Psionic

Same here. I missed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4jBXkF0B-c

My mistake...it must've been someone else. Maybe Rick Weis or Lenny Herman.

That would be Kris Krohn. I don't think he really visits any forums much due to lack of time. He now has three Retro Games Plus locations and is one of the founders and organizers of RetroWorld Expo. If you want to get a hold of him, I would suggest you call him at one of the stores or message him via Facebook.

A firm release date hasn't been announced yet.

I believe they said they plan to release 7500 physical copies. Yeah, those tend to go quick. Out of curiosity, which one was it? I recently missed out on the Ninja Gaiden LP box set, which pretty much sold out immediately, although it looks like the regular version is back in stock so apparently they're planning to press more. Obviously you're always limited by the quality (or lack thereof) of the original source media. But at least this time there won't be any serious limitations related to the delivery media or the hardware that the game is running on. The game will basically look as good as it can. A lot has happened in 25 years...the difference between CD and Blu-ray quality video is obviously substantial. It also appears from what they've shown so far that the video footage will be presented "open matte" so you'll be able to see things that were cropped out in the original release.

I looked but didn't see anything in Classic or Modern Gaming about this. It looks like everyone's favorite FMV game is getting a modern reissue courtesy of Screaming Villians and Limited Run Games. There was a Kickstarter campaign to release this a few years back which was unsuccessful, but apparently this is happening anyway. Anyone planning to pick this up? It'll be nice to see this game remastered with HD quality video. It's interesting that after all the controversy surrounding the original release, the (uncut) reissue apparently got though the ESRB with a "Teen" rating. https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/25/15424780/night-trap-ps4-xbox-one-25th-anniversary http://nerdist.com/controversial-vintage-video-game-night-trap-is-getting-a-ps4-and-xbox-one-re-release/

Unfortunately, any info about Gamex won't be coming from the X-Man himself. I tried to get in contact with him a while back with no luck. I decided to attempt tracking him down again recently, only to discover that he died last summer at age 69 of causes unknown. http://www.markballenmortuary.net/notices/Robert-Brownell Details are sparse as he was cremated and there doesn't appear to have been a service (or if there was it must've been private). But it appears he did leave a wife or ex-wife named Annmarie Brownell, who was formerly listed as the agent for his company Alan Roberts Productions, and who was credited in a few pictures he worked on back in the late 70s. Looks like they may have a daughter named Patricia Brown as well. The quotes in that book came from another source, most likely the interview with him that originally appeared in the October 1983 issue of Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated. In that piece, he talked about X-Man and an Emmanuelle game that was supposedly being worked on. I believe it's highly probable that none of those companies in the database had anything to do with this one, and that no such company as "Universal Gamex Corp." ever actually existed. "Gamex" and "Gameworld" could have simply been brand monikers used by Alan Roberts Productions, or they could have been a division of that company. The fact that they used the same address only reinforces this. As I've stated before, I also believe that H.K. Poon was a real person and the programmer of the game, not just some silly pun. Poon is a fairly common Cantonese surname.

Is there any possibility this version was done by someone outside Atari (i.e. Roklan)?

The game was a tax write-off...that much is not in question. The copyright info for Tax Avoiders gives the year of creation as 1982. The date of registration was 2/6/84 and there are members here who purchased the game new around that time (bfstats, for one).

What's this?

Nice. Is Mike the one who had several sealed copies of Glib in an original factory box up for auction last year? Whoever that was, he claimed to be involved with the game's development. That's a shame about the display timing issue. I always wondered how and why a game like this that was produced by a major game company came to be so rare. I guess that question has been answered. I'm a big Scrabble fan and I actually tracked down the guy who ran QDI in its final years looking for info about this game. I believe he was the son of Pete Farentinos. He hadn't been at QDI during Glib's production, so he wasn't able to tell me much or even point me in the right direction. It's good to know that the story's finally been told. I'll have to shoot him an email and direct him to this article.

There are several unused things in the Donkey Kong code, but the only thing I'm aware of in Zaxxon is the unused ITC logo that was mentioned above, which is found in Congo Bongo as well. It would be nice if someone with real knowledge took a good look at all these games. Looks like Mr. Durnavich is attempting to do that.

