AtariAge + Atari Q&A

[leech]

17 hours ago, zzip said:

The Jag dev-kit might have been TT-based, I could be misrembering.  It was one of the 030's  

 

 

According to this post;

"A duplicate of the original TT 030 development drive the ROMS were derived from. It is also packed with early development material"  So sounds like the TT was used at least for Tiny Toons development.  Ah, one of the games on the box that never came out.

[number6]

8 hours ago, Wildstar said:

Commodore trademarks as indicated in uspto.gov website is: Polabe Holdings

 

https://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=tm&qt=sno&reel=&frame=&sno=73359737

 

In case link fails I printed to pdf so you can see the assign. This pertains to ownership rights not contractual based trademark licensing which is dependent on the terms of the license as to whether that license is exclusive or non-exclusive or other limits set forth in the licensing terms. 

Commodore logo assign.pdf 453.12 kB · 0 downloads

If you want the entire history of legal wrangling I'd be here for years explaining each move.

Let's keep it simple. What I stated is true.

 

Read the comments for additional details

 

This is the followup. Again more details in the comments.

 

You should see many names mentioned and the parts they played. Beyond that, I've known all these folks in some capacity for decades.

 

Further info including a phone convo with Eugene Van Os

 

I agree with Albert. We're in danger of going way off topic here. There is a dedicated forum on AtariAge for Commodore antics. Feel free to ask further questions there in lieu of using this forum. Ditto for Amiga.

 

#6

Edited September 16, 2023 by number6
added reference

[Wildstar]

5 hours ago, number6 said:

If you want the entire history of legal wrangling I'd be here for years explaining each move.

Let's keep it simple. What I stated is true.

 

Read the comments for additional details

 

This is the followup. Again more details in the comments.

 

You should see many names mentioned and the parts they played. Beyond that, I've known all these folks in some capacity for decades.

 

Further info including a phone convo with Eugene Van Os

 

I agree with Albert. We're in danger of going way off topic here. There is a dedicated forum on AtariAge for Commodore antics. Feel free to ask further questions there in lieu of using this forum. Ditto for Amiga.

 

#6

 

I was indicating who "owns" the C= and Commodore trademare not necessarily who has a license to use it by the IP. Police is just a IP holding company... who licenses the C= trademarks. There's a long nebulous story since Commodore's bankruptcy which we can talk about in the appropriate thread. 

 

[+thanatos]

On 9/