Venture Official Release

[+remowilliams]

I was never a Venture fan, but was wanting to purchase it to help out the A8 scene. Well, that's not going to happen now.

 

Along with leagues of others judging by the sales numbers. A shame too since this is such a highly active and supportive community as the past has proven time and again.

 

Oh well guess the two who don't get it here, just aren't ever going to.

[+CyranoJ]

Just in case anyone thinks we're living in some fantasy land.

 

THE PIRATES OUT THERE WAITING TO RIP YOU OFF DO NOT, AND PROBABLY NEVER HAVE, EXISTED.

 

(Comic Sans for extra irony)

[_The Doctor__]

I get so confused I thought one of these guys kinda got it... but then it slipped far far away.... sadface

[gozar]

I bought Kobyashi Maru!

[Shawn Jefferson]

I know I shouldn't feel this way probably, but the impression I get from all the posts worrying about Piracy, low sales, lowering costs, etc... Turns me off because it seems like it's only being done for the money.

[+CyranoJ]

I bought Kobyashi Maru!

 

Thanks! (For helping to prove a point)

[+remowilliams]

Turns me off because it seems like it's only being done for the money.

 

Sadly not only is that the most apparent motivating factor - but they don't even remotely recognize that they could achieve more actual income by not going about it in the insanely delusional way that they've chosen and repeatedly (and accusingly) communicated.

 

Seriously you two - take a bunch of lessons from the ABBUC folks and all the other amazingly talented and supportive people in the A8 scene who have contributed to its ongoing health and success.

 

Or just hide away in your imagined hordes of pirate caves and count your pennies...

[FifthPlayer]

For $40, I can buy a Colecovision Flashback and play Venture, and 60 other games.

 

For me to want to spend $40 on just that one game for the A8, there has to be a reason - that I'm doing something to help the A8 community.

 

But I don't get that feeling buying from people who regard the rest of the A8 community with distrust and contempt.

[Kratters31]

For $40, I can buy a Colecovision Flashback and play Venture, and 60 other games.

 

For me to want to spend $40 on just that one game for the A8, there has to be a reason - that I'm doing something to help the A8 community.

 

But I don't get that feeling buying from people who regard the rest of the A8 community with distrust and contempt.

 

The version on the Atari 8-bit has a challenger mode that has more monsters and a 4th level. Something not in the Coleco, 2600, or Arcade. PeteyM5 and Kjmann repackaged the game for us on a cheaper 16K cartridge so Video61 can be sale for $40 instead of $50. That was because people were complaining about it at $50. Video61 even warned PeteyM5 that does not matter how cheap you make a game people will complain, even if they can get it for free.

 

They seem to have closed the book on Venture and busy with other projects. You won't see Venture ported to other mediums anytime soon. This Secretum Labyrinth series seems to be Venture + 2600 Adventure on steroids.

[Mclaneinc]

The point here is that for the price of one game a person can get a whole system and plenty of games so the game has to be good which Venture is and you have to take in to context that the people buying it in this case are willing to pay a bit extra to keep the Atari line going as an act of good will so when a seller starts calling people pirates and making it plain its all about the cash then the same caring folk will lose faith in that person or persons.

 

Pete's rather odd post where he went on about people sharing copies with their mates if there was a digital download version just felt like a stake in the heart to the folk that would normally support the same people. I myself was told very publicly that all production of games would stop if a copy of Venture ended up being dumped, all because Sal didn't like me asking about Digital Downloads and started becoming rather rude in his replies. Now I own venture on cart and I've never even thought of trying to dump it as I don't have the skill to do it and have no wish to spread a hard worked on game, even if I did have the skill and I suspect other folks may have dumped it just as a personal test then it has never seen the light of day on any places because PEOPLE CARE.

 

But lets strip this back to basics, I'm from a retail sales background as a manager of a well known Electronics company in the past, I sold Atari 8 bit products and one of the rules in that 'game' is not to alienate the very people you need to sell to, Petey did that with his rant which he claimed was a joke, one thing you learn in retail is that the customer base will vote with their feet if you annoy them..

 

I wish Petey and Sal well even though I've had cross words with them because I like what they produce as gamers but caution them to remember we, the buying public have a choice, respect works both ways.

[peteym5]

I would like to apologize for making a statement about a prior post I made about charge $5000 per floppy or digital downloads. The decision about using media other than cartridges is made by KJMANN and VIDEO61. I made the effort to fit the game into 16K so Video61 can put it onto a Atari brown shell cartridge instead of the 32K Williams cartridge that was more expensive to make and the socketed chip did not fit properly.

 

I never implied everyone is a pirate and still want to strongly support the Atari community. As you notice, I am approaching my own projects differently by putting out beta/demos' ahead of the cartridge release. That is to ensure I am putting out a quality game on these cartridges when they are ready. If there were ways to copy protect floppy disks that are hard to bypass, then I probably be more in favor of using other media. I had ideals over the years and figured there will always be a way to circumvent it.

[Shawn Jefferson]

You cannot protect any media. Even cartridges can be dumped very easily (the Atarimax USB cartridge programmer could be used by almost anyone to dump most common cartridge types.) Any protections you add can be fairly easily removed.

 

The issue is not the media or adding protections. The Atari community does not "pirate" things generally speaking. Old software that is "abandon-ware", sure, it's being distributed, archived and generally freely used now, but I think that's a completely different thing. Home-brew authors who don't want their software distributed/dumped/cracked have their wishes respected... even some who did not write the software but put up a lot of money to make sure prototypes are able to be enjoyed and not collecting dust in someone's basement (Fandal and Xenophobe.)