If you do a search, you'll find several threads about buying games from the Venezuelan sellers. The number of shipments has drastically decreased over the past couple years as the huge stock of games they once had for sale has gradually dried up to a slow trickle. The results have been mixed. I was able to get quite a few NOS items at decent prices a few years ago, some of them very rare. Like many people, I did have a few negative experiences where items arrived in damaged (or completely destroyed) condition. Fortunately in those cases the games were not particularly rare or expensive, and I think in almost every case I was able to secure a refund or replacement. I haven't personally purchased anything in quite a while, so I don't know if any issues with customs still persist. If you live in the USA, you needn't worry about taxes or other importing fees...that's more of a Canadian problem.

Yeah, I have no problem believing this guy Crane was really that unethical. What he did was hardly stupid, it was actually kind of genius...right up until the part where he got caught. The video game industry really was the Wild West back then and there was no shortage of stuff going on behind the scenes at various companies ranging from mildly unethical to outright illegal, believe me. Actually, I can think of several instances where people siphoned off development contracts using middleman tactics like this guy. With access to good developers being a treasured commodity, that went on quite a bit back then amongst people who were in a position to take advantage of it. While it my have been a bit shady, it wasn't outright illegal. What makes this case a bit unique is that this guy actually worked for the company he was bilking over and he blatantly engaged in forgery and fraud to do so. Of course he was also a lawyer and should know better, although his legal knowledge and powers are what allowed him to pull off the scheme in the first place.

The Synapse version was released on disk (and possibly tape) here in the States, and Sega of course commissioned another version that they published themselves on cartridge. That version (which was probably developed by McT) has nice graphics but slow, clunky gameplay. You can view comparative screenshots of the two versions here. I imagine that one (or both) of these versions was released overseas on disk and tape by U.S. Gold. I also imagine that the cartridge by Sega could possibly be found in shops that carried imports and such, although it's quite rare. I'm not aware of any other official releases although I'm sure there were bootlegs and rip-offs. There was no shortage of games inspired by Zaxxon to one degree or another. Look at Blue Max for one. Maybe not, but it certainly proved that a much better version was possible than the first effort for the 2600 by Coleco. Oddly enough, I still don't know who developed that original port (or the similar Intellivision conversion).

She may have helped out with graphics or something on Tutankham, but Dave Engman was the main programmer and it's his name that appears in the code. Zenji was designed by Matthew Hubbard. I've never heard of her being involved in any way, and I'm pretty sure she had actually left Activision by then.

I'll do my best, but first a bit of background on the American wing of Sega that's relevant to the chapter in this book. Even though Sega had some early success in the arcade market, their entry into the home market in North America was somewhat delayed. Initially, Sega licensed a few of their hit coin-ops (Carnival, Space Fury, Turbo, Zaxxon et al) to Coleco, who developed and sold home versions of these games not only on the ColecoVision but the Atari 2600 and Intellivision as well. In early to mid 1982, Sega made the decision to form a consumer division that would develop and publish games for home consoles and computers in North America. They went on to hire nine programmers to work on ports of Sega arcade games for the Atari, Apple, and Commodore machines. This group of programmers worked at the same facility in San Diego where their peers in coin-op also worked, although they were kept separated - they were housed in a separate room and had their own software manager. Due to the volume of work in doing conversions for the various gaming machines of the day, Sega also hired several subcontractors (including Beck-Tech, McT and Syndein Systems) to work on these ports. This was not an unusual practice at that time. It was also not an unusual practice at that time for the rights to a certain game, regardless of developer, to be held by different publishers on different formats (i.e. cartridge vs. magnetic media). This is where the book chapter you linked to becomes relevant. Apparently, when Sega initially made the decision to enter the consumer market they only intended to publish games on cartridge format, not believing that the magnetic media market (disk and tape) was something they wanted to pursue. Sensing an opportunity there, a member of Sega's legal department named Robert Crane, who was in charge of licensing opportunities, formed a shell corporation called Universal Licensing with the intention of approaching Sega and offering to market a disk version of Zaxxon for the Commodore 64 through a licensing agreement. He then used his legal influence at Sega to negotiate a contract with Universal for the Zaxxon rights, without disclosing to anyone at Sega that he in fact was Universal (running the bogus company using the alias "Steve Kness"). He also didn't disclose that Universal had neither the cash to pay the $10,000 licensing fee, nor the ability to produce or distribute the intended product. But he had a plan... To get around this problem, Crane used his legal powers at Sega to amend the agreement between Sega and Universal, granting Universal the ability to sublicense Zaxxon. Acting as Universal, he then sold the Zaxxon rights to Synapse Software for $50,000, using a portion of that money paid to Universal by Synapse to pay the $10,000 fee for the initial licensing agreement made between Sega and Universal. He then helped Synapse obtain programming info from Sega so they could develop the Zaxxon port. Basically, he "robbed Peter to pay Paul". He made money without having to invest any of his own, and without having to actually produce a product. But he didn't stop there... After learning that another company would have paid twice as much for the Zaxxon rights as Synapse had, Crane again used his legal authority at Sega to further alter the agreement between Sega and Universal, this time amending it to include Super Zaxxon as well. He did this even though Sega had deliberately denied a request to include Super Zaxxon in the original license, and despite the fact that as a lawyer for Sega he had previously prepared the copyright registration for the two games showing Super Zaxxon to be a derivative work of Zaxxon. Universal then sold the Super Zaxxon disk rights to HesWare, although both Sega and Synapse objected to this blatant "double-dipping" on the Zaxxon license for obvious reasons. The rest of the chapter basically explains all the legal problems that resulted from Crane's blatantly unethical actions as Sega's counsel, which ended up getting him canned. I often wondered why the disk versions of Zaxxon and Super Zaxxon for the Commodore 64 were developed and sold by two different companies...now I know why. That was an interesting read, thank you for posting it. Actually yes, Zaxxon and several other coin-ops based on the same hardware (including Future Spy) are believed to have been designed and engineered by a Japanese company called Ikegami Tsushinki, although the true extent of their involvement is not known, and that's not what's being discussed here. The scam summarized above only involved certain home versions of Zaxxon.

