ATARI 2600 homebrews and copyright

[Lord-Chaos]

Anyone knows which companies care or don´t care if you port games or use comic/movie characters in a homebrewn game?

 

As for game companies, some rest in peace since years, but some like EA still exist and they may not like their copyrighted games ported to a vintage system.

 

As for movie or comic characters I´ve heard that some companies will sue everyone who dares to use the names of their characters.

 

We are talking non-profit here of course,

 

Thimo

[Thomas Jentzsch]

As for movie or comic characters I´ve heard that some companies will sue everyone who dares to use the names of their characters.

Fox!

[Nukey Shay]

Any company will if they still have even a slight interest in it...because if they don't, they would lose that copyright. Therefore, if you are trying to get legal rights from any company, it's going to be pretty hard to convince them to license it for a dinky little 2600 game (which barely has any market at all).

 

Ones that would be most likely met with little or no opposition if you do so without permission would be generally any game that has already been cloned to death (Space Invaders, Pac Man, etc.)...but even that is no guarantee that they won't file a CAD on your butt.

[Snider-man]

As for movie or comic characters I´ve heard that some companies will sue everyone who dares to use the names of their characters.

Fox!

 

Heh. Yep. Both apes and surly drunken robots have seen a Fox C&D at times, eh? And I can understand why. After all, the Planet of the Apes movie did sooooo well at the box office. No? Well, at least Futurama is still a viable Fox commodity. No? Huh. Then I guess the Fox lawyers are simply jackals. Yep. That's it.

[sku_u]

If you are borrowing from a franchise character or other copyrighted material, chances are that someone will send out a cease and desist letter before long.

 

Fortunately, many homebrews come in way under the radar, so the bigger companies do not always take notice.

[Susuwatari]

I remember Stella-a-Sketch... Oh well

 

I guess I won't be expecting Thundercats game anytime soon. Heck, new Thundercats comic books are still coming out.

[Lord-Chaos]

I remember Stella-a-Sketch...  Oh well

 

I guess I won't be expecting Thundercats game anytime soon.  Heck, new Thundercats comic books are still coming out.

 

At least the ATARI ST got one Thundercats game (the one also available for C64, AMIGA and several other 8 Bits but not the ATARI 800 or 2600).

 

Anyone knows about Electronic Arts and old games ?

 

I heard that they lost the Bard´s Tale franchise some time ago because they did not use it , so the original programmer has it back.

What about M.U.L.E. , Archon , 7 Cities of Gold and others ???

 

Thimo

[Cootster]

There's supposed to be a new Bard's Tale for PC/PS2/etc. in development, I think, by the original creator.

 

And as for the others. They are all concepts way too good to die, and ahead of their time . . . Why EA hasn't used them is beyond me . . . They can afford to experiment a little by bringing something back . . . Heck, between the annual sports games, The Sims, and the Harry Potter license, they move way more than their fair share of product now . . .

 

Best bet to find a licensed character to build a game around would be to dig up something really old or from a company that went splat, only to have it's inventory lying unused.

 

In short, anything from the 80s is a definite no-go.

[TMR]

What about M.U.L.E. , Archon , 7 Cities of Gold and others ???

 

i was reading an interview with Danielle Berry about M.U.L.E. and she said that there was a new version planned but that the prospective publisher (EA, i think) wanted guns in there and she didn't so the entire project was cancelled. At a guess, EA doesn't own all the rights to it's old titles and the chances are that they were only licensing for the short term, so it'd be a case of chasing up the developers to see if the rights have reverted - for a random example, Cathryn Mataga has the rights for Shamus because she fairly recently developed the Gameboy version.

 

i can add a little comment about using trade marks; i released Millennium Assault on the C64 a while back and it's a Star Wars themed shoot-em-up - to date i've not heard a thing from Lucas's people about problems and i'm more than pleased to see that, if they are aware of it, they're being nice to me since it's not for profit and quite a nice little game. The Tomb Raider demo we did ended up being shown around at Eidos and they got in touch to say "ta very much for the free publicity!" =-)

[Lord-Chaos]

What about M.U.L.E. , Archon , 7 Cities of Gold and others ???

 

i was reading an interview with Danielle Berry about M.U.L.E. and she said that there was a new version planned but that the prospective publisher (EA, i think) wanted guns in there and she didn't so the entire project was cancelled. At a guess, EA doesn't own all the rights to it's old titles and the chances are that they were only licensing for the short term, so it'd be a case of chasing up the developers to see if the rights have reverted - for a random example, Cathryn Mataga has the rights for Shamus because she fairly recently developed the Gameboy version.

 

i can add a little comment about using trade marks; i released Millennium Assault on the C64 a while back and it's a Star Wars themed shoot-em-up - to date i've not heard a thing from Lucas's people about problems and i'm more than pleased to see that, if they are aware of it, they're being nice to me since it's not for profit and quite a nice little game. The Tomb Raider demo we did ended up being shown around at Eidos and they got in touch to say "ta very much for the free publicity!" =-)

 

What happened to the rest of Ozark software - anyone knows ? some of them must be still alive today and may be interested in the old games ?

 

Archon once was made into Archon Ultra by SSI, but this game was not so great.Maybe they have the license now, but I think SSI is pretty dead now, too.

 

Anyone knows who owns the EPYX licenses today ? Summer/Winter/World Games were great and Impossible Mission is a true classic (once was remade by Microprose as IM 2025, not that great) ?

 

Thimo

[Cootster]

Doesn't Activision own the Epyx rights now?

 

And as for SSI, yeah, they're defunct. WotC might very well own those rights, and in that case, don't even attempt an HB Archon, and hope that the Debasers of the Fuji don't end up developing it like MtG: Battlegrounds.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Doesn't Activision own the Epyx rights now?

 

No. Most of them belong to a company called "Alpha Omega Publications".

 

Archon belongs directly to Jon Freeman and Anne Westfall. They have been very friendly towards remakes of Archon so far.

 

Greetings,

Manuel