Toki Prototype For 7800 Discovered!

[Shawn]

On 12/24/2019 at 2:08 AM, Kosmic Stardust said:

 The Genesis port (going ape spit) has similar assets from the arcade but the levels are completely reeesigned so it plays like a poorly made hack.

To you that is.

[Shawn]

On 12/24/2019 at 6:03 AM, Lost Dragon said:

THIS.

 

I know poor health put paid to Colin Porch ever finishing Head Over Heels II on the Atari ST some years ago and there's nothing quite like life to throw a real game changing event your way with no prior warning..

 

It may well be Willard is facing real world priorities that have meant any hobbyist work is the last thing on his mind.

 

That's the thing though, Willard isn't and hasn't done anything with the binary found on the HDD, others have done all the work with this title. He just found a zip file on a HDD and gave it to a couple people and they did all the added work polishing it up and converting it from PAL to NTSC.

[Tempest]

It appears that Willard may indeed be unreachable.  Are there any other avenues we can try?  Friends of his maybe?

[Greg2600]

4 hours ago, Shawn said:

That's the thing though, Willard isn't and hasn't done anything with the binary found on the HDD, others have done all the work with this title. He just found a zip file on a HDD and gave it to a couple people and they did all the added work polishing it up and converting it from PAL to NTSC.

All the more reason to justify releasing it at this point.  You had quality work done by enthusiasts for not. 

 

3 hours ago, Tempest said:

It appears that Willard may indeed be unreachable.  Are there any other avenues we can try?  Friends of his maybe?

Well, shouldn't his own words (below) be worth something in all this?  He said publicly, numerous times, the intention was to finish it up and release it.  While a cart release where someone might make a profit may be inappropriate, I'd think releasing the finished ROM is.  He clearly wasn't fond of having the games slip into private, never to be seen.  While it is still quite sad that the other roms they found I assume are not shared at all, and perhaps sharing this rom now could imperil those....Like someone said a few weeks ago, it's literally been years now with little or no contact.  I feel like the "team involved" should set some type of deadline, and if contact cannot be made, then release it. 

On 1/28/2015 at 8:31 PM, Willard said:

We bought several test department and development computers on ebay. Some of them were duds with nothing more than test reports on them. As we bought all the computers that were sold around that time we won some and we lost some but overall it was worthwhile as we found some great stuff and were able to prevent it from becoming lost or ending up in a private collectoin.

On 1/28/2015 at 10:03 PM, Willard said:

Like I said we are not sure what can be done with the game until more analysis is done in regard to how feasible it is to get onto cart. But a cart release plus an eventual ROM would be reasonable imo.

 

I did a small comparison of toki a few day ago out of curiosity just to see how the versions stack up. Graphically it's interesting how Atari omitted certain details (likely due to hardware limitations) but also tried to add a little more detail in other ways to make up for it. In regard to level design and game play they did a pretty impressive job getting the arcade game on the 7800 with few compromises.

 

[Lost Dragon]

On 12/25/2019 at 1:01 PM, Shawn said:

 

That's the thing though, Willard isn't and hasn't done anything with the binary found on the HDD, others have done all the work with this title. He just found a zip file on a HDD and gave it to a couple people and they did all the added work polishing it up and converting it from PAL to NTSC.

Ahhh I see.

 

So, if Willard himself is unreachable (for whatever reason),  what about the people he passed the code onto?

 

Is there no other paper trail to follow at this point?

[Lost Dragon]

On 12/25/2019 at 6:01 PM, Greg2600 said:

All the more reason to justify releasing it at this point.  You had quality work done by enthusiasts for not. 

 

Well, shouldn't his own words (below) be worth something in all this?  He said publicly, numerous times, the intention was to finish it up and release it.  While a cart release where someone might make a profit may be inappropriate, I'd think releasing the finished ROM is.  He clearly wasn't fond of having the games slip into private, never to be seen.  While it is still quite sad that the other roms they found I assume are not shared at all, and perhaps sharing this rom now could imperil those....Like someone said a few weeks ago, it's literally been years now with little or no contact.  I feel like the "team involved" should set some type of deadline, and if contact cannot be made, then release it. 

 

 

 

The more that comes to light, the more... Rum as it were this becomes. 

 

Some potential conflict of interests/views on what to do with it perhaps? 

 

Disagreement about who's doing most of the work and who's going to take most of the credit?

 

Reaching here, but seen numerous forums and gaming sites implode for reasons above.

 

Founder takes on assistance,  but then people say hold up..your site but who's putting in the graft?

 

Without Me/Us you'd have nothing.

 

Even if it's not finished, at this point in time releasing as is would be something,  passing it onto others who could finish it better still.

 

But for it to languish in limbo after hopes were raised is a sorry end to such a promising affair.

[Jinks]

Nothing is going to implode. The game is safe. Someday it might be released. Just a game not a big deal. 

[Shawn]

2 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Ahhh I see.

 

So, if Willard himself is unreachable (for whatever reason),  what about the people he passed the code onto?

 

Is there no other paper trail to follow at this point?

 

The game is safe and sound. It's in the hands of those who worked on it. Only reason it's not out is cause Willard isn't around to give the go ahead. Myself I believe he will never come back as all of his online presence has been dead in the water for over 3 years. He didn't even renew his website domain name. 

 

EDIT: Last time I talked to his friend who bought the HDD's with him well over a year ago (might be 2 years by now), Buddies, he told me he had sold off his whole collection so even his partner in crime is no longer in the scene at all. 

[gambler172]

And you guys should know.....someone,who owns a prototype,does not have the rights automatically ?

So,what should he do.....go to law?????

