Zaxxon - the legal backstory....

[Gentlegamer]

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.

 

Was he disbarred? He should have been.

[+Cafeman]

 

 

Designing and programming are two different things - coding duty does not conflate with creating the idea or the gameplay beats always...

 

sTeVE

 

True. Miyamoto designed DK, and that team coded it. So are you thinking SEGA designed Zaxxon and contracted that team o tcode it too? I thought SEGA just bought/licensed the game and had nothing to do with its design. Similar to Frogger which was originally a SEGA game too, although created by Konami I believe.

[ricortes]

 

Was he disbarred? He should have been.

http://www.statebarcourt.ca.gov/portals/2/documents/reporter/V01_012Crane.pdf

 

Suspended for two years and return of funds if I read it correctly.

[+FujiSkunk]

 

True. Miyamoto designed DK, and that team coded it. So are you thinking SEGA designed Zaxxon and contracted that team o tcode it too? I thought SEGA just bought/licensed the game and had nothing to do with its design. Similar to Frogger which was originally a SEGA game too, although created by Konami I believe.

 

Zaxxon, at least legally, is wholly Sega's property. It's not like Frogger where Sega was just an overseas distributor for Konami. Whether that means Zaxxon was actually created in-house at Sega, I don't know.

[fujidude]

Yet another example which reinforces the stereotypes about lawyers being lower than snakes.

[Joe Durnavich`]

 

Are there any hidden or unused things in the Zaxxon code?

 

I have analyzed only one fourth of the program code, so I can't answer that yet. The entire program has to fit in only 20 KB of ROM, so I doubt there is room for too many hidden or unused things. Not really hidden or unknown, but two things that I learned so far are: (1) After you enter your initials, the initials entered screen that follows spells it wrong: INITIALS ENTERD. (2) It was always well documented that the value of each enemy plane you shoot down increases by 50 points per level, but I learned too from the disassembly that seven items in the scoring table have 50 points per level added to their value starting with level two up to level seven. I don't know what objects the seven entries correspond to yet, but one of them is the fuel tank. (Fuel tanks are worth 300 points on level one and 550 points at level seven and after.) I always knew I was earning more points on the platform stages in later levels, but I never knew where the extra points were coming from.

[+FujiSkunk]

I just checked The Cutting Room Floor. Somebody did in fact find Ikegami's logo hidden in Zaxxon's code. That seems to confirm they handled the actual coding of the game.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I don't think that Radarscope uses as many sound effects that you recognize from Donkey Kong, except in emulation. The sounds are wrong in MAME. There are recordings of gameplay from the real machine you can find that are not like this...

That would explain a lot, actually.

 

Even if it used the same sound generation hardware and the DK upgrade was as simple as burning new EPROMs, depending on how the game drove the sound hardware, the effects could be drastically different.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yet another example which reinforces the stereotypes about lawyers being lower than snakes.

"Stereotype?" Seems factual to me. Lotta serpents slithering around trying to steal your money.

[+Psionic]

Are there any hidden or unused things in the Zaxxon code?

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.

[Lost Dragon]

I was brought to this thread after i was asked if the claims made in an issue of RetroGamer magazine some time ago, held true...

 

That HES Software's C64 and A8 versions of Super Zaxxon had received favourable reviews from the press at the time...

 

 

Well C64 wise Zzap64 gave it 57%

Commodore User 3/5

C+VG 7/10

 

So, i would say medicore to average rather than favourable on C64.

 

Can't think of any A8 reviews off my head.

 

But i wasn't aware of the back story and legal side.

 

Thanks to all involved for bringing that to my attention.

[tjlazer]

Yeah there are 2 versions of Zaxxon and Super Zaxxon on the commodore 64. One from Sega (cartridge) and one from Synapse (Disk). Interesting note, all of the C64 Sega Zaxxon cartriges have the label on them upside down! Do a search on eBay or Google.

[+Psionic]

On 11/11/2018 at 5:17 AM, tjlazer said:

Interesting note, all of the C64 Sega Zaxxon cartriges have the label on them upside down! Do a search on eBay or Google.

Sega had cartridges produced in several countries during this period but it seems to be the ones from Taiwan that often suffer from this problem, so it was probably one specific facility that was the culprit.  For example, many (but not all) copies of Star Trek for the VIC-20 that were assembled in Taiwan also have upside down labels.

[Tempest]

1 hour ago, Psionic said:

Sega had cartridges produced in several countries during this period but it seems to be the ones from Taiwan that often suffer from this problem, so it was probably one specific facility that was the culprit.  For example, many (but not all) copies of Star Trek for the VIC-20 that were assembled in Taiwan also have upside down labels.

Not to mention almost all CBS carts for the 5200.  It wasn't just limited to the Commodore controlled plants.

[+DrVenkman]

27 minutes ago, Tempest said:

Not to mention almost all CBS carts for the 5200.  It wasn't just limited to the Commodore controlled plants.

CBS carts and all the Parker Brothers games too. Grrrr .... 

[tjlazer]

On 2/27/2017 at 5:12 AM, H.E.R.O. said:

Zaxxon on the C64 in the USA, if my old 80's gaming mags are telling the truth, was done and/or published by a company called Datasoft.

 

Datasoft also made Zaxxon for the Atari 800/XL/XE series too.

Edited July 26, 2019 by tjlazer

[JamesD]

If you are interested in Zaxxon, you'll want to talk to Steve Bjork. 
He programmed the arcade game, the CoCo version, several other Datasoft titles, and a lot of other games.
He's a regular on the CoCo Discord server, and makes appearances on CoCoTalk! (live CoCo oriented talk show).

Edited July 26, 2019 by JamesD

[kiwilove]

I thought the credit for designing the arcade game was by Ikegami Tsushinki - a Japanese company.  So it was not designed by Sega?

 

I do wonder about how the arcade game was running.  I don't have Mame running at present - but when you press the key for showing the graphics/tiles - don't they appear differently?  So that the arcade hardware skews the graphics - or something like this?

I recall - if memory serves me correctly? That this is with the Zaxxon game only?

 

I recall that Super Zaxxon was an especially hard arcade game - that in Hull, where I was living in 1982/1983 - that no one would play it there, or very few.  Maybe I was the only one who could make it to the dragon?

 

I like to see  what I would call a better version of Zaxxon running for the Atari 400/800 one day... but it is only wishful thinking...  It would be a hard project to do.

 

Harvey

 

[JamesD]

Well, I *thought* he wrote it, but he's only credited for Zaxxon in 1983, where the Sega game is 82
So he just wrote the CoCo version and the unofficial Z-89 CoCo 3 version.

https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,196778/

[+Psionic]

16 hours ago, Tempest said:

Not to mention almost all CBS carts for the 5200.  It wasn't just limited to the Commodore controlled plants.

Zaxxon cartridges were mentioned, so I was addressing Sega titles specifically.
 

16 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

CBS carts and all the Parker Brothers games too. Grrrr ....

The Sega and CBS labels in question were actually applied to the cartridges upside down, resulting in what should have been the end of the label appearing on the face instead.  While many Parker Brothers labels such as that 5200 Gyruss one should have been printed with the text the other way, they were not glued on the cartridges improperly at the factory.  PB did eventually address this and printed the labels for the later titles (Frogger II, Star Wars: TAG & Mr. Do!'s Castle) with the correct orientation.  

[Mclaneinc]

I love all this stuff, its just wonderful hearing the BTS stuff, another mini but good one is the story behind Dropzone...If there's not been a thread re it (I would guess there has) then its all an interesting read although I've forgotten most of the detail now. But this back story re Zaxxon is really historically interesting for an old shooter fan..

 

Thanks people..

[Flojomojo]

I just looked up the current state of the live trademark, and it appears to be with SEGA of Japan, which feels like the correct place to me -- but I didn't know of all the tangled history!

 

It looks like SOJ had to take legal action recently to bring the mark back in-house. I'll try to figure out the history when I have time and attention to lay out what I saw in USPTO, unless someone else does it first. 

 

There was a brief time when River West Brands (now called Dormitus) grabbed the inactive trademark for themselves. I think that's how we got Zaxxon on the 2014 AtGames Colecovision Flashback, rightly or wrongly. I'm not a fan of that grave-robbing company, but hey, an extra game on the plug-n-play was nice. 

 

There once was a very short-lived tunnel runner on mobile called Zaxxon Escape. 

 

There was also a flooring product using the Zaxxon name for a while.   ? Zaxx-on, Zaxx-off! ? 

 

I always thought the game itself looked great, but was frustrating to play. Do some people's minds process the isometric view better than others? 

[+DrVenkman]

20 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

I always thought the game itself looked great, but was frustrating to play. Do some people's minds process the isometric view better than others? 

Same. Especially since we had the cassette version - really hard to rage-quit a game that takes you ten minutes to load again when you regret your decision and decide to try again.

 

The only trick I found that helps is to just fire continuously and try to compare/process both the “altimeter” graph on the left side of the screen as well as the point at which my shots are impacting any walls/obstacles on the right.  But yeah, it’s a tough game for sure. Put Blue Max into that same catergory.

[Flojomojo]

So the most recent Zaxxon trademark filing is quite long, and seems to reflect some kind of dispute. Not sure if this link will persist, so I'll screen shot it. I don't understand why Mark Thomann is listed on there. He's the CEO of the zombie brand-grabbing Dormitus (formerly River West) that holds the Coleco name. Does "correspondent" mean he was trying to prevent ownership of the Zaxxon name from reverting to Sega, who has been associated with it for 35 years? Or do they have some sort of arrangement between them? Not sure what Thomann brings to the table, other than being quick to grab an expiring trademark. His phone number is on there and I'm tempted to call up and ask. 

 

We need a lawyer to explain. See, lawyers can be good for something, guys! 

 

 

 

 

[+DrVenkman]

DISCLAIMER: IP law is not my primary practice area and I am not a trademark expert my any means, and this post does not constitute legal advice, nor does reading it on your part create or imply any attorney-client relationship. Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball!  

 

Having said that, it looks to me like Sega of Japan owns the mark as far as the USPTO is concerned. Thomann’s listing as “correspondent” merely means he’s been involved in recent disputes or proceedings involved with the mark and therefore is getting official notices from the USPTO with regard to filings and status updates. Basically I think it means Thomann tried to nab the mark, Sega of Japan came in and put the kibosh on it by reviving early registrations and/or proceedings and shut him down. Or so it looks to this “lawyer-but-not-an-IP-lawyer”. YMMV.