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Battlesphere Instructions?


AdeptRapier

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Because they like that the price of these are about $900... Instead of producing new copies or creating new software they make excuses and chose the lazy way to make money by making this game rare. That is why on e bay they sell reproductions and they are doing pretty well because most of the buyers are gamers they do not care to collect and pay an overpriced tag for a homebrew... 

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Personally i believe this team of the creators are just scam.. They try to make overpriced money from a game by making it rare to find. Do not forget it is just a homebrew. Unfortunately for them, e bay is full of sellers who sell reproductions of this, so actually there is still production of this game going on?

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They are just scam.. Too much value we have given to these people when at the same time there are programmers out there who work and create new titles without complaining and making very low profits but do what they love. One example is a german guy who has worked over the last 20 years and has given us titles like moon patrol for Vectrex etc.. Do not give value to one time hits creators, but to creators who have dedicated many years from their life to do much greater work and bring so many titles out to the public.

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20 minutes ago, Lucius2018 said:

Personally i believe this team of the creators are just scam.. They try to make overpriced money from a game by making it rare to find. Do not forget it is just a homebrew. Unfortunately for them, e bay is full of sellers who sell reproductions of this, so actually there is still production of this game going on?

The team who worked together to make Battleshpere put a lot of time and effort into the title and have every right to do with it as they please whether we like it or not. 

 

Every game cartridge or cd copied and sold without the permission of the copyright holder is still piracy (not just battlesphere) and it can hurt the wider community... spend some time on the forums and look into the wonderful work being done on things like the Atari ST ports, Homebrew ports like another world, 

previous and ongoing work by Songbird Productions then look into the shops that are still selling propper copies of the games.

 

If you want physical media you have to pay the  price, titles are still for sale here at Atari Age, songbird e.t.c, and in the UK i have bought jag and lynx games from Telegames (uk).

 

I say pay the price because I know BattleSphere is out of my price range when it pops up so I choose to play it via y**t*b* as a posted video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes, it's very easy to create a repro.  I've not made one myself (I misspoke in another post saying I was playing Battlesphere to test something, when I meant Battlemorph, and didn't realize until it was too late to edit.  You can tell from the rest of the comment I referred to the wrong game ?), but out of curiosity I gleaned all the instructions necessary including exact parts numbers and whatnot from a quick forum search, so if you don't have one and want one, you can learn to solder in about 30 minutes (Cartridges don't require any advanced soldering skills at all.  It's no harder than building Lego IMHO.) and get all the parts and tools on eBay for under $150 total.  If that's still too hard, you can probably find a friend of a friend who can build you one on these forums via private messages (I'm not going to do this, so don't ask me.  I'm not morally against reproductions in general on things that actually are abandonware, but I don't feel great about producing something for others that the original creators still clearly care about, and I don't have the time anyway).  The only people this is truly inconveniencing are collectors trying to get that non-existent official complete set, and while I don't have anything against collecting, it's not my cup of tea and I don't particularly sympathize there either.

 

Having the instructions would make it a bit easier to use a reproduction or an emulator to try out Battlesphere (Start the lawsuits: I did briefly play this game on an emulator.  It's fun, but complex), and I personally think there's value from a preservation/historical point of view in having the manual and a box image out there on the web, but the rights holders have chosen to protect their IP, and that's their right.  As noted several times, they aren't allowed to make money off of it for anything other than for their preferred charities, so I don't even particularly disagree with their decision here: You're essentially stealing from charity if you buy/play a reproduction as long as they're pulling these out from under their beds every now and then.  Even if they were making money, no one's getting rich selling $1000 cartridges ~once or twice a year on eBay.  I'd be a bit miffed at that point, or if they start actually suing & collecting on people making reproductions for their own personal use or trying it out on emulators (Come on: we ALL copied mp3s in college/high-school/etc.  Turn a blind eye), but maybe they like having the app with the most mystique on Jaguar, maybe they have motivations that they want to remain wholly their own.  They created something, and I think it's reasonable that creators get to decide how they distribute their creations.  That doesn't come with any inherent obligation to explain it to us, even if we don't agree with them.

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5 hours ago, cubanismo said:

As noted several times, they aren't allowed to make money off of it for anything other than for their preferred charities, so I don't even particularly disagree with their decision here: You're essentially stealing from charity if you buy/play a reproduction as long as they're pulling these out from under their beds every now and then.

TL;DR version: want to do good? Don't waste your money on Battlesphere and all the BS that's associated with it. Buy a game from your favorite homebrew developer instead, and donate the rest to a charity of your chosing.