 

You're worried about a problem that doesn't exist.

 

If it's KJMann worried about the pirating, I still find that a little funny since he was "selling" software that others wrote or modified without even asking. (including some done by myself... but I don't really care that much, since I gave all my work to the community for free to do what they want with.)

[Mclaneinc]

I totally agree with Shawn, even people like me and Starwindz (oh and Mark Hardnman) have been happy to make it clear we will remove any game by a person from our respective gamebases if they don't want it in there, the point being, we respect the software makers completely. I've never claimed to be an angel but what I did as an 18yr old and what I feel now as a 53yr old are completely different, in the day software was flowing out of everywhere, even Atari UK were letting things out the back door but now when its just some wonderfully talented devs producing super quality titles you learn to respect these folk and their property, the last thing ANY of us want to see is developers stopping production.

 

I can honestly say I've not seen a single sold Atari 8bit new title ANYWHERE in lists on usenet etc....That should tell you something PeteyM.........

[peteym5]

So where does it all go wrong with V61 and why do we think SIC! or The!Cart would be inferior somehow? Last I checked they weren't held together with scotch tape or have orange potato chip residue running things, what exactly is the quality issue if you burn it to any cart.. I never had any cartridge fail me in 32 years, except a double sided sticky tape shell falling apart and I don't want to go there again.

Problems we had in the past with Atarimax flash carts is that they somehow lost the contents of the game and the reason why V61 is going to stick with EPROM only cartridges. I understand SIC! have issues with the contacts not connecting properly or wearing out easily. By the time we get SIC! carts shipped here for the game to be flashed onto them, we probably spent almost the same as putting Williams or XEGS cartridges together. THE!CART runs at 59 Euro, roughly $70 to $75 US dollars and that is already more that the price Video 61 will sell an XEGS game for so that option is out. I never stated The!Cart is inferior, just impractical to put one game on them and sell them.

 

Same games like Tempest Elite or Secretum Labyrinth will not run on a real Atari with only 64K of RAM. Could make versions that use extended memory for like the 130XE, but we are looking at a whole new range of people complaining that we made a game only for computers with 128K or more ram. As soon as I said Tempest Elite is a VBXE game, people were concerned I was making the game only run on Ataris' with VBXE, even after I wroteit detects real hardware or VBXE and loads the routines. The bottom line we are not going to do executable full versions of these games anytime soon.

 

I have control over Secretum Labyrinth and Delta Space Arena, but I am still going with the cartridge versions first and see what happens.

[peteym5]

To let everyone know we are considering doing a test game for sale on boot data cassette for a few dollars cheaper than a cartridge. However the word is not final because we are not sure we can keep up with demand because of the amount of time it takes to save the files on each cassette. The title will be determined at a later date, I am still waiting for permission to do it from KJMANN, but he takes awhile to get back to me. Please be patient. Oh yes, if you attempt to copy, the tape will self destruct in five seconds...

 

I am going to be honest with future titles on cartridge, I am going to put an effort into them to make sure the programming and content are worth the money. If it's a weak game, add features or include it in with a multicart. I think we did a good job with Venture by adding challenger mode, extra map screens, and monsters. However it looks like we could have added 20 map screens and still get people complaining about the price.

[+remowilliams]

We all do enjoy so much being treated like inevitable predatory thieves, thank you for your unwavering support in this area.

[Joe Stella]

keep your game. not even interested in a free copy.

[Paul Westphal]

Yada yada, yada. If you like it, buy it. They don't make hardly anything on these carts, and do it because they can, and it's nice that they do. You get what you pay for, and Venture is great. Did I want to pay for the rocketeer? No. But Its great too, and I did it to thank them for their contributions, and further development. Bitch and moan all you want, but they took the time to make a game for computer designed in the 70's. Be thankful for that.

[+CyranoJ]

I don't know what Rocketeer has to do with this, but the two situations are hardly identical.

[Kratters31]

For those of you that did not figure it out, the game on cassette announcement is a joke. I do not think anyone will release software on cassette in this day in age. Consider cartridges load instantly or inflate programs + data faster than it takes to load from disk. Have to consider cartridges are much more durable than other media like disks. I know other people do games on disks because they do not have access to EPROM burners and hardware. Plus Atari Venture is superior to the Coleco, 2600, or Intellivsion versions. Need newer hardware to do a better looking game.

 

Oh yes, KJMANN did contact the original people about doing Venture and Tempest on the 8-bit, the replay was they did not care what people do on the Atari 8-bit because they know probably won't sell much.

[+remowilliams]

Oh there's surely a joke in all of this, but it isn't what you think it is.

 

Also, thanks 'unknown shill guy' for all your posts at AA only in this single thread.

[+Stephen]

Maybe Pete from RPC games hired himself out to do some promo work now that all of the groundbreaking work on Centron 3D has been completed for the Amiga

[Albert]

Regardless of your feelings on this subject, if you have to resort to name calling, you have lost the argument. if you can't discuss this in an adult manner, then move along to the next thread. This is the only warning I will give.

 

..Al

[FifthPlayer]

For those of you that did not figure it out, the game on cassette announcement is a joke. I do not think anyone will release software on cassette in this day in age.

 

So peteym5 (author of the "cassette joke") and KJmann have decided distrust of potential customers is not enough, and are now outright trolling them.

 

I think both of them should revisit their ideas about how to run a successful business.

Edited November 23, 2014 by FifthPlayer

[+Stephen]

I just bought two tapes recently - they had music on them not games (http://www.pixelkitsch.de/2014/09/30/pressespiegel-vol-15-proc-atari-magazin/).