EotB potential buyer list.

[108 Stars]

Well, the rights are certainly not completely obsolete now, with it being an AD & D game. So Wizards of the Coast would have a saying in it and would certainly demand royalties for it; I have no idea who has the rights to the game itself nowadays though, with SSI and Westwood Studios being out of business.

 

Actually I believe trying to aquire the license would be the death of the idea; it will not be possible for such a limited release.

If this will be done it will have to stay an unofficial release; a thing that goes under the radar because the production run is so small and it is merely freakware. Like Rick Dangerous for Genesis, or all those game reproductions for NES, which are basically ignored because of their small numbers.

[+remowilliams]

Actually I believe trying to aquire the license would be the death of the idea; it will not be possible for such a limited release.

It most certainly would. You will, with a 99.99995% chance never receive rights to do so.

[bojay1997]

Actually I believe trying to aquire the license would be the death of the idea; it will not be possible for such a limited release.

It most certainly would. You will, with a 99.99995% chance never receive rights to do so.

 

You would be surprised. Look at how many amazing titles Carl Forhan released with the blessing of developers including Midway on Total Carnage. It is not that hard to track down rights. In fact, Wizards of the Coast has a dedicated section of their legal department which can help you do things the right way by figuring out who owns what parts of the license for the game today. Releasing this in an unlicensed manner makes the "limited" editions worthless and the regular edition very overpriced, especially since as soon as one of these cartridges gets sold to someone who doesn't care about the "business plan" behind this release, it will be spread on various ROM sites anyway.

[108 Stars]

being unlicened does not reduce the worth at all; it´s still a collectors´piece. The game is not overpriced either for such a low production run; that is just a question of what it is worth to you, the pricing seems realistic..

[EricDeLee]

Actually I believe trying to aquire the license would be the death of the idea; it will not be possible for such a limited release.

It most certainly would. You will, with a 99.99995% chance never receive rights to do so.

 

You would be surprised. Look at how many amazing titles Carl Forhan released with the blessing of developers including Midway on Total Carnage. It is not that hard to track down rights. In fact, Wizards of the Coast has a dedicated section of their legal department which can help you do things the right way by figuring out who owns what parts of the license for the game today. Releasing this in an unlicensed manner makes the "limited" editions worthless and the regular edition very overpriced, especially since as soon as one of these cartridges gets sold to someone who doesn't care about the "business plan" behind this release, it will be spread on various ROM sites anyway.

 

 

Not sure if I like the way this is worded.

Look... flat out, the prices and the idea was to convince someone that there is a market for this game. Obviously there is.

If you don't like the fact that it will be unlicensed... don't buy it.

 

For that matter... don't buy any game that is a reproduction of a prototype. Don't buy the Cabbage Patch Dolls repro for Atari 2600. Nor the Gamma Attack... or any repros for that matter. What about the Centipede proto for the Lynx? Was that officially released by the company and the rights given to someone to remake? (It could have been but I am not sure). I personally think talk like that is BS. The cart may be worthless to you. It really could be. But I can tell you know that it is not worthless to hundreds of Atari Lynx fans.

 

If it was worthless... why would this thread be 5 pages long?

 

A lot of people seem to get their underwear in a bunch during times like this when a game is finally seeing the light of the day. I just called someone out on this crap in the Wii forums. He was talking about Softmodding the Wii is wrong, and no one should burn copies of games and that he would never do that. Yet... in the next sentance stated that he does that with Sega CD games. That is calling the kettle black.

 

I know a ton of repros have been made and should not have been made. If they were to use the logic in your statement. But in my opinion, if you are so offended by it, move along. Others will buy the game, others have been waiting for the game for a long time. That selective logic doesn't make sense to me.

 

I love how this is a 'business plan'

WOW! If only you really knew my true intentions of this game.

 

I'm not one to buy a game and lock it in my closet so no one else can play it. It is called giving back to the community. I can't program games (I haven't coded before... but may sometime in the future)... yet I think I have found a way to give back to the community. I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

 

Oh... and I think Tetris was released as an unlicensed game back in the day for the NES. I think that turned out to be a collector's item at one time.

Edited March 18, 2009 by EricDeLee

[bojay1997]

Actually I believe trying to aquire the license would be the death of the idea; it will not be possible for such a limited release.

It most certainly would. You will, with a 99.99995% chance never receive rights to do so.

 

You would be surprised. Look at how many amazing titles Carl Forhan released with the blessing of developers including Midway on Total Carnage. It is not that hard to track down rights. In fact, Wizards of the Coast has a dedicated section of their legal department which can help you do things the right way by figuring out who owns what parts of the license for the game today. Releasing this in an unlicensed manner makes the "limited" editions worthless and the regular edition very overpriced, especially since as soon as one of these cartridges gets sold to someone who doesn't care about the "business plan" behind this release, it will be spread on various ROM sites anyway.

 

 

Not sure if I like the way this is worded.

Look... flat out, the prices and the idea was to convince someone that there is a market for this game. Obviously there is.

If you don't like the fact that it will be unlicensed... don't buy it.

 

For that matter... don't buy any game that is a reproduction of a prototype. Don't buy the Cabbage Patch Dolls repro for Atari 2600. Nor the Gamma Attack... or any repros for that matter. What about the Centipede proto for the Lynx? Was that officially released by the company and the rights given to someone to remake? (It could have been but I am not sure). I personally think talk like that is BS. The cart may be worthless to you. It really could be. But I can tell you know that it is not worthless to hundreds of Atari Lynx fans.

 

If it was worthless... why would this thread be 5 pages long?

 

A lot of people seem to get their underwear in a bunch during times like this when a game is finally seeing the light of the day. I just called someone out on this crap in the Wii forums. He was talking about Softmodding the Wii is wrong, and no one should burn copies of games and that he would never do that. Yet... in the next sentance stated that he does that with Sega CD games. That is calling the kettle black.

 

I know a ton of repros have been made and should not have been made. If they were to use the logic in your statement. But in my opinion, if you are so offended by it, move along. Others will buy the game, others have been waiting for the game for a long time. That selective logic doesn't make sense to me.

 

I love how this is a 'business plan'

WOW! If only you really knew my true intentions of this game.

 

I'm not one to buy a game and lock it in my closet so no one else can play it. It is called giving back to the community. I can't program games (I haven't coded before... but may sometime in the future)... yet I think I have found a way to give back to the community. I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

 

Oh... and I think Tetris was released as an unlicensed game back in the day for the NES. I think that turned out to be a collector's item at one time.

 

Let me be perfectly clear with you because I think a lot of your posts on this board and others have been amateurish at best and blatantly misleading at worst. You started off quite some time ago now claiming that you were doing a poll to influence someone who had no interest in releasing this game into releasing the game and that your only intention was to get it released to the community. Then, a few days ago you come back and claim that you are somehow about to receive possession of the game, but will either stick to your old distribution plan or create an entirely new one with a time frame of a year until release. Then, you admit on another board that your personal goal is to obtain the prototype for yourself and sell copies under the same proposal you were using to entice this alleged third party into releasing the game. I honestly don't understand or know what your business plan is at this point, because it changes everyday. For all I know, you are making this whole thing up to trick the owner of the proto into dumping it and releasing it. Who knows? I sure don't with all the contradictory things you have posted.

 

Selling something at $100 and $200 which you do not have the legal right to sell is not giving back to the community, it's called exploiting the community and stealing from the developers and license holders. Tengen Tetris was released based on a misunderstanding of a confusing Russian and European licensing agreement. When Tengen figured out and were threatened with litigation over the error, they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to retrieve stock from retailers and destroy them at great financial loss over as much as a million dollars in components. You are not Tengen and this is not a misunderstanding.

 

I recognize that morally and legally, releasing the game for $40 like a number of other retailers on the web have done for Lynx games that are not licensed (such as Centipede) is technically not different, but to me it does make a difference because the person releasing the game is really doing it to get it out there so others can enjoy it and not placing artificial price barriers to ownership or trying to make money off the process. When you charge $100-$200 for something which you have no legal right to sell, you have crossed a line and frankly, I'm not afraid to call you or anyone else out on it.

