NovaXpress

Here's a mind twister: The word Ewok was NEVER used in Return of the Jedi. The only reason we know that word is because of the toys.

Companies like Marvel and DC don't fool around with penny-ante deals like 2600 homebrew cartriges. These people are in it for the millions. The profits from the game wouldn't even cover their attorney fees. If anyone wants to actually make a comic game, perhaps one of the independent publishers would allow a tie-in. They'll take any publicity they can get. I swear most people never read the posts. We established long ago in this thread that Warner ultimately controls the Batman character. No one else. 20th Century Fox owns any images and stories from their Desilu-produced TV series. Adam West owns the rights to Adam West. Actors typically sign away the use of their image to the studios, so Fox would likey own any pictures of West in character. Come to think of it, an Adam West game would be appealingly weird. Maybe a hack of Tax Avoiders in which he seeks out residual checks and appearance fees for auto shows.

That's absolutely wrong. Lucas received all merchandising rights in exchange for giving up his director's salary. This has never been done since because Fox lost a bundle.

Lucas sold the toy rights to General Mills. Look at EVERY old school Star wars toy and you will see their name, or an affiliates' name. That's no doubt. What i can't be sure of is whether video games were indeed covered by this deal. If Fox had kept the rights, Lucas wouldnt have made millions off the General Mills deal.

Man, there are some Photoshop magicians around here! I think we're gonna actually need an Atari Special Edition cart in the Superman style next.

The story I heard at the time: Before Star wars was released, Lucas sold exclusive toy rights to the General Mills corporation. GM quickly released figures through their Kenner division, board games through their Parker Bros division, and weird paper spaceships that travelled down a string included in Lucky Charms cereal. Due to this contract, Lucas was unable to sell video game rights as he wished to do. When Parker went into the video gaming business, the licnese could finally be used. This is why it took so long to see an official Star Wars game. Atari licensed the arcade rights from General Mills, with Parker getting home rights as part of the deal. You can bet it just killed 20th Century Fox to have lost out on this deal. At least they still had Megaforce! So is this the true story? Any other details to this?

Why would Parker Bros make a Spidey game? Parker was fanatical about attaching their games to existing brand names. I believe that Monetzuma's Revenge was the only original title in their history. So Parker needs some titles to launch their label. They were the only video game company legally able to license Star Wars so that was a gift from the gods, they wanted some hit arcade games so they went with Frogger and Sky Skipper (good call with that last one). Since the video game warket was almost exclusively made up of teenaged boys at the time, publishers looked for other products with teen male appeal to attach to their games, such as action figures (GI Joe) and rock bands (Journey Escape - another good call). Comic books were a natural, but since Warner owned the DC characters, all that was left was Marvel. Yes, there were essentially only two superhero comic publishers in the world at the time. Marvel's most popular titles were Spiderman and the Hulk, so why not buy the rights? Hulk was supposedly not fit for releases, I suspect we'll find out the truth on that title soon enough.

Cloak And Dagger

Batman would most definitely NOT have appeared on 20th Century Fox's label. Why? Because Batman is a DC Comics character just like Superman. DC Comics was (is???) owned by Warner Communications who also owned . . . So Batman would have been easy for Atari to liscense and produce. Was Superman not a good seller? I was hoping for a Batman cart as soon as I picked up Superman in the old days. I always preferred the caped crusader.

I remember a controller similar to the Fairchild's made for the 2600, it had a "half-speed" feature which, when the button was pressed, would send quick left-right signals to the controller. So your Pitfall Harry would indeed move slowly (if one pressed the joystick right, the signal would be interrupted by brief contrary signals). Just picture what this feature did for Decathlon!!! Many of the magazine of the day mentioned this joystick as the key to raising scores without breaking joysticks.

Hasn't anyone seen a girl hold that vibrating controller a little TOO close to her lap?

Forget about Mario, I want to see that damn lauging dog from Duck Hunt apprehended. Don't bother with the guns, he can't be shot. I've tried so many times . . .

During the late 80s a friend of mine ordered 5200 games by mail order, this was the first time I saw Choplifter. We know that INTV sold Intellivision games by mail order after the crash, manufacturing new PacMan carts to keep up with demand. perhaps such a company continued to produce 5200 carts as needed. I so wish i still had one of those catalogs.

My father worked at Sears, so due to the 15% discount every 2600 cart I had was Tele-Games, until the proprietary labeling ended with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the silver boxes. Sears also began selling Activison titles at this time. Up to this point, all products sold at Sears had to be self-labeled, no matter who the real manufacturer was. RCA made the Sears televisions for example. I still have my first 2600, the first display model at the local store.

These are the sort of questions one ponders after a long winter in Nebraska. I'm more Jungian myself

Peope do have automatic psychological reponses to symbolism. It is not a stretch to see such elements in games as well as our daily lives. Look at advertising campaigns and marketing gimmicks. Read some Psych 101. For those of us who like to ponder the twisted history of video games I propose this: Pong was innocuous and therefore popular but not as big as Space Invaders, which brought in elements of male sexuality. Pac Man became even more popular by playing on female sexuality (as well as eating). Games of this era were simple enough to be easily analyzed. Once can say that GTA has the same male appeal as Space Invaders, just hidden under layers of complexity. And I think that Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em is nowhere near as disgusting as DIG DUG! That weird blue moleman with the 5-foot long schlong, pumping subterranean creatures full of spunk until they explode. That is truly sick.

