No Mattel or INTV title screens

[Jeffrey Bouchard]

Hello,

 

I enjoy all retro game products and plan on buying all 3 new flashbacks. I am just curious as to why there are no Mattel or INTV title screens on any of the new compilations such as Xbox or the flashback? This is just a question and is not a deal breaker for me, however, since Intellivision Productions owns the games and the original title screens were on the Intellivision Lives compilation for the PC, I do not understand why they are not included.

[+DZ-Jay]

Probably because Mattel is still a living company and still owns the name "Mattel Electronics." Intellivision Productions has ownership of the software, but not the Mattel brand.

[+intvsteve]

I can't speak for the XBOX/PS/GC compilations, etc.

 

As far as the Flashback, you do get title screens, but you won't see the "standard" Mattel ones. Why? I think the explanation is pretty simple.

 

• The FB is running with a slightly modified EXEC that replaces MATTEL ELECTRONICS PRESENTS and the Copr @ parts of the standard screen built into the EXEC
• The mod to the EXEC was likely necessary because:
  a) To put the Mattel stuff in probably would have required some weird licensing deal from the current Mattel corp
  b) Rights to those ROMs now belong to Intellivision Productions, so they are expressing their legal ownership of the copyright on those ROMs

IANAL, so the legalese aspect is supposition, but you get the drift.

 

Interestingly, and as a point of observation to this being a true emulator that's running the original ROMs in the Flashback, you will see that games which bypass the EXEC's default title screen still run the original ones, unmodified, AFAICT.

 

The modified EXEC is likely also the reason why the Intellivoice games don't emit the standard "Mattel Electronics presents..." voices, either. In fact... does it do that on a Super Video Arcade? I'll have to try that out....

[+JasonlikesINTV]

IANAL, so the legalese aspect is supposition, but you get the drift.

 

 

Sooo.....TINLA?

 

I had to look that one up, but I love all of your acronyms and initializations.

[Jeffrey Bouchard]

That makes sense. I just find it interesting that the ones that bypass the Exec still have the unmodified ones.

[+intvsteve]

That makes sense. I just find it interesting that the ones that bypass the Exec still have the unmodified ones.

To change those would have required modifying those ROMs individually.

• Changing each of those ROMs would have been risky and / or time consuming
• It would have also cost more time and money
• We probably would have complained

The EXEC tweak was likely necessary for the reasons listed earlier, and probably pretty simple: just substitute some bytes in place of the existing characters and BOOM! ALL the ROMs built around the original EXEC title screen are 'fixed'.