The NES Gradiente Phantom System and the fight for access in Brazil's gaming underground
Brazil's fight for the NES Gradiente Phantom System.
For a whole generation of Brazilian kids, the Nintendo Entertainment System was never called that. It was the Phantom System — a console released by Brazilian electronics company Gradiente in 1989. It came in a shell originally designed for the Atari 7800, used a Sega Mega Drive controller, and played both NES and Famicom cartridges. The motherboard was reverse-engineered in-house and didn’t use any of Nintendo’s proprietary chips. It wasn’t licensed. It wasn’t official. But in Brazil, it was the NES.
