Spectrum Game News
Some snippets of Spectrum game news , via the RT forum and micro mart if you guys are interested....
http://www.retro-trader.com/forum/index.php?showforum=155
and for the critics amongst you , you will also take note that we have not withdrawn the 500 plus games we have licensed , we reserve the right to if business needs call for it , but after withdrawing some intially , we have now decided that at this point there is no need (as long as you all go out and buy these new discs of course :0) which I can reveal will only be ?4.99 a go , and have menu driven , screen shot , automated emulator systems , so easy to load and play) and will cover Spectrum , C64 and Amiga games , all licensed all legal , and all good cheap to buy , and great to play fun , so hopefully Mel will not give me his usual ear bashing !! Hope they meet with your approval , and the full line appears soon.
http://www.retro-trader.com/forum/index.php?showforum=155
and for the critics amongst you , you will also take note that we have not withdrawn the 500 plus games we have licensed , we reserve the right to if business needs call for it , but after withdrawing some intially , we have now decided that at this point there is no need (as long as you all go out and buy these new discs of course :0) which I can reveal will only be ?4.99 a go , and have menu driven , screen shot , automated emulator systems , so easy to load and play) and will cover Spectrum , C64 and Amiga games , all licensed all legal , and all good cheap to buy , and great to play fun , so hopefully Mel will not give me his usual ear bashing !! Hope they meet with your approval , and the full line appears soon.
Post edited by Retro-Soft on
Comments
lol
i dont :)
For a fiver I can play the games I already have, on an emulator that's provided with them (which I already have). I suspect that I'm pretty much in the same boat as almost every other Speccy enthusiast. It's not like you're selling originals to be played on original hardware.
Your emulator cannot possibly be more accurate than the current crop of emulators, and is unlikely to offer anything new - and the main "best" emulators are all free with one exception. The vast majority of us already have the "denied" games. Aside from having "legal" copies of the games, there's not a lot of incentive here. As the majority of WOS is in a legal grey-area, due to having expressed permission for only a handful of games, I doubt that any legal issues will bring much weight to bear.
What *is* the incentive for me to buy any of these? I really can't see this venture as being successful, and it looks like yet another "jump on the retro-bandwagon" schemes.
D.
Necros.
If no-one buys these discs, will "business needs" then call for you to deni...erm, "withdraw" all these 500+ old games? (And do you think anyone would really care if you do?)
How many discs do you plan/expect to sell?
How many different Spectrum discs are you planning to release and how many games will be on each?
Could you give us an indication of how many TAP downloads you've sold at 99p a shot, or would that be bad business practice to reveal these stats?
There is a load going over to OZ for example , and India , all over the globe , bringing it to people who might never have heard of the spectrum before , so I hope it will do more good than harm , and as I have told you many times the licenses are better in my hands than some of the big companies believe me , I have been dealing with many of them for the last year...I know....
The only people I am going after , are the ones who sell the discs with X thousand on them on ebay and places like that , its wrong , it endangers what you guys have done here , and its just plain piracy , so you might have noticed a lack of them on ebay. We cannot stop ever single disc , but we are , and will get the bulk of them , I know where most of them come from anyway , one supplier , who is going to get a nasty shock sooner or later as well.
Anyway as ever I hope you will give me your general support , as the aim is to bring out the NEW spectrum games on the discs as well as just the old classics , in fact even on disc one you will find some newer games !
Plus there will be some games not even on here (WOS) , for example I do have some master 3" discs of a whole companies games , none which are on WOS , and in fact I have the only known copies (as far as I know ) on loan from the original company , so hopefully in the later discs there might be something for everyone.
Plus there will be some extras on the discs , nothing too clever , but the odd interview / review of games , maps of games etc. , done by the authors just for the discs ! So there is new stuff on the disc also.
Hope you do actually like them !
Plus, from my point of view - the best games made aren't available to you. So what incentive is there for me to buy the CD? I have never touched any other systems, so those games are lost on me straight away.