I remember an old issue of Video Games (an Electronic Games competitor aimed at adults and run by Punk! and High Times publisher John Holmstrom) in which ith following was argued: Pac Man was the first game to appeal to women because of the play mechanic. "Boy games" such as Space Invaders and Defender centered around a player represented as a phallus, destroying creatures by penetrating them with their phallic emissions. However Pac man engulfed his opponents, echoing female sexuality. Interesting theory. Many boys such as myself liked Pac Man also, I guess that a good game is a good game. I do see some plausibility in this theory. Discussion?

OK, I'll grant the Donkey Kong-induced wreckage, but what about the Hammer level? Who is this building made for? Is this all ideed some kind of mud pie conspiracy? As I understood the Mario myth, he was a construction worker in Donkey Kong, became a poacher in DK Jr, and finally got fed up with apes and started a plumbing business with his idiot jumpy brother. I attributed Super Mario Bros to a bad mushroom experience. Judging by the number of sequels, he really liked those mushrooms. Whatever happened to Penelope anyway? Mario had no use for her after the first game? She couldn't compete with that trampy Princess? Why hasn't Bowser alligned with Donkey Kong to kick some plumber ass? It's a stretch, but I prefer the Mario-as -villain theory

Maybe Mario wasn't the good guy after all. Look at the messed up buildings he created! Uneven floors, easily removable bolts, no OSHA regulations. Only a demented mind would design such a structure. I believe that Mario was trying to use the poor girl for his own sick desires when a giant ape showed up to the rescue. Damn you Mario!

What do you mean converted 2600 to 7800 format? These games would already run on a 7800 obviously. I don't see why anyone would ever reporgram thse pieces of crap, try out the ROMs on Stella and see.

Sega burned a lot of their fans with the 32X debacle and the poor quality Sega CD games. Consumers were not ready to trust Sega with their next videogame purchase, for all they knew the Saturn could be another dog (it definitely was not). Meanwhile, Sony was a known electronics company that hadn't made any enemies among video game fans. The Sony commercials were much better and Sony became heavily involved with grassroots sponsorship. When the PS1 came out, I first played it at a rave in Chicago. Sony set up booths at many concerts, fairs, extreme sports programming and the like to build word of mouth. Playstation commercials were all over MTV and ESPN. Sega did very little to promote Saturn (where's the Sonic game???). By the time FFVII came out, Sony already had the dominant position. FFVII for Saturn would not have been such a hit because Sony was already in many homes and seemed to be the 'hipper' system. I believe that the Genesis outsold the SNES, at least it did for many years. Most analysts felt that the SNES came out a year too late after Sega already had a foothold in the 16-bit market. Sonic was the killer app that pushed Genesis over the top. So now, 2 generations later the opposite seems to be the new rule. The Dreamcast suffered by being first because Sony's hype went into overdrive. Remember how much better they said the PS2 would be? It wasn't. Under the new paradigm, being first to market means that the competition will slam you in the press and add a couple new features for their system. Rumor has it that the Xbox 2 will be ready long before the PS3. but Microsoft will hold it till Sony is ready for release. No company has ever put more videogames in homes than Sony. Their customers are happy with their machines. The backward-compatibility of the Playstation series is an incredible selling point. Most video game families will be Sony for life, I don't see any other company being #1 for decades.

Atari was already on its deathbed by the time Nintendo made their move. If the NES didn't take over, it would have been Sega or someone else. Atari died all on its own from the idiocy of management. From all stories I've heard, Nintendo was practically begging Atari to produce the American Famicom but Atari felt that console games were dead. This Capcom deal is just part of the Great Crunch of 2003, many companies are going to disappear altogether. Many contracts are going to be rethought and rewritten. Everone will admit that PS2 has won this round of the console wars hands down, even a major company such as Activison suffers huge losses because of their Xbox and Gamecube flops. I expect to be playing future Marios and Zeldas on the PS3.

About 1/4 of the time I end up on the damn black line. WORST . . . EASTER EGG . . . EVER!!!!

If it is less than 20 years old then I say it ain't classic. The SNK era is still too new for my taste. If one considers broken-down 90s fighting games to be "classic" then FFC will do the trick. I love it when I hear kids refer to games like "Doom 2" as classic. I think the rule should be that if you are still in high school and a game was released in your lifetime, it is not a classic yet.

The Family Fun Center has about a dozen old games or so (no Tempest even), not good enough. If the Cedar Point midway is still as good as it used to be then it'll be worth the trip. The best classic gaming in Nebraska is at a mall arcade in North Platte where they never get in anything new. I actually played Empire Strikes Back and Q*Bert's Qubes there a couple years ago.