Thanks, I hadn't seen the manual. I actually have the Ultra CD Backup RAM Cart which didn't come with one. On page 1, it says that one of the purposes of the RAM cartridge is to be used when the amount of data is too large to be saved via internal memory. Also on page 5, it says that some games allow saves directly to the cart. This pretty much confirms what I had figured - that direct saving is only possible with games that were specifically programmed to take advantage of this feature due to large amounts of save data, like certain RPGs. I was just wondering if anyone had a basic list of which ones offhand. The FAQ you linked to mentions Shining Force, Third World War, and Eye of the Beholder as game that basically require the RAM cart. Yeah, it seems that for most games the RAM cart only serves as a backup, true to its name. Oh well...at least no one can accuse them of lying.

Might do some good to track him down. While we're on the subject of Activision prototypes... After all this time, how have we still not identified the two unknown prototypes? Activision was not that big of a company, and all their 2600 games were done in-house, so someone must know something about these or at least who was working on them. Crane, Kitchen, et al have appeared at CGE and such over the years. Has anyone ever asked them about these?

I figured as much, but thanks for confirming that. ​Another question about the Sega CD's internal memory... Is there a quick list anywhere of which games will save directly to the back-up RAM cart? None of the games I have seem to do so, requiring me to constantly copy from the system RAM to the cartridge. I assume for the earlier titles (developed before the RAM cart was released) there's simply no way around this?

I take it you've never actually talked to Charlie Heath about this game?

There's at least 2 or 3 others floating around. One was sold on eBay in the last year. You also have a picture of one on your site, although that cartridge has a different case that appears to be the same one used by Fox/Sirius for their 2600 games. Regarding the "special" label, I have a Tac-Scan prototype with a similar blue and white label. Nothing special about it...I think they just used those labels early on before switching to the other ones later. The Bally/Midway titles always have those pinkish red labels that are very similar to Activision review carts.

I just picked up a CDX. When I turn on the unit with no disc inserted, rather than taking you to the control panel (i.e. the CD player screen) it goes right to the SEGA CD space intro screen and says "NO DISC" at the bottom. If I then insert a game disc, it doesn't give me the option to "PRESS START" or do anything else. The game simply loads right away. Because of this, I initially had the same problem the OP was having of not being able to access the memory manager. I eventually figured out that pressing and holding one of the action buttons as the game loads would allow me to do so. Inserting a music CD to access the control panel and then swapping in a game disc is another option. Is this normal, or is there possibly a BIOS problem with my unit? I've looked at a few YouTube videos and the systems being used seem to behave the same as mine does. Perhaps early CDX units had an earlier version of the BIOS which required you to press start to load the game? Hopefully some CDX owners can chime in.

CBS Electronics was a subsidiary CBS/Columbia, as stated above. They developed and published some of their own software titles and also had a licensing agreement with Coleco to distribute their products (including the ColecoVision console) outside North America. CBS and Coleco were separate entities and there was no connection between the two companies beyond that.