8 replies to this topic

[Jess Ragan]

Looking back, the one thing that really angers me about the golden age of video games is that American game companies were so quick to take total credit for games they only distributed in the United States. I DARE you to find the word "Namco" anywhere on a Pac-Man arcade machine. Midway did everything within their power to hide the game's roots... then added salt to the wound by releasing unauthorized sequels using code from the original. It's no wonder Namco quickly became tired of dealing with them, and chose to license their games through Atari instead.

Slightly less annoying is Sega's unjustified claim to the game Frogger. I was convinced for over a DECADE that Frogger was created by Sega, only to come to the realization that it actually belonged to Konami. You can imagine my confusion when I saw the name "Konami" on later Frogger games, like the one released for the Playstation. That took everything I THOUGHT I knew about Sega's style of game design and turned it on its head.

Was anyone else bothered by game companies taking all of the credit for games they didn't actually design? I know I can't be the only one.

JR

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Jess Ragan said:

Midway did everything within their power to hide the game's roots... then added salt to the wound by releasing unauthorized sequels using code from the original.  It's no wonder Namco quickly became tired of dealing with them, and chose to license their games through Atari instead.

Yep - although Bushnell-era Atari had a bone to pick with Namco for, of all things, making their own Breakout clones without authorization from Atari for the Japanese market.

The wheel turns all the time, it's just that different folks wind up on top of it - or on bottom - depending on how it's rolling.

I found one thing more annoying than Midway: Atari suing Bally, Magnavox, and everyone else under the sun for Pac-Man play-alike games that were, on average, better than Atari's own 2600 version of Pac-Man. I've always felt that had less to do with protecting a copyright than it did with "for God's sake, sue the superior titles off the market!"

[JB]

For what it's worth, Bally STILL claims they "created" PacMan.

[NE146]

Hey, you're speaking to the choir. Growing up all I HAD around me were the Japanese versions of games. I always knew Puckman was Namco, ditto with games like Pole Position, Dig Dug, Galaxian and of course other jap creations like Moon Patrol, Kangaroo, & Space Invaders. So I always thought it was hilarious when I'd hear or read things like.. "Atari engineers are busy creating new games like Kangaroo!" (I think this was on an episode of Starcade)

I mean some of them should've been obvious.. Look at Kangaroo and Dig Dug.. how 80's Japanese videogame can you get?! Or look at Moon Patrol. That is as UN-WILLIAMS-ISH as you're gonna find

But then again of course it worked the other way around too.. in the beginning, I thought TAITO created and published Defender

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[Ze_ro]

I always get annoyed with recent games that show multiple screens of company logo's when you start up... like Tony Hawk on the Dreamcast shows overly long animations for Activision, Neversoft and Trey-Arch. Neversoft made the game in the first place, and Trey-Arch ported it... but all Activision did was slap their name on it and market it. I guess they deserve some recognition, but I can easily see people getting confused and thinking that Activision was the company who actually programmed the game (after all, how many people have heard of Neversoft or Trey-Arch?)

I also think it's weird how some of the classic remakes are coming from odd companies... generally not the ones who made the game originally, such as Hasbro releasing Q*Bert a while back, and Activision releasing 2600 packs with Imagic games in them. Usually, it's because the company actually bought out the original, but it still seems weird somehow.

--Zero

[Mindfield]

Ze_ro said:

I always get annoyed with recent games that show multiple screens of company logo's when you start up... like Tony Hawk on the Dreamcast shows overly long animations for Activision, Neversoft and Trey-Arch. Neversoft made the game in the first place, and Trey-Arch ported it... but all Activision did was slap their name on it and market it. I guess they deserve some recognition, but I can easily see people getting confused and thinking that Activision was the company who actually programmed the game (after all, how many people have heard of Neversoft or Trey-Arch?)

I also think it's weird how some of the classic remakes are coming from odd companies... generally not the ones who made the game originally, such as Hasbro releasing Q*Bert a while back, and Activision releasing 2600 packs with Imagic games in them. Usually, it's because the company actually bought out the original, but it still seems weird somehow.

--Zero

And ironically -- disappointingly, even -- Infogrames, now Atari, is not releasing any updated classics or retro game packs. Just new games. It's a funny old world, after all.

Mind you, Atari suing competitors for copying Pac Man wasn't all that odd -- they had exclusive rights to create and/or distribute all Pac Man games released on home consoles and computers, so it stands to reason they'd want to crush competing derivatives -- even if they were superior. Hey ... it worked for Bill Gates.

[JB]

Mindfield said:

Ze_ro said:

I always get annoyed with recent games that show multiple screens of company logo's when you start up... like Tony Hawk on the Dreamcast shows overly long animations for Activision, Neversoft and Trey-Arch. Neversoft made the game in the first place, and Trey-Arch ported it... but all Activision did was slap their name on it and market it. I guess they deserve some recognition, but I can easily see people getting confused and thinking that Activision was the company who actually programmed the game (after all, how many people have heard of Neversoft or Trey-Arch?)

I also think it's weird how some of the classic remakes are coming from odd companies... generally not the ones who made the game originally, such as Hasbro releasing Q*Bert a while back, and Activision releasing 2600 packs with Imagic games in them. Usually, it's because the company actually bought out the original, but it still seems weird somehow.

--Zero

And ironically -- disappointingly, even -- Infogrames, now Atari, is not releasing any updated classics or retro game packs. Just new games. It's a funny old world, after all.

Anymore.

I've got a Combat and Warlords that beg to differ.
...
I also have the Hasbro Missile Command they reissued.

[Cafeman]

I agree! IN the 90's when I started to learn more about the history of videogames, thanks to the great articles by Steven Kent and others in Next Generation magazine and in books, I was astounded to realize that it was Namco who made Dig Dug, Pac-man, Pole Position, Galaga, and so many others. I never really thought about it until that point, I always thought it was Atari. I remember feeling a bit of anger over being "mislead". But I was also happy to read in these histories of the talented Atari employees too -- making Tempest, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, Asteroids, etc was no small accomplishment.

It also made me respect Namco as a company far more. I didn't like Namco for a little while because I saw them as a Sega imitator -- Sega comes out with VF, Namco does Tekken. Sega does Daytona, Namco does Ridge Racer. That's when I started to read & learn of Namco's past, and plus Soul Calibur really impressed me later on but that's a different subject.

[liveinabin]

Ah well, the Japanese had the last laugh. The NES could very well have been handled by Atari in the west, but Atari screwed it up and it wasn't.

I wonder what's going to happen now though, now that the Japanese game makers are running out of ideas. Is it time for the west to take it back? Or will we just make ever more anal WW2/FPS/RTS games