[Greg2600]

23 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

The game is safe and sound. It's in the hands of those who worked on it. Only reason it's not out is cause Willard isn't around to give the go ahead. Myself I believe he will never come back as all of his online presence has been dead in the water for over 3 years. He didn't even renew his website domain name. 

 

EDIT: Last time I talked to his friend who bought the HDD's with him well over a year ago (might be 2 years by now), Buddies, he told me he had sold off his whole collection so even his partner in crime is no longer in the scene at all. 

Well you've got the best info yet.  Did the Buddies guy say anything about the Lynx stuff they had to be released?

2 hours ago, gambler172 said:

And you guys should know.....someone,who owns a prototype,does not have the rights automatically ?

So,what should he do.....go to law?????

None of any of us involved have any rights.  The issue was that the AA elders would rather not tick off anyone, as a bad rep would harm future endeavors.  I obviously agree, but this Willard fellow clearly has left the scene.

[Lynxpro]

I don't think Willard has a right to be pissed off if it's released. He's ghosted the scene. It's like being properly notified to appear in court and not showing up. There's a difference between that happening when one has received sufficient and proper notice - multiple times at that - and not being properly notified. Everyone else's word remains honorable.

[Jinks]

I just hate reading the spelling of honour. There is no honour in honor. 

[Lost Dragon]

My interest (as a non-7800 owner) was purely based on the sudden disappearing act of Willard (never good to see anyone suddenly up and leave in such a manner) and as a Toki fan, had a genuine interest in seeing how the game turned out.

 

Spent a lot of time back in the day on the ST and Lynx versions. 

[Shawn]

5 hours ago, Greg2600 said:

Well you've got the best info yet.  Did the Buddies guy say anything about the Lynx stuff they had to be released?

 

 

All Buddies told me was that he had sold off all his Jaguar systems. I was looking to get one from him at one point a couple years ago cause I knew he had at least a dozen of them. When I contacted him, he told me he sold all of them and no longer had his battlesphere network of systems. He used to have a ton of jags to hook them all up together to play battlesphere. I have no idea about any Lynx stuff because I've never been interested in the Lynx so I never asked him about such things.

[CPUWIZ]

Dudes, none of us will release this ROM, unless someone finds Willard or an obituary.  Arguing in circles means nothing to us.  Who would trust us with something like this again, if you just release it anyway.

 

The ROM's are in 5 peoples hands, so it is unlikely to disappear.

[Shawn]

1 hour ago, CPUWIZ said:

unless someone finds Willard or an obituary. 

 

While I agree with your stance on this in principal for the most part, I think odds are it will be the latter before the former cause he is gone from the scene 100 percent for sure. Someone at some point would have had contact with him over the last 3 years if he was interested or wanted to be involved with anything video game related. He never had much interest in the 7800 and finding this Toki binary was just a bonus while recovering Jag and Lynx material (he told me so himself). His intention was for the binary to get to the masses and not kept to the very few as he was recently quoted by another AA user. His stance on that was clear from the get go. I also think the couple of people who have worked on it to make it to the state its in currently instead of the half baked PAL version it started as should get paid for their time (if they are interested in any sort of compensation that is). I remember when the ZIP file was first brought up in the back channels. I was part of that discussion at the time. I think he even sent me a copy of it at the time, if not he at least showed me the file in screen shots from the HDD he recovered it from. It's a shitty waiting game is all cause it's so close but also just that far out of reach.

 

[Tempest]

Well if Willard is truly gone, then what about the people who fixed the rom up? Are they still around?  What do they have to say?

[Shawn]

8 minutes ago, Tempest said:

Well if Willard is truly gone, then what about the people who fixed the rom up? Are they still around?  What do they have to say?

 

Yes they are around and they are of the same mindset as CPUWIZ already mentioned in regards to holding back to honor Willard calling the shots of when and what happens with it's release to the masses. 

[Tempest]

7 minutes ago, Shawn said:

 

Yes they are around and they are of the same mindset as CPUWIZ already mentioned in regards to holding back to honor Willard calling the shots of when and what happens with it's release to the masses. 

Ah ok.  Well that's that then.  

[Shawn]

1 hour ago, Tempest said:

Ah ok.  Well that's that then.  

 

I have one other avenue of contact to try. I'll let everyone know if I hear anything.

[CPUWIZ]

2 hours ago, Tempest said:

Well if Willard is truly gone, then what about the people who fixed the rom up? Are they still around?  What do they have to say?

 

Are you fucking kidding me?

[Guitari]

3 years off the scene is hardly any time at all. I knew Willard comes and goes but who else doesn't? All of us will at some time take time away from AA. Other projects have taken more years to get off the ground and materialise just when you think it'll never happen. 

[Swami]

11 hours ago, Jinks said:

I just hate reading the spelling of honour. There is no honour in honor. 

Boston Tea Party, dude. ?

[CPUWIZ]

What if, someone found this proto and actually tried to figured out how the code works, but can't and just decides to give it to someone else for RevEng (pun intended).  Would you want that person to turn it into freeware, because I was in a coma for 3 years?

[Trebor]

Just to clarify Willard's stated intentions for the game, his words verbatim:

 

"As mentioned in the Toki discovery thread, we will be releasing the ROM, shortly after we make the cartridges available"

[Bold and underline mine].

 

Willard intends to have a cartridge release first, followed by a ROM release shortly thereafter - both activities he will be a part of the distribution time frame one way or another.

 

I'm sure CPUWIZ would love to recoup the money already invested in hundreds of pieces of hardware, but some people can't be bought.  Much respect to the man because of it and obvious why Willard trusts him.