé. On the up side Pelloni has drawn tons of attention to his one man project. However, forcing Nintendo or any publisher to the negotiation table by calling them a “dinosaur” has to have a distinct negative. Like not ever getting the desired development kit.
So what option does Bob have left? Pulling a Tengen Tetris.
When Nintendo restricted NES licenses publishers like Tengen and later Wisdom Tree devised their own NES cartridges that bypassed the NES’ lockout chip. After Super Noah’s Ark 3D unlicensed games at retail stores became a thing of the past. We might see them again if Bob has his way.
Pelloni claims on the Selectbutton forums he was approached by a homebrew cart manufacturer that wants to put Bob’s Game on a microSD card, package it with a DSi ready homebrew cartridge, and sell it in retail stores like Walmart. One way to look at this proposition is Bob’s Game is a Trojan horse which is being used to bring a homebrew cart in retail stores. Another possibility is this is an empty threat to “scare” Nintendo. In either case it would be exciting if a homebrew cart/Bob’s Game combination ever came out in stores. The DS has a large homebrew community and if one homebrew game can get sold with a shifty gray market bundle other homebrew games could too.
Will Bob’s Game democratize DS game distribution in ’09? We’ll see.
Images courtesy of Bob’s Game.
