Quattro Nightmare

While we were browsing the enormous game selection at VGXPO's Retrocon, Angela and I stumbled across way too many games that we never heard of from companies we never knew existed. These were mainly NES titles, a system that had plenty of games published by companies that were established and then vanished alarmingly quickly. Upon glancing at all of them, I saw one of them had the name Quattro on it, a name I remembered from my childhood. I just had to do some digging into my closet after remembering that I still had a few cartridges left in my closet.


It was an old Codemasters-developed collection called Quattro Adventure. It was pretty easy to find too, given how the cartridge really stands out. When I was younger, I always wondered why this particular cart (and a few others from Tengen, I believe) was so different from the usual cartridges from most familiar publishers. "Familiar" being, of course, Nintendo games, but that also includes cartridges from third-parties like Capcom and Konami (or Ultra, their pseudonym to bypass Nintendo's stipulation to release only five games a year). What made this one so different? I wouldn't buy the fact that it was merely some limited edition encasing because I'd sure never read about them anywhere in the magazines I currently kept up with (especially Nintendo Power), and the cartridge itself feels pretty cheap and incredibly hollow -- it almost feels as if there's nothing inside. So, what gives?

It's a shame we didn't have the vast space of information and resources known as the internet back in the early 90s, as searching it now will reveal that the game's publisher, Camerica, didn't have an official license to release games for the NES. They bypassed it by releasing their own unique cartridges that could override Nintendo's lock-out chip. The cartridge also includes a switch on the back that allows it to work with either an American or European console. Pretty useful! Well, only if you actually wanted to play the games.


And you probably didn't want to if you were already aware of their inherent mediocrity. The cart, since it's tough to make out in the pictures, includes Boomerang Kid, Super Robin Hood, Treasure Island Dizzy, and Linus Spacehead. That's four games, since "quattro" means "four" in Italian. At the time, I believe I was around the age where I could begin to distinguish a great game from something horrible. Thankfully I'd been through plenty of good games that I could immediately write this off after gluing myself to the television and playing the games for half a weekend. I recall the package being a mere $10, and it wasn't even worth that, honestly.

A collection like this is an older example of the kind of collection that you'd find at a cheap price in a supermarket somewhere that looked appealing to parents. I'm sure I remember finding this one at an Electronics Boutique back in Media, Pennsylvania. Games like this were, and still are, an incredibly easy sell, unfortunate as that may be. Thankfully, these days we have tools like the internet, where its denizens are ready to tell us which games are worth buying and which you shouldn't even take a glance at upon seeing it. If only more consumers used that tool.