I just spent the last hour or so reading through this thread, most interesting.
More time has passed now, any news on this?
I find it very interesting, The Way of the Exploding Fist was a game I grew up with. Quite a well-known title in Europe; C64, Speccy & co were huge here, and I think an NES version of Exploding Fist could have sold well even in 1989 here, and thanks to the homecomputer-heritage even gain some attention by th very anti-console older gamers at the time.
Too bad the prototype is NTSC and runs glitchy on modded systems, so even the repro will probably reach a low percentage of European players.
Anyway, I hope Andrew Davie will have his game soon; maybe you could build him a simple cartridge now and send him the box, label etc later seperately when it is released? The man has been waiting so long, give him something to play.^^
btw, I just saw you also were responsible for Asterix and the Magic Cauldron on C64; another game I played when I was just a little kid.^^ I never figured out where to go and wen in circles, but for me it was fun anyway. Thanks for one of my dearest childhood-gaming-memories, Andrew!
Personally I am a friend of repros and always find it sad when an unreleased game is not made available to the public in some form; like Star Odyssey and Bill´s Tomato Game for the Genesis recently.
Moral issues are really everyone´s own concerns; the standards are too different. While on a legal level the company owning the copyright would be the ones to ask, I personally do not feel the slightest bit of guilt if they do not profit from it. The games are very old and outdated by today´s standards, and the companies themselve chose not to release it.
While I also do not think it is
neccessary to get a programmer´s permission (the product itself does have some historical value and needs to be preserved), at least when the game in question is not a breathtaking revolutionary piece of fine art but "just" another game or even a port, I do appreciate it if they are contacted about it and given the possibility to get a copy for themselves and have some input in the release if they want. A human being just has a more legit connection to the game he crafted than some obscure entity such as a company, being merely a tool to gain profit.
If someone like Andrew Davie is so enthusiastic about it, he more than deserves getting the fruit of his work.
I think most developers would be happy to know their unreleased games finally see some kind of release and is enjoyed by a few people. Copyrights and royalities aside, it must feel so much better to see the baby you spent so much work on getting at least a little bit of appreciation rather than staying dead and rotting away never to be seen by anyone else´s eyes.
Andrew is a special case because he is so easy to reach because of his activity here. For the many other developers that have not been asked, partially because people don´t care, partially because they are not easy to find and contact, I am sure they will find out someday when they are bored and remembering old times via the magic of Google. And it will most likely rather put a smile on their face than make them angry.
Of course, these are my personal thoughts, and based on my felings of right and wrong; nobody has to agree with them.
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MegaManFan, on Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:03 AM, said:
