The GameKey was the first NES converter I ever saw back in the days. It was back in 1993, while I was studying at a business college, in Aalborg - Denmark. The NES still was around, though not that common anymore among videogame owners as releases were slowing down because of the SNES and thereby lack of interest in producing NES games. Then a Danish company got the brilliant idea, import and sell cheap American and UK Nintendo Entertainment System carts in Denmark.

But because of Nintendo's brilliant invention, the 10NES, known among players as the lockout chip, people in Europe were not able to play the American carts out of the box, or even UK carts in mainland Europe for that matter. So a few companies, among them Sedimex in Belgium, came up with a gadget which would pass the lockout system by stealing the country data from another European cartridge.

The Gamekey was born and distributed by Horeleg, who didn't specialize in porn accessories eventhough their name sounds like they should. Horeleg also distributed the Game Genie in the UK, well the Gameboy version atleast.

The GameKey was packed with a UK or American game and was sold for 200 Dkr, which is around US$25, and thats how I got some of the nicest games ever released, New Ghostbusters 2, Defender of the Crown (hmmm), Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu as well as the European version of Contra, called Probotector.

Ok, the GameKey does have its compatibility problems with some US carts, like Rolling Thunder by Tengen, but lucky for us europeans, another converter came to life under the name NES-8, but thats a whole other story....