Pirating Platform Studies. The Historical Impact of Latin American Clone Consoles, 1973-1994

Abstract

As a sub-discipline of game studies, the field of platform studies could benefit significantly by destigmatizing piracy and paying more attention to how clones, copies, knockoffs and bootlegs have contributed – and continue to contribute – to video game history and global game culture. Yet to date, myriad so-called clone consoles from Latin America and other regions of the global south have remained conspicuously absent from most scholarship on platform studies and video game history. Platform studies’ overall focus on formal-market development tends to start and end with developers in the global north, while failing to account for how players across the global south have historically accessed games made for the Atari, Nintendo Entertainment System and other platforms. This article focuses on the historical contributions of clone consoles developed in Latin America from the 1970s to the 1990s, showing how they were much more than copies, and in fact laid the groundwork for the eventual development of sustained national game industries. Clone consoles from Latin America also reflect the ways local creators must adapt imported technologies to make them functional for local users, frequently leading to innovations and improvements on the originals. Together, the consoles examined here demonstrate that we cannot fully understand the history of video games or the evolution of global game culture without an appreciation for the contributions of piracy and unlicensed development in bringing game technologies to players across Latin America and the global south.