Boulder Dash ROM will not be released

[+SoulBuster]

It has been reasonably civil, some insults notwithstanding. I am watching, though..

 

..Al

 

I agree for the most part it has been civil and good information.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Yes,

 

AtariAge Store: Halo 2600

 

..Al

Looks like you ran out of Halo boxes today. Edited July 13, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Rev]

Looks like you ran out of Halo boxes today.

What the crap! I ordered the boxed version. I hope I get it. :-(

[Mr SQL]

I would add that, notwithstanding their legendary pedigree and talent, if Jentzsch and Davies write games at home, on the side, in their spare time; and the work is not part of their main source of income; then they are as homebrewers as the rest of us unwashed masses -- impressive and masterful homebrewers, but homebrewers nonetheless.

 

I don't mean to denigrate them in any way; in fact, I respect them immensely. I'm just pointing out that words such as "commercial," "professional," and "hombrewer" and even "hobbyist" and "enthusiast," have meaning.

 

Cheers!

dZ.

dZ,

I agree this is a matter of perspective but your example is extreme - if Jentsch and Davies write games at home in their spare time, but have built these kind of games professionally for a living then their games will reflect that and not be of the same category as games people build at home in their spare time.

 

108 Stars,

I had thought you wrote games for the 68k, what are your thoughts? Your definition of "not a homebrewer" would seem to exclude Jentsch and Davies writing "homebrew" games without seeming like pro athletes competing in amateur track and field events. I think they are professional programmers writing professional games.

[Albert]

Looks like you ran out of Halo boxes today.

That's not the case -- why do you say that?

 

..Al

[+remowilliams]

Maybe some crazy Inty guy bought your last ten.

 

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

It used to be a separate entry. Looks like you have recently merged it with the unboxed version now. But you lost the sales for the boxed version.

 

Any other ones you have merged?

[Albert]

It used to be a separate entry. Looks like you have recently merged it with the unboxed version now. But you lost the sales for the boxed version.

 

Any other ones you have merged?

I removed all the duplicate entries, as it was a mess, and I added boxes for about 15 other games yesterday. The sales weren't "lost", per se (those products are hidden and weren't deleted), but the "best sellers" entries for each of the "merged" games will not include sales for the "boxed" version of the game. There's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately (ask me privately if you want to hear me rant about the store software).

 

..Al

[Rev]

I removed all the duplicate entries, as it was a mess, and I added boxes for about 15 other games yesterday. The sales weren't "lost", per se (those products are hidden and weren't deleted), but the "best sellers" entries for each of the "merged" games will not include sales for the "boxed" version of the game. There's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately (ask me privately if you want to hear me rant about the store software).

 

..Al

Great news. Thanks

[108 Stars]

dZ,

I agree this is a matter of perspective but your example is extreme - if Jentsch and Davies write games at home in their spare time, but have built these kind of games professionally for a living then their games will reflect that and not be of the same category as games people build at home in their spare time.

 

108 Stars,

I had thought you wrote games for the 68k, what are your thoughts? Your definition of "not a homebrewer" would seem to exclude Jentsch and Davies writing "homebrew" games without seeming like pro athletes competing in amateur track and field events. I think they are professional programmers writing professional games.

No, I only do graphics.

I don't think the quality of the work is what makes the difference between homebrew and professional work. I honestly don't know what Thomas Jentzsch and Davies do to pay their bills. I just think BD can't be it; as Elektronite said, they are not paid usual professional programmer wages. And that is only natural, you can't afford that for the few units such a game on a legacy platform sells. I believe the two of them are well aware of that too, that is one reason they did it for a relatively small amount. Had the project been a game for EA or some other big company and PS4 the platform, I bet they would not have agreed to do this for little money.

 

They know it is a niche project, so they accept payment below the standard. And that is because of enthusiasm. Because it is to some degree a hobby.

 

Now their results are professional grade; no doubt about that. Other homebrews are too; there's quite a lot going beyond what was seen as official releases on their respective platforms. Homebrews can often be the peak a system can reach.

 

In my book, that does not change a thing about terminology. Professional games can be really, really terrible, and homebrews can reach standards that make them feel like AAA titles. For as long as someone does this on the side, at least partially as a hobby project beside his day job... that's homebrew for me.

 

The main point here is that homebrew must not be seen as some kind of insult. I absolutely salute the people involved in homebrews on any system, the dedication to spend their time and work so that relatively few can have fun on often obsolete hardware. That's why I like to help with what limited skills I can offer. And it is also great that there are publishers making physical copies of those games possible, and companies with valuable IPs like First Star Software or Cinemaware granting rights for compensation that is affordable in light of low sales. Without homebrew, very few independant games on old systems would be possible. It would not be viable. So yeah, I do think of this kind of game development as homebrewing, but not in a negative way.

Edited July 13, 2015 by 108 Stars

[+DZ-Jay]

dZ,

I agree this is a matter of perspective but your example is extreme - if Jentsch and Davies write games at home in their spare time, but have built these kind of games professionally for a living then their games will reflect that and not be of the same category as games people build at home in their spare time.

 

I don't agree. There's much more to a good and high quality game than the mere fact of having professional experience.

 

There are good and bad games and good and bad programmers in the Homebrew and commercial worlds.

 

dZ.

[SoulBlazer]

Even if the game was available on ROM I wouldn't buy it. I'm perfectly happy playing my old C64 version of the game. So no lost sales from me either way.

 

Personaly, I'd like to see more original games. No infringing on anyone's rights that way, the programmer can take better advantage of the hardware then anyone else could BITD, and I'd be inclined to buy a actual Intelivision if the games were unique enough. (This goes across all platforms, BTW. Why do I want a copy of a game that has already been ported on 6 different systems?)

[Mr SQL]

I don't agree. There's much more to a good and high quality game than the mere fact of having professional experience.

 

There are good and bad games and good and bad programmers in the Homebrew and commercial worlds.

 

dZ.

Hmmm... I agree with all of those things but I think Jentszch and Davies games reflect not just that they are professional programmers, but that they are professional game programmers from the 80's. You know, what I'm talking about

[Andromeda Stardust]

I removed all the duplicate entries, as it was a mess, and I added boxes for about 15 other games yesterday. The sales weren't "lost", per se (those products are hidden and weren't deleted), but the "best sellers" entries for each of the "merged" games will not include sales for the "boxed" version of the game. There's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately (ask me privately if you want to hear me rant about the store software).

 

..Al

Glad you cleaned it up. It was annoying having to check separate entries for the same game. I understand most collectors prefer CIB, but for gamers on a budget, the loose copies allow us to buy more games. Kudos...

[+DZ-Jay]

Hmmm... I agree with all of those things but I think Jentszch and Davies games reflect not just that they are professional programmers, but that they are professional game programmers from the 80's. You know, what I'm talking about

 

I guess I don't. I don't want to take anything away from them, but I've seem lackluster stuff from people from BITD too, and amazing stuff from newcomers to the scene. The fact that they did stuff BITD is not *necessarily* the deciding factor. That's all I'm saying.

 

Jentszch and Davies are very talented individuals, and I imagine them having the same talent and passion and strive for excellence even if they were born last decade and missed the entire 80s.

[freewheel]

I don't think the quality of the work is what makes the difference between homebrew and professional work.

 

It doesn't (there are very good and very bad examples of both). Nor does "a company was involved" (anyone can incorporate for peanuts). Nor does "we licensed it" making something cost more does not make it somehow "better"). Nor does how many copies - plenty of commercial software sells beans. I don't even really like the terms being thrown about - "professional" just means you got paid for it. Guess what? Almost everyone in the homebrew scene gets paid for their work, even if it's a pittance. I've arguably been "paid" for the little work that I've done, because it helped me get a new fulltime job if you can believe it.

 

The term "homebrew" came about to describe people who are writing software for systems that the average person couldn't or didn't, back in the day. NO ONE was writing 2600 games at home in the 80s, because the hardware and software tools to do so simply didn't exist or were prohibitively expensive. Well, a tiny handful did, and they released games (Extra Terrestrials and that one about Moses are good examples) but those were rare exceptions that were produced during the actual lifespan of the console. The only other people really doing things like this (Imagic, Activision, etc) had massive amounts of money to spend on reverse-engineering the hardware, and developing their own tools. And everyone else just paid for a dev kit from the hardware manufacturer eventually, post-crash.

 

Homebrew is developed primarily at home, hence the term. As opposed to being done as your job, in a game development studio, using professional tools that you either paid for or created yourself.

 

Now, if someone approached Keith Robinson and licensed the official Intellivision development tools and systems from the 80s, and developed games for commercial distribution that way? That verges a fair bit away from homebrew in my book. But anyone using AS-1600 and jzintv to write games on a PC - by definition hobbyist's tools unless Joe Z. has different views - is doing exactly the same thing as every other homebrewer. They may make the best homebrew game of all time and it may sell 10000 copies, but it's still homebrew.

