History of non-Nintendo Famicom game publishing and manufacturing

[Gentlegamer]

Is there a good source that outlines the history of non-Nintendo publishing and cart manufacturing for the Famicom?

I'm familiar with the famous NES third-party licensing program, but I'd like to learn more about the evolution of the Famicom. I know many games were published and manufactured by non-Nintendo companies, in the context of NES are these considered "unlicensed?" Did Nintendo have arrangement to collect royalty fees for any of these carts?

[ImATrackMan]

For many third party companies, Nintendo manufactured and supplied boards, parts, and judging by the many companies using the "standard" cart shells, cartridges. I don't think there was ever any actual "licencing" besides the standard "Family Computer is a trademark held by Nintendo Co. Ltd." thing. Most of those companies also manufactured their own boards, mapper chips, and mask ROMs, so even though there wasn't any real "licencing" these companies still paid Nintendo for the cost of parts and manufacturing to some extent.

[Gentlegamer]

Thanks for the reply, that dovetails with other sources I've seen.

[Great Hierophant]

Konami, Jaleco, Taito, Sunsoft, Namcot, Bandai, Irem and Seta were the first third party publishers whom Nintendo allowed to make games for its system.  They obtained the right to manufacture their own cartridges, so they use their own cartridge shells, PCBs and hardware chips.  Except for Namcot and Bandai, sometimes these companies would use Nintendo's boards and cartridge shells.  However, they all have the official Nintendo Katakana name and typeset design for Family Computer,  ファミリーコンピュータ, somewhere on their front, top or back cartridge labels.

Everybody else who followed were limited by Nintendo to Nintendo's own boards and cartridge shell designs.  For the NES, every official licensee used Nintendo's cartridge design and labels and virtually always used Nintendo's boards and chips.  Occasionally, favored companies like Konami, Acclaim, Sunsoft and Virgin Games were allowed to make their own boards and Sunsoft and Namco chips were used in a few NES carts.