Edited by Zerosquare
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48 minutes ago, Zerosquare said:

TL;DR version: want to do good? Don't waste your money on Battlesphere and all the BS that's associated with it. Buy a game from your favorite homebrew developer instead, and donate the rest to a charity of your chosing.

This whole charity bullshit (from the developers, not the community) is long since played out.  Stephanie Wukovitz (lovely person, the only one from the 4-play group that wasn't an utter twat in real life and who was also the most shit upon BY life) had a kidney transplant due to diabetis complications.  Hence the charity donation.  Well guess what - I and many others embarked on a multi-year campaign of running 5ks, doing the charity bit, donating to research for HER not this game.  A charity donation should be done for charitable reasons, not to beat their collective dicks chests and scream "Look how awesome I am".  They act like they cured cancer from selling a few thousand games.  Fuck 'em.  Scott divorced Stephanie mid-way through the kidney loss, T-bird was a notorious megalomaniac, and Tom Harker ripped off the Jaguar community for thousands of dollars for undelivered CatBoxes.

 

Again - the only saint in all of this, is Stephanie.  I;m glad she's moved on and away from all this garbage.  Keep this stuff in mind when thinking about the great 4-Play, Scatalogic.  Perfect name for them - they were 75% then 66.66% shit after good old Tom left.

 

Scott, Doug, one more final kiss my ass.

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1 hour ago, Stephen said:

This whole charity bullshit (from the developers, not the community) is long since played out.  Stephanie Wukovitz (lovely person, the only one from the 4-play group that wasn't an utter twat in real life and who was also the most shit upon BY life) had a kidney transplant due to diabetis complications.  Hence the charity donation.  Well guess what - I and many others embarked on a multi-year campaign of running 5ks, doing the charity bit, donating to research for HER not this game.  A charity donation should be done for charitable reasons, not to beat their collective dicks chests and scream "Look how awesome I am".  They act like they cured cancer from selling a few thousand games.  Fuck 'em.  Scott divorced Stephanie mid-way through the kidney loss, T-bird was a notorious megalomaniac, and Tom Harker ripped off the Jaguar community for thousands of dollars for undelivered CatBoxes.

 

Again - the only saint in all of this, is Stephanie.  I;m glad she's moved on and away from all this garbage.  Keep this stuff in mind when thinking about the great 4-Play, Scatalogic.  Perfect name for them - they were 75% then 66.66% shit after good old Tom left.

 

Scott, Doug, one more final kiss my ass.

I used to follow Steph on her website before "blog" became a word. Or maybe around the time that word was coined. Anyway, she seemed nice.

I wouldn't say I have very nice things to say about Scott. I think I tried to tweet him once. I mentioned the CatBoxes which of course most Jag followers remember. I didn't accuse him of anything, (Tom Parker deserves the blame for that) but he sure responded like I did.

I don't know, just seems like a very bitter person without much provocation...

T-Bird was the most vocal person on JI2 back in the day in regards to promoting the game they were working on back in 1999. I don't remember much about him honestly...

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On 7/28/2020 at 7:54 AM, Phill.T said:

A. Simple. To persuade Hasbro to release the Jaguar into the public domain, 4Play offered that all profits from the game would be donated to charity. Because of this agreement, any company selling BattleSphere must also give their profits to charity. No 3rd party producers seem charitable enough to accept this agreement and produce BattleSphere.

Did Hasbro end up releasing all the Jaguar IP to the public domain? For example, the BIOS/firmware?

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No. The only thing we got from them was a very terse press release saying basically:

 

- developers can release Jaguar software without Hasbro's approval (great - they had been doing that for several years already anyways)

- they shouldn't use the Atari trademark (well, duh)

- Hasbro has zero interest in the Jaguar (duh again)

 

Nothing else. The BS guys made a big deal out of this, but in practice it didn't make any difference.

Edited by Zerosquare
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I'd run into that before... It is a bit confusing, because the initial statement seems to imply something much broader:

 

Quote

it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar

 

Working on emulators, the Atari ones we have done so far (Lynx, 2600) don't need any firmware, so it hasn't been an issue.

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 I was once annoyed/pissed off by the charity sales angle of Battlesphere, as it surely seemed like Scatologic had a huge stash of NIB Battlesphere that they were hoarding, and slowly releasing on Ebay to maximize the amount of money made on each one. That was their right to sell it however they wanted to, but alot of people really wanted to play this game, and this was many many years ago, probably 15 years by now.

 

Now that I have owned the game for many years and don't have the anxiety of wanting to acquire it, I look at it a little differently. It wasn't always difficult to get a hold of, and it wasn't always expensive. There was a time early on when it was priced like any other CIB Jaguar cartridge. Now, it's a rather expensive and rare collectible. 