 

And in my opinion, the ONLY reason to even make the distinction in the first place is to somehow lessen the work of homebrewers. The very people who made all of this possible in the first place. Which is a slap in the face of a lot of hard working people (who are all infinitely smarter than me).

 

Incidentally, there's a reason the term "homebrew" doesn't really exist in the PC world. It's because anyone has always been able to develop software for the PC. No special tools, no reverse engineering, nothing. Sure - , some people use it to describe C64 etc development, but that's more an indication of the age of the platform more than anything. And the term evolving to essentially mean "writing code for ancient technology".

 

[freewheel]

On a different but related note, I'm curious as to just how the hell BD ended up being a sales disappointment. Are sales of modern-games-for-80s-platfoms just generally declining? Or were the expectations a lot higher than for previous titles?

 

Not fishing for numbers, because I doubt anyone is willing to share trade secrets. It just seems odd. The game is arguably one of, if not the best to come out for the system - certainly in modern times anyway. I figured it would be setting modern-day-for-80s-platforms sales records given how many copies of rather mediocre games have been sold in the past.

[SoulBlazer]

On a different but related note, I'm curious as to just how the hell BD ended up being a sales disappointment. Are sales of modern-games-for-80s-platfoms just generally declining? Or were the expectations a lot higher than for previous titles?

 

Not fishing for numbers, because I doubt anyone is willing to share trade secrets. It just seems odd. The game is arguably one of, if not the best to come out for the system - certainly in modern times anyway. I figured it would be setting modern-day-for-80s-platforms sales records given how many copies of rather mediocre games have been sold in the past.

I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but as for me personaly it comes down to what I said in my last post here....why buy a game I can already play just as well on at least six other platforms?

[+DZ-Jay]

The main point here is that homebrew must not be seen as some kind of insult. I absolutely salute the people involved in homebrews on any system, the dedication to spend their time and work so that relatively few can have fun on often obsolete hardware. That's why I like to help with what limited skills I can offer. And it is also great that there are publishers making physical copies of those games possible, and companies with valuable IPs like First Star Software or Cinemaware granting rights for compensation that is affordable in light of low sales. Without homebrew, very few independant games on old systems would be possible. It would not be viable. So yeah, I do think of this kind of game development as homebrewing, but not in a negative way.

 

I think the point has been made. The debate about "homebrew" being a slight is a red herring. It seems rather clear so far that the only one who has taken it as an insult and has fought tooth and nail to make sure he is not labelled as such, has been William of Elektronite.

 

Everybody else here is arguing the semantics of the word from the same side.

 

-dZ.

[Crazy Climber]

Why do I want a copy of a game that has already been ported on 6 different systems?)

I would normally agree but sometimes its worth it. DK arcade is a great example. The Intellivision version has additional features that, as far as I know, are exclusive. Im not very familiar with Boulder dash but I was hoping for more little "extras" like DK arcade had, programmers should do wnat Carl did more often. The little things really do matter (although in the programming world I do not know how "little" the DK exclusives would be considered) overall though DK really "wow'ed" me, and that doesnt happen often as Ive grown bitter and judgemental now that Im old and yell at kids on my lawn. What is with the price of milk these days anyways, sheesh...

[+thegoldenband]

Even if the game was available on ROM I wouldn't buy it.

 

This post confused the hell out of me until I refreshed my memory on the difference between SoulBuster and SoulBlazer.

 

Can we cut the Gordian knot of issues surrounding the term "homebrew" by replacing it with "indie"? Probably not, but I thought I'd offer it up.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

...they are professional game programmers from the 80's.

Just to make thinks more complicated for you: I ain't.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Yes,

 

AtariAge Store: Halo 2600

 

..Al

Jason trivia....Halo 2600 is the only non Intellivision homebrew I've purchased.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Someone mentioned Blix earlier. If true, it's sad that Michael @ GDG possibly had a bad experience with Blix. I like it and don't mind the bug. It gives it character, I suppose. I'm sure some people didn't care for it, but I bet there are way more that 30 potential loving homes for the outstanding copies. I hope he considers another game for the Intellivision.

[+Andrew Davie]

And, for those who think that it is simply a matter of 'dumping' the cartridge ROM in order to distribute it....it ain't happening. The JLP cartridge is very well protected.

 

We, too, thought that our Atari 2600 Boulder Dash cartridge was extremely well protected by the hardware protection circuitry and encryption included therein, and essentially impossible to dump. I would have put good money on betting that it would NEVER be dumped. Enough said!