Several companies, refusing to pay the licensing fee or having been rejected by Nintendo, found ways to circumvent the console's authentication system. Most of these companies created circuits that used a voltage spike to temporarily disable the 10NES chip in the NES. A few unlicensed games released in Europe and Australia came in the form of a dongle that would be connected to a licensed game, in order to use the licensed game's 10NES chip for authentication. In order to combat unlicensed games, Nintendo of America threatened retailers who sold them with losing their supply of licensed titles. In addition, multiple revisions were made to the NES PCBs to prevent these games from working.
Why did the companies circumvent the authentication system?
refusing to pay the licensing fee or having been rejected by Nintendo