[+karri]

I would do it similar to Alpine Games. Connect Audio I/O to A17 and add a second start up sequence to the ROM at $020000. So the game can start in both Lynx I and II.

As result you can use A17 to select ROM/RAM and you can use Audio I/O for select read or write from SRAM.

 

I would like to replace it with a SOIC8 64k i2c NVRAM. This takes care of saves without the need of a battery. But of course this also needs to hack the code on the cart a little. And we need to design a new PCB as the pinout is not the same as we had on the old 1024 bit NVRAM.

 

Yes, this solution is OK, but it was planned as batterie game, so we should reproduce as batterie game.

 

Lynxman

 

Your argument for battery is accepted.

 

The ROM is 512k and it needs the full address counter A0-A10 plus block select A12-A19 (I know that A11 is missing in Lynx cart pinout, so it really is A11 - A18).

 

I would not duplicate the bootloader. Instead I would create a small logic circuit that would do something like:

 

power on   Audio I/O  ROM/RAM
 yes		 X		 ROM
		  0->1	  RAM
		  1->0	  ROM

 

This would work with the original game with no changes needed.

 

--

Karri

[matashen]

I only ask about that point(license rights) to know the situation and figure out what to do.

 

By other repros the licence is lost, cause the companys not longer exists. So reproduction is not piracy in that case.

 

But Eye of the Beholder is created by Imagic Design with a license from TRS (they where integrated in WotC later cause Richard Garfield hate some people there and would fire some of the guys).

The license rights of AD%D is by WotC and that is a 100%own by Hasbro since ten years.

 

So i think for more professionakity it would be great to have the bless from them to reproduce that title.

I think WotC and Hasbro are not interested in that license, cause there is no way to make a lot of money with it.

 

Carl if you reading this... can you care about license ? Have you connections where to ask.

 

 

Regards

 

Matthias

[108 Stars]

I´d say a save system that does not require a bettery would be preferable; batteries run out, and you have to remove them after 15 years or so and put in a new one. I would not want to risk damaging the card in the process.

Also I believe the use of the battery back in 1993 was a matter of price; I suppose ROM-chips that could be rewritten were just too expensive back then, but not anymore.

 

About the whole price debate...I am rather new to the Atari-scene, but from what I gather the problem starts with the price of the prototype. Eric has bought it now I understand, and I believe that part of the pricing is for paying for that. After all, unlike all other owners he is willing to share the game with the community while the others kept it locked up and were happy to be the only ones having it.

 

Then, in addition to the material price he says it himself; he cannot recode the save system or anything, design the PCB and just build the cards by himself. And those people who can do it might very well demand payment for their work...work that will be done by hand since no factory will start their machines for 60 cards.

So, I think 100 $ is reasonable; I would say that box and manual would be affordable for 100 $ to come with the game as well though, but even if they won´t, it is still a great opportunity.

 

Last thing is that a ROM-dump would be possible too, that´s correct. But seriously, I doubt anyone would have the nerve to play through an RPG like EotB with handy, upscaled to an ugly pixelated mass, seeing that it is so freakin´easy to play the game on SNES, Sega-CD or even the PC-original.

And really, the majority of the people do not have the skills to build a card with that ROM themselves.

 

I hope the game does get dumped and released as a ROM eventually, if only for screenshot purposes or the same reason most Lynx games are probably downloaded; to try them out before buying the real deal.

 

@Matashen

My worries concerning asking for the license is that by doing so, we might awaken a sleeping dog. Doing so would lead the copyright-holder´s attention right to Eric, and he might get an official "no go" for the repro; that puts him into an even worse situation than just reproducing the game and staying under the radar.