Besides, a quick google can find the games and emulators anyway.
It's OK saying 'we ned your support', but what you are actually saying is 'we need your money' - which I am not prepared to give.
Also, I like the way you have taken credit for the decline in ebay CD's. Thats very nice of you. It's not as if I haven't done anything there. Like getting the backing of 2 major companies if my initial email to the sellers fails.
Or have I misunderstood and the contents of those 3" master disks are going to be uploaded to WOS soon?
The disc isnt aimed at people like us, its aimed at like he says the average guy who hasnt a clue about emulators or games. Most of my mates havent a clue about that sort of thing and the odd one may think 'ha ha i remember those old games' when they see a disc like this selling in the shop.
But on the other hand people buying up the rights to these games and then selling them, its just a pity that all of us who have made retro popular again now see many people profit from this.
Retro Gamer used to moan about emulators/images yet in the old RG they used to have an advert from some company illegally selling so many emulators/images on different cd's which was very amusing !
However if these discs dont sell too much will the games then all suddenly be denied to try to boost sales ?
Any new games from the Speccy i'll certainly buy (as long as i dont have to buy 48 other ones i already have on a cd) but for me personally to see some people try to benefit from the retro boom, hmm tough one really.
Be interesting to see what happens with those rare ones which arent on WOS, will we be forced to buy a cd of 50 games just to get our hands on these ? If they were selling those on their own i would buy these.
Not so. Millions of Spectrums were sold back in the day, and who knows how many illegal clones. The WoS fora have 350 or so active users. Clearly the discs are not aimed at us hardcore Spectrum fans but at those who had one back in the day and but wouldn't particularly want to seek out Spectrum sites on the internet. I think a lot of people are going to be shocked when they discover Spectrum games are still being written today. :)
A number of my newer games for a start. Hardcore retro gamers will have seen the games I write for Cronosoft or make available for download on my website, but I see this as a way of introducing some of my more bizarre titles to a slightly more mainstream audience. Very few gamers, modern or retro, will have seen anything like The Fantastic Mister Fruity, Loco Bingo or Gamex the Games Exchange ever before. Let's show the world that Spectrum games can be far more original than this modern 3d console nonsense!
I spent a couple of days compiling and writing some background material. I don't know how much of it will be used, but the majority of it was written specifically for the compilation.
Egghead Website
Arcade Game Designer
My itch.io page
I know that they aren't as high quality (they're BASIC) as the games say Jonathan creates but I was presented with the opportunity to get 'em
released and I took it.
I ain't expecting huge profits and whatever I do make for them I
consider a bonus, after all, they wern't made with the intention
of commercial release. Hell, a profit of 50p or so is still a result to me.
Wether this makes me a good or bad person, I ain't sure and I'm also
aware that seeing as I'm in on it my opinion may be of little value.
I know you are still prolifically developing games, Jonathan, but you are one of the precious few. I can understand why people buy your games from Cronosoft, because they get lovingly crafted new games on lovingly crafted cassettes with lovingly crafted artwork etc. CDs (CD-Rs?) with a load of old games and the odd new one hidden away on them will not have the same appeal. Certainly if there are, say, 50 games on a CD, that means an author of one of the games will get less than 1/50th of the royalties for each CD sold, so I don't think anyone is likely to make a fortune here.
I don't like the way Retro Soft comes across with this attitude that he's doing us all a big favour, because he's not doing it for the love of Spectrum games, he's doing it for the money, just like everything else he sells at his websites are being sold for the money. I think he's being naive if he thinks he can make money out of old Spectrum games, but nonetheless that's what he is trying to do.
The 'retro craze' wouldn't exist without the hard work of WoS, the TZX preservation team, and numerous other individuals who contribute their time (and money) to keeping old computers alive, so people with these retro online shops are just jumping on the bandwagon, plain and simple.
In the 90s, these games were defunct but now, with mobile phones et al coupled with retro being in-vogue, they are potential money spinners and greedy people are bound to show up.
It would be unfortunate if that were the case although I can't say I'd mind if the original developers received some royalties.
Ta,
Xeno
hes good at ranting
normally does the whole ranting of everybody in #speccy P:
Fogarty Lee - that comment is a little unfair , I did not say we were the only ones doing it , but we ARE registered VERO owners on ebay , we do have permission from the C64 owners to work on their behalf also , and we do get cancelled up to 30-40 sellers a day , so we do put the time and effort in MOST days on this.
I know time and time again we are going to get flack , but there is interest in the discs from many many retailers worldwide , the only minor thing delaying the first couple of discs is we are waiting on the PEGI rating registration , then they will be out. If I was just doing the retro discs for the money , not for the fact I WANT to get them out , I WANT to support the authors who have put their faith in me , I would have not bothered , this is about much more than this , and to just go over a post made a while back , the BIG news we had hoped we were weeks away from announcing nearly a year ago , did not happen ONLY because a certain major international company which due to NDA's I cannot give details on , wanted several hundred thousand pounds upfront for royality permissions , which of course no one would pay , so that project was shelved , but I have kept my promise to the authors even though that one to us was broken , and have / will get them into the shops still (this despite being let down by a second international publisher - hence putting my own money where my mouth is) . PLUS there is still something else on the horizon now , as you may or may not know the company is Nintendo Dev registered , we have one or more GBA games coming out and DS on the Horizon , the company has and will grow way beyond the original remit of licensing retro games , and we may still have something good to pull out of the bag for you yet. Believe me or not , thats up to you , but the people who have met me , and know me , know the truth. So thanks to the people who have supported us.
But like others have said people like 'us' and WOS have made retro games cool again, many more people have got into it but because of it getting popular again people are just looking to make money.
It is good you havent denied those games but i have a feeling some day soon you will if sales arent good etc.
Again any new games you sell etc i think everyone here would be happy to hear and to buy its just repackaging old games is the killer. Just seems you want to have a chunk of profit from the retro scene. Wouldnt be so bad if you admitted that.
I will say fair play to you though for replying to stuff on this thread which is obviously on the whole negative.
He's certainly still not attempted to answer any of my simple questions and points.
He's just posted again saying he can't explain anything properly due to "NDAs" (gosh, isn't the big scary business world just soooooo full of red tape!), and claims that companies asked him for hundreds of pounds upfront right at the end of negotiations (to republish Spectrum games or what!? get real!), and more bullshit about how he's not doing it for the money but because he cares oh-so-much about the authors (or something).
The talk about DS and GBA stuff is irrelevant and is an attempt to avoid the issues.
I'd like to know if he has paid Speccy game authors ANY money IN ADVANCE for licensing their games, because he seems to be making out that it has cost him a fortune already ('putting his money where his mouth is' and all that).
Why can't he name the company that he claims have loaned him their entire catalogue of games on 3" discs, ALL of which are unavailable at WoS or elsewhere (Codies? Rare? Fred Smith's Homebrew Software Co?). What are they going to do if he names them? Sue him for thousands of pounds? Mummy, hold my hand, the big corporations are scaring me!
He claims that people who've met him and know him know the truth (I guess NDAs don't apply to everyone then) so perhaps one of these special enlightened people could explain some things a bit better to us riff-raff because the man himself clearly doesn't want to.
What irks me a little about this thread, and earlier discussions, is that only Spectrum games ever get denied. I visit several retro sites, including C64 and CPC, and none of them have ever needed to remove games by Retro-Soft, or even had any discussion going about it. And now we hear that there'a hugh take-down affair going on at eBay and several hundred new titles potentially up for denial. Why are Speccy titles treated so differently?
If almost feels like we're digging our own graves just by being responsive to C&D requests and every other platform gets away with it :(
i dont know hugh take down
and whys he having an affair?
Considering that, supposedly, there's lots of support worldwide for these discs, I'm wondering why, exactly, you can't divulge what's on them? The NDA you mentioned seems to apply to something else entirely and we've actually had a couple of people post here going "Yeah, my games'll be on there". Not to mention the fact you seem to be indicating that everything is pretty much set in stone at this point, with distributors and retailers practically falling over themselves to sell this stuff.
Instead of riling everyone up with these "W00t! We haev teh biggest Spetcrum news eva!!!1!!!1!" posts every couple of months could you just give us some hard and fast details instead? We are, after all, talking about some old Speccy games for heaven's sake, not nuclear missile blueprints.
http://video-games.listings.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-Retro-Gaming_W0QQfromZR4QQsacatZ11988QQsocmdZListingItemList
ADJB
Claims to have every C64 game - Over 3,000. As there are over 17,000 titles listed in Gamebase64, I think he is missing a few!
It's quiet simple to me. Speccy games and the game programmers were (and still are) the most innovative and accomplished of all programmers throughout the 80's and their games were supremely crafted works of art, crammed into a mere memory morcel which most other platform developers simply could not comprehend.
What's more the speccy fan-base is quiet frankly flourishing and is a force to be reconned with. Thanks to WOS we have mobilised an army of thousands intent on preserving all that was (and still is) great about this 8-bit marvel. The greedy money-makers such as Retro Shaft just want to undo all the good that has been achieved for the sake of a few fast bucks and shaft us all. The very same people who made that company what it is. Take away the retro and you take away their software lifeblood.
Stay united, stay real and WOS and it's content and members will be around long after Retro Shaft have lost the so-called ?000's of setup costs.
Well, i can't agree with your logic (since i'm a C64 programmer and therefore you're saying i suck) but reason really is quite (as opposed to quiet) simple; most of the C64 game archives are run by members or former members of the C64 cracking scene; the word "copyright" usually produces the odd snigger here and there and cease and desist orders tend to not quite generate the effect they're meant to because these people were pirating the games the first time around.
In the case of Gamebase64 (whose archive is probably the closest equivalent of the WOS one) they do remove titles that are denied and have done in the past but i notice that WOS holds copies of a lot of titles that are denied to the C64 community so it works both ways; on the C64 side of things, all the Hewson, Epyx, First Star and Commodore titles are denied so, whilst the latter of those four obviously has no bearing here, games like the Boulder Dash series, Uridium, Impossible Mission, Spy Vs. Spy, Zynaps, Summer/Winter/California Games and more are available here but not in their C64 incarnation.
Cease and desists are bit of a lottery; some companies will cover all their bases whilst others will, for reasons best known to themselves, only aim for one platform (like Paul McKenna or First Star for example) and i've even received one over the name of one of my "recently" released 8-bit games.
I HAVE placed a lot of my personal money into a lot of game projects we have had no external support , my risk , and my (long term) return or loss , I have never made out that profit will not be made by me , authors , shops , etc.
As per the other post , C64 , spectrum , amiga 'collections' on ebay are targetted , but not 24/7 , so some always get through , just like the market DVD film pirates etc. does not mean it is right , or C&E are not trying to stop them but all reasources are limited in time and effort and money for any company.
A selection of the INTIAL spectrum games signed to us were asked to be removed when this initially started because the companies which were involved with us asked us to have exclusive (as much as practical) rights to the games , when this deal fell through we stopped this practise , hence why no more since , as above I reserve the LEGAL right to do so to licensed / contracted games , but have no desire to. I dont know why people think I want to destroy the retro scene ?? They need to get out of their bedrooms a bit more I think.
Tell you what you guys show us all your wages slips , your mortgage payments , credit card bills , etc. I will tell you our account details , sales figures etc.
NDA's - now anyone who has any business knowledge would know these cannot be broken if you want to stay in business , and have trust and faith from other companies in the future , and want to keep your house. These are legally binding contracts with multi-million pound companies so do the maths , sorry no details on what I cannot tell you.
I mistakely made some statements on this forum originally thinking spectrum fans , would support spectrum projects in all their forms , but it was shown not to be the case. I once again thank the authors and users who have supported us in this venture.