 

What I've seen in our video game hobby that's more annoying than the games that become collectible and expensive, is inevitably so many people get upset and uppity about something they 'feel' is too expensive to buy. That something is inherently unfair about a game that has become expensive, so something 'should be done about it'. Either demands are made for the developer to do another print run of the game (Zaku for the LYNX) which they have no obligation to do so, or that all of a sudden it's only righteous and fair for pirated copies to be manufactured. I already see people on this thread basically saying as much, that since Scatologic isn't willing to produce more copies, that making pirated copies is the right thing to do.

 

There are rare games on every game console, and this happens on each one of them. It's almost the norm now on Ebay, that if you have a game for sale over $50, the sellers are putting pictures up of the opened game cartridges showing the original PCB etc..., because piracy is so rampant. Sorry you weren't around when the game was cheaper to buy, that's the advantage of the people who were around in the scene at that time. That doesn't give you the right to make demands, or make money off someone else's work and IP. 

 

There  are rare and expensive items in just about any hobby, and that's healthy. The unhealthy part of a hobby is always the fakes and counterfeits. I got a big dose of reality for you, Scatologic is not the bad guy because they won't produce new copies of a 20 year old game just for you. 

 

You see this same behavior in Magic: The Gathering. I've been playing that game since 1994, and I wasn't early enough to get any Black Lotus or Mox's. Yeah, I wish I had those cards of course, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars, any one of those cards could buy the whole Jaguar CIB library ok? But, I don't feel it's my right to make my own fakes and sell them on ebay because Wizards of the Coast won't make any more of them.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Cobra Kai said:

 I was once annoyed/pissed off by the charity sales angle of Battlesphere, as it surely seemed like Scatologic had a huge stash of NIB Battlesphere that they were hoarding, and slowly releasing on Ebay to maximize the amount of money made on each one. That was their right to sell it however they wanted to, but alot of people really wanted to play this game, and this was many many years ago, probably 15 years by now.

 

Now that I have owned the game for many years and don't have the anxiety of wanting to acquire it, I look at it a little differently. It wasn't always difficult to get a hold of, and it wasn't always expensive. There was a time early on when it was priced like any other CIB Jaguar cartridge. Now, it's a rather expensive and rare collectible. 

 

What I've seen in our video game hobby that's more annoying than the games that become collectible and expensive, is inevitably so many people get upset and uppity about something they 'feel' is too expensive to buy. That something is inherently unfair about a game that has become expensive, so something 'should be done about it'. Either demands are made for the developer to do another print run of the game (Zaku for the LYNX) which they have no obligation to do so, or that all of a sudden it's only righteous and fair for pirated copies to be manufactured. I already see people on this thread basically saying as much, that since Scatologic isn't willing to produce more copies, that making pirated copies is the right thing to do.

 

There are rare games on every game console, and this happens on each one of them. It's almost the norm now on Ebay, that if you have a game for sale over $50, the sellers are putting pictures up of the opened game cartridges showing the original PCB etc..., because piracy is so rampant. Sorry you weren't around when the game was cheaper to buy, that's the advantage of the people who were around in the scene at that time. That doesn't give you the right to make demands, or make money off someone else's work and IP. 

 

There  are rare and expensive items in just about any hobby, and that's healthy. The unhealthy part of a hobby is always the fakes and counterfeits.

I 100% agree with this, its their game they can do what they want with it. Same as I can with mine.

Quote

I got a big dose of reality for you, Scatologic is not the bad guy because they won't produce new copies of a 20 year old game just for you. 

I also 100% agree with this. That is not the reason they're the bad guy.

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4 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

I 100% agree with this, its their game they can do what they want with it.

Yes of course.  What's mine is mine and all that.  However, I and others also have a right to an opinion that certain personal choices are rude.  I personally feel the same about of print books that aren't in the public domain.  Some people like to get on here and other places of discussion and vent about frustration over that behavior they feel is rude.  They also have a right to do that, even to the point of being rude themselves.  Making a reproduction can reasonably be viewed as political protest in this context: They are so upset by the simplistic unconditional rights endowed on creators by current copyright law that they knowingly break those laws, though of course now I'm mixing law and mortality up, which is always a mess.

 

My point being, I don't think people's moral rights when it comes to intangible things like copyright are anywhere near as cut and dry as the prevailing law or the above comment implies.  We all want creators to be encouraged, respected, properly compensated, and to control how their creations are used to some debatable degree, but does anyone anywhere get a warm fuzzy feeling watching those stupid "PIRACY IS THEFT!" infomercials the MPAA forces on us from time to time?  To say creators have zero motal obligation and responsibility for their creations is just as naive as requiring them to produce more of them IMHO.  I tried to thread the needle with a situation-specific interpretation in my prior comment in this thread, but @Zerosquare's response made me question it immediately.  Context does matter.  It's nice to have simple hard rules, but if things like this were actually that simple, we would have declared law bug free in the iron age or something and replaced judges with Z80s  long ago.

 

I realize this post itself is on a fine line between video game discussion and politics, and I went back and self-edited it a few times to remove political references as much as possible.  Sorry if it's over the line mods.  Do your thing if needed.

Edited by cubanismo
Fixed a few formatting errors, no prose changed.
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On 7/29/2020 at 4:34 PM, Stephen said:

This whole charity bullshit (from the developers, not the community) is long since played out.  Stephanie Wukovitz (lovely person, the only one from the 4-play group that wasn't an utter twat in real life and who was also the most shit upon BY life) had a kidney transplant due to diabetis complications.  Hence the charity donation.  Well guess what - I and many others embarked on a multi-year campaign of running 5ks, doing the charity bit, donating to research for HER not this game.  A charity donation should be done for charitable reasons, not to beat their collective dicks chests and scream "Look how awesome I am".  They act like they cured cancer from selling a few thousand games.  Fuck 'em.  Scott divorced Stephanie mid-way through the kidney loss, T-bird was a notorious megalomaniac, and Tom Harker ripped off the Jaguar community for thousands of dollars for undelivered CatBoxes.

 

Again - the only saint in all of this, is Stephanie.  I;m glad she's moved on and away from all this garbage.  Keep this stuff in mind when thinking about the great 4-Play, Scatalogic.  Perfect name for them - they were 75% then 66.66% shit after good old Tom left.

 

Scott, Doug, one more final kiss my ass.

Say what you want about the Scatalogic folks in regards to their interactions with the Jag community, but leave their personal lives out of it. The story you're telling is a little different than what I heard, and it's most likely that none of us know the whole story. Regardless, their personal lives are their own, and I wish them all well in life. Gossip like this just doesn't belong in a discussion anywhere.

 

 

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7 hours ago, Sauron said:

Say what you want about the Scatalogic folks in regards to their interactions with the Jag community, but leave their personal lives out of it. The story you're telling is a little different than what I heard, and it's most likely that none of us know the whole story. Regardless, their personal lives are their own, and I wish them all well in life. Gossip like this just doesn't belong in a discussion anywhere.

Apologies if any of it was secret, but it was not.  They all had so much online interaction back then, that all of this was out there.  It's not like I revealed personal phone conversations.  But I see where you are coming from.  It's just videogames after all, we should be playing them for the fun they bring.

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34 minutes ago, JagChris said:

I came online about 2003. To think when that blink of an eye goes by again how many of us will still be around? 

 

L

Got my Jag in 94 - found out about it from VERY early online sites.  I was on the old redsun.net for a while.  I know Kevin Manne is still around - he's a real old school guy.  Wes Powell - haven't heard from him in many many years.  I remember he wanted to call his website "Buff Jag" :)  Don't recall what it ended up being named.

 

Love this forum - it seriously re-ignited my 8-bit collecting.

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1 hour ago, Stephen said:

Got my Jag in 94 - found out about it from VERY early online sites.  I was on the old redsun.net for a while.  I know Kevin Manne is still around - he's a real old school guy.  Wes Powell - haven't heard from him in many many years.  I remember he wanted to call his website "Buff Jag" :)  Don't recall what it ended up being named.

 

Love this forum - it seriously re-ignited my 8-bit collecting.

Wasn't the redsun.net site the original Jaguar Interactive? I found JI2 shortly after I got out of the military, in early 1997. Prior to that my Jag discussion area was all in the rec.games.video.atari newsgroup. Kevin still shows up here every now and then, but I haven't heard anything at all from Wes in many, many years as well. Sometimes I still miss the unfounded optimism many of us had for the Jag back then.

 

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16 hours ago, Sauron said:

Wasn't the redsun.net site the original Jaguar Interactive? I found JI2 shortly after I got out of the military, in early 1997. Prior to that my Jag discussion area was all in the rec.games.video.atari newsgroup. Kevin still shows up here every now and then, but I haven't heard anything at all from Wes in many, many years as well. Sometimes I still miss the unfounded optimism many of us had for the Jag back then.

Yeah - I miss the Jag Interactive days.  The forum software left a lot to be desired, but it sure was cool for a while when new games were still coming out, cheats were being discovered,etc.

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