Edited March 18, 2009 by 108 Stars

[EricDeLee]

Let me be perfectly clear with you because I think a lot of your posts on this board and others have been amateurish at best and blatantly misleading at worst. You started off quite some time ago now claiming that you were doing a poll to influence someone who had no interest in releasing this game into releasing the game and that your only intention was to get it released to the community. Then, a few days ago you come back and claim that you are somehow about to receive possession of the game, but will either stick to your old distribution plan or create an entirely new one with a time frame of a year until release. Then, you admit on another board that your personal goal is to obtain the prototype for yourself and sell copies under the same proposal you were using to entice this alleged third party into releasing the game. I honestly don't understand or know what your business plan is at this point, because it changes everyday. For all I know, you are making this whole thing up to trick the owner of the proto into dumping it and releasing it. Who knows? I sure don't with all the contradictory things you have posted.

 

 

I recognize that morally and legally, releasing the game for $40 like a number of other retailers on the web have done for Lynx games that are not licensed (such as Centipede) is technically not different, but to me it does make a difference because the person releasing the game is really doing it to get it out there so others can enjoy it and not placing artificial price barriers to ownership or trying to make money off the process. When you charge $100-$200 for something which you have no legal right to sell, you have crossed a line and frankly, I'm not afraid to call you or anyone else out on it.

 

Wow! so you know everything that has gone on behind the scenes in regards to this whole thread... right?

I have not misleaded anyone, I have not tried to make money off of this deal... nothing. Yet, I will say this: If I wanted to make a small profit for the hard work I've placed into this thus far, then so be it. Isn't that the American way of life? Isn't that how MOST collectors on the forums are? Gamma Attack is one example. Proto found, repros relesed, and the finder of the proto recouped a bit of money back. What's the big deal?

 

Let me tell you this about this whole thread that was started soooo long ago (dare I say it has been less than two months?): I recieved the run around from a collector who had the proto and mentioned that there was no market for the game because it would be too costly to make. I threw those numbers out there to reflect HIS idea of what cost could be. Going off of those costs, I came up with a scenerio for marketing (so-to-speak). And I believe I have shown without a doubt that -- that there is a market for this game.

 

When I got fed up with the constant run around, an insulting sexual email about my WIFE of all things (over a damn game... ) I cut ties from this collector and moved on with a different plan: Actually using someone's advice: just buy the damned proto and work from there. So I did. Now, I've been very civil with that collector... thus far even though the crap he sent me as it was disgusting and completely stupid. So... yes... the plans have changed. In my opinion: Be freaking thankful they changed. You'll be dealing with a much better option soon. Much better that what it was. That's my opinion though. So please don't sit here and preach to me because the plans changed and then sit there and accuse me of trying to sucker someone into releasing his ROM to the world. That ideal is amateurish at best.

 

The statement about selling a Centipede Lynx cart for $40... how it is a better situation? If you think for a moment that the people selling it aren't making a profit, you are dead wrong. Same goes for AvP, and other carts that are sold in a similar fashion. There is no difference. If you are grilling me for what I am doing, you should be grilling them as well.

 

And really... what have I done? I made a thread to show that there are collectors wanting to buy this game.

I threw out generic prices from an unreliable source that claimed it would take that type of money to produce this game, and one that really gave a lot of misleading information.

I got fed up with that guy and decided that owning the cart for myself meant a lot to my collection, thus I decided to buy it outright. It will be in my collection now.

If I leak a rom, if I make carts for a few friends.... who really cares.

 

5 clones were made once before for EOTB... for around the same price tag. Were you upset about that as well?

That is the last I'll speak of this. I will update my lists, and I will give information about the cart or any potential sales. I will not discuss anything to do with silly stuff like this again. You are doing nothing but looking for an arguement without knowing any of the facts. And in that... I take offense to.

[jaguar_fan]

It should be here tomorrow!

Here's a few screen shots

 

 

 

Wow, that really looks like a real game!!

Edited March 18, 2009 by jaguar_fan

[Lynxman]

power on   Audio I/O  ROM/RAM
  yes		 X		 ROM
		   0->1	  RAM
		   1->0	  ROM

 

This would work with the original game with no changes needed.

 

Thinking about one Word: "if"

 

If Audio I/O is used to select ROM/RAM, you are right.

