Inky Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Albert, I know it's early, but if the cost is right, I'd be interested in a Jag and Jag cart shell. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 (edited) I can believe Mike was taken for a ride, but also its obvious Mike was not 100 percent honest during the situation. Could be that both are scammers. One intentional, one that didn't know how to handle himself. Either way the end result was the same. A blemish on the retrogaming community. Without 100% proof and in-my-face real life discussions I can only take guesses. Edited April 5, 2016 by Keatah 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Albert makes the shells, Kevtris the boards? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Sean Lee Robinson story doesn't smell right Why did he pay 2500 for a Intellivision and Amiga FPGA core, which was supposedly a finished product and he didn't have it demoed or tested at the very least??? Why did Mike post those pictures of the HD Capture when he admits they looked faked??? "nor was ever given an address where he lives or works" ,does anyone pay a work for hire without knowing this information?? "let him and Steve work together on this without my interference", so Steve Woita is to blame for this mess, as he clearly has the resume for both hardware and software development, and was supposedly working with Lee??? Do we know if Steve Woita was really working on this project after John left, or that he seen's Lee work??? Wow, the guy that designed the Apple //e chipset gone rogue.. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 (edited) Albert makes the shells, Kevtris the boards? Granted it's just a shell, an inanimate piece of plastic, but I don't think I could stomach looking at a jaguar playing multiple systems. If that happens I'd just ask for a bare board or disassemble it and make my own housing. 2nd thought, it would be a fitting end. The system that mike and co wanted to make initially would come to be. And *if* it went that way I bet it would happen with minimal fuss & hype. It would just kinda like sorta show up and the orders would roll in. Edited April 5, 2016 by Keatah 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
webmiester Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Wow mike thats pretty long winded story. I think that its bad that he got gyped by that sean guy was his own fault being too trusty. first and important rule of business, is trust no one, if a person is working on product for you you have to insist and seeing progress work and talk in person. As well as do a background check on the person before handing out cash. heres a question what will Atari age do with the jag tooling, is it just the cart shells or is both the console and shells, its obvoius they can prod do cart shells for new jag homebrews but I don't know about the console shell. Correct. When I hired out a technical writer I paid in 4 payemnts. 1 payment = 2 chapters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPA5 Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I can't wait until someone turns this thing into a documentary. Hell, turn it into a reality show! There's more drama here than Real Housewives, Big Brother, and the Kardashians combined. He said, she said, rumours, accusations, speculations, podcasts, blog posts, forum topics, detective work, investigations, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, feuds, beefs, more rumours, more speculations, money lost, money gained, oh my! It's the never-was project that will now seemingly never-die, kept alive through healthy circular discussions for all time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 (edited) I can't wait until someone turns this thing into a documentary. Hell, turn it into a reality show! Screw that! It's the best text adventure ever! Better'n anything the great Infocom could develop. Every character and participant is real life. We can research our own clues. It has supplementary graphics. It's unfolding in real-time. It even has the requisite cursed "talisman".. And out of all this I discovered I got a new agenda. Whoa! Edited April 5, 2016 by Keatah 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leods Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" Stupidity obviously accounts for a ton here. No doubt about that. But that toy fair crap was both stupid and dishonest. I don't care how stupid you are, after that damning evidence, if you'Re not willing to open that up and see what's inside you're guilty. Period. That was wilful deception, even if the said guy was who made this prototype. If mike had opened that SNES that first night, and appologised, then I'd consider him innocent, and scammed by this guy. But as it played out? If he really was scammed, it was while trying to scam others. Every single step of the way in this "project", even being the nicest possible and trying to see the best case scenario, Mike still comes off as very incompetent and deceiving. 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I can believe Mike was taken for a ride, but also its obvious Mike was not 100 percent honest during the situation. Too many holes in the story, even if this guy was scamming Mike, why didn't Mike do his homework before signing checks and making promises? And what about all the BS that happened BEFORE this other dude got involved? Maybe a massively driven desire to make the console happen and prove all these here AtariAge Hater Brigaders wrong once and for all - that and complete and utter naivety mixed with dreams of being King of RetroLand. 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 (edited) Because Sean is very, very good at this kind of manipulative shit. He bilked all kinds of money and goods from people for promises just like this. He's quite convincing and good at gaining trust for things he promises but has no real ability or intention of delivering. He always claims to know people you trust. That he was a con man was easy to spot as soon as Eli/Piko began telling the tale of his interactions with Mystery/Mr. Lee, and I said as much at the time. Edited April 5, 2016 by sh3-rg 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKMike Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Yes,I remember distinctly hearing a podcast where "Sean" name was thrown around and if memory serves it was the one with UKMike and Pipercub (and maybe Piko). I think I even added it to one of my posts but I ain't going back 150 pages to find it. EDIT: or not, can't remember. It was us but it was actually Shane and not Shaun. We were also joking. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dj_convoy Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 [...] Thank you for some sanity in the "poor Mike, he was scammed" parade. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 [...]I have made the decision that my reputation is worth protecting[...] <proceeds to destroy reputation further> 19 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bojay1997 Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I believe Mike was taken by this Sean guy. It's just another example of the countless bad decisions that Mike has made throughout this disaster of a project. If anything, it makes Mike look worse than he already does. Or he just heard about all the scamming this guy has allegedly done in the Commodore community and decided it would be any easy way to deflect blame and guilt for his own attempts to perpetrate a massive fraud. Personally, I don't believe a word Mike says and I hope nobody ever gives him a penny for any project in the future as he is proven that at best he is incompetent and at worst, a world class scam artist. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PikoInteractive Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Stupidity obviously accounts for a ton here. No doubt about that. But that toy fair crap was both stupid and dishonest. I don't care how stupid you are, after that damning evidence, if you'Re not willing to open that up and see what's inside you're guilty. Period. That was wilful deception, even if the said guy was who made this prototype. If mike had opened that SNES that first night, and appologised, then I'd consider him innocent, and scammed by this guy. But as it played out? If he really was scammed, it was while trying to scam others. Every single step of the way in this "project", even being the nicest possible and trying to see the best case scenario, Mike still comes off as very incompetent and deceiving. No because if they had opened the fake SNES proto and I would have seen it or been notified; hell was going to break loose then, when Piko official statement would have been "CC proto is FAKE". I'm still pissed at all this, Mike says he is the only one that lost money; and that is not correct. I spent this year's expo/travel/convention funds on that trip to NY as well as 2 weeks of work handling the backlash etc. And we weren't even considered to buy the Molds when I told them we wanted to buy them. So I see it like we were the most damaged third party monetarily. 25 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaysWithWolves Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 That may have been who I was thinking of, too. OK found my old post: I wonder if I misheard Shawn for Marshall .... now back to listening to that podcast ... sigh!!! http://www.retrogamingroundup.com/roundups/2016/RoundUp099_2016.03.04_128k.mp3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Screw that! It's the best text adventure ever! Better'n anything the great Infocom could develop. Every character and participant is real life. We can research our own clues. It has supplementary graphics. It's unfolding in real-time. It even has the requisite cursed "talisman".. And out of all this I discovered I got a new agenda. Whoa! Hmm. SCUMM VM adventure sounds wildly appropriate to me. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
galax Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Or he just heard about all the scamming this guy has allegedly done in the Commodore community and decided it would be any easy way to deflect blame and guilt for his own attempts to perpetrate a massive fraud. Well he does give an explanation about how he met the mysterious Mr. Sean 'Lee' Robinson: At this time I researched others that could step in and bring this product to fruition and that lead me to Clay Cowgill. Clay really took this project under his wing from Nov 2014 to January 2015 and helped us (me and Steve Woita) define the hardware and its capabilities – this is when we were considering, at Clay’s recommendation, architecting something in-line with the Beaglebone Black. It was also at this time, that another person entered into the mix, Sean “LEE” Robinson. Sean was a “acquaintance or colleague” of Clay’s and it just so happened that he had moved from Washington (state) back to Southern California. He had heard that I was working with Clay on this project and offered to help. Since he and Clay were colleagues, and the fact he was local and very close to me, it seemed like a good idea to have them partner up on the project, which they did to some extent. As Clay is reading the thread at the moment maybe he could throw some light on Sean's involvement? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clay Cowgill Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I've been content to take a "not my circus, not my monkeys" stance with this whole brouhaha, but since Mike decided to name drop me... * Mike seems to have some facts jumbled up a bit at the beginning of the project. For the record, Sean (whom I had met a couple times before) contacted me directly in early November 2014 to see if I was interested in speaking to Mike about a retro-style hardware game device. I've done that kind of development work commercially for years now, so I agreed to at least explore the possibility and agreed to let Sean give Mike my contact information. Mike and I then spoke directly by phone on Nov. 17th, 2014. Sean was already working with Mike well in advance of my involvement and my understanding during the call with Mike was that he and Sean were actually friends and had known each other for quite some time. * The project was not what I as a hardware designer would consider 'defined'. Mike wanted 'hardware' as quickly as possible, but there was nothing that I would consider a bare minimum to start designing from-- no product requirements documents, no hardware specification, no consideration of the product ecosystem. I provided some example architectures on 12/1/2014 of 'things that could be made to work in a short period of time' based on designs I'd done earlier, but there was still a pretty glaring lack of direction. * By 12/19/2014 I pushed back on putting any additional time in on the hardware until we A) knew what the programmers needed/wanted for features and performance and B) knew the performance of available platforms relative to their costs. That was falling outside of what I was comfortable putting time and effort in on (all my involvement was done without compensation as spec work in return for per unit royalties should the product eventually come to market), so Sean stepped up and did a bunch of work with available generic hardware platforms and existing emulators to evaluate possible candidates. The outcome of that was that the AM3354 (based on the performance of a BeagleBone Black devboard) would probably be sufficient given the back-of-napkin type wish-list we had for features. Over the next couple months there wasn't a lot of progress on nailing down specifications (I don't know if there *ever* was an official requirements document/engineering spec generated)-- even basics like what type of video modes and outputs the device was supposed to have were still up in the air at the end of February. However, there *was* talking up the system in public when it didn't even exist on paper yet-- I took that as an excellent sign that it was time to officially part company at the end of February and "pursue other opportunities". 39 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I've been content to take a "not my circus, not my monkeys" stance with this whole brouhaha, but since Mike decided to name drop me... The plot thickens. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dj_convoy Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Why does everyone keep ruining Mike's cover story with facts? Big poo poo heads. 22 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+xucaen Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I was looking at your info. I've never even heard of you or it before. Hmm, that's odd, I wonder why. When was the last time you dialed into a BBS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Was there ever this much politics in the 1st days of videogame development? No. Games were better too. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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