[EricDeLee]

Yay! It is here!

[108 Stars]

Would you mind telling us what the game cost you?

 

Anyway, I am waiting eagerly for any news!

[+karri]

power on   Audio I/O  ROM/RAM
  yes		 X		 ROM
		   0->1	  RAM
		   1->0	  ROM

 

This would work with the original game with no changes needed.

 

Thinking about one Word: "if"

 

If Audio I/O is used to select ROM/RAM, you are right.

 

I had a look at a photo of the EOTB cart and the Audio I/O line is wired to *G pin on the chip which is actually the pin that drives the ROM output. This means that to access the EOTB ROM you need to set Audio I/O low.

 

I know that it is easy to access an ic2 latch using Audio I/O and a few address pins. A latch would allow us to do any kind of bank switching magic. But the EOTB code would not support it.

 

Am I missing something?

--

Karri

[nonner242]

I still have hope!

[Hurricane]

Count me in for the 40 cart run please!

[Lynxman]

power on   Audio I/O  ROM/RAM
yes		 X		 ROM
			0->1	  RAM
			1->0	  ROM

 

This would work with the original game with no changes needed.

 

Thinking about one Word: "if"

 

If Audio I/O is used to select ROM/RAM, you are right.

 

I had a look at a photo of the EOTB cart and the Audio I/O line is wired to *G pin on the chip which is actually the pin that drives the ROM output. This means that to access the EOTB ROM you need to set Audio I/O low.

 

Please send me the Pinout of this interesting Chip. Or there are different EOTB carts which different schematic and we are talking about different issues.

 

For my eyes the Audio I/O go to Pin 1 & 27 of the RAM/EEPROM/whatever-for-save-highscores.

I do not know any RAM/EEPROM which have Chip or output enable at this Pins.

 

SW_CON go to Pin 20 which is usual chip enable. This makes sense for me.

 

Audio I/O is Pin 32 and SW_CON is Pin 27 of Lynx connector

 

Do you agree?

 

I know that it is easy to access an ic2 latch using Audio I/O and a few address pins. A latch would allow us to do any kind of bank switching magic. But the EOTB code would not support it.

 

You are talking about the 93C46? The 93C46 is not I2C, it is a chip with microwire interface. This is a big different.

I never saw a Lynx Cart with I2C chip for saving something. (But OK, i don´t own every game.)

 

Lynxman

[108 Stars]

Eric, stop playing that game, do a few pics and report on your experiences!

[Ninjabba]

Yeah sign me up for that game!!! .. the 40 list tho.. am low on cash in general :S

Edited March 22, 2009 by Ninjabba

[Shawn Jefferson]

I don't think it matters whether or not the reproduction cart has a battery-backed RAM or not, as long as the cartridge functions in roughly the same manner as the original (so minimal code changes are required). There are some good arguments to not including the battery, one of which is that it will easily distinguish this reproduction from the original prototypes and any of the other copies made. It may also help keep the value of the original prototypes (although I think they will retain their value personally.)

[ninermaniac]

If there is any possibility, I would like to be added to the Extreme Limited Edition list. Thanks.....

[ozyr]

I would like to be added to the list (twice if possible).

 

One would be for myself, and one for a friend (who will not sign up for the forum here). He goes by 'sirclisto' if you could add him. I know he would pay the current rough asking price.

 

I would pay that also, for a fully playable and savable EotB game. I've been waiting a long time for this.

 

 

Funny thing is Eric, I know the guy you got the game from (he was just at the Midwest Gaming Classic)! I tried to buy his game from his last year (and he almost sold it to me at the price you paid - except he booked out of the show early and forgot to sell it to me). Small world....

 

 

Hope this can be done!

Edited March 23, 2009 by ozyr

[108 Stars]

O Eric where art thou?

[EricDeLee]

Deep within the bowels of Waterdeep's underworld!!!

 

(sorry... I've beena bit busy with work everyday since I got my game. Even this weekend... I was working until past midnight some nights. I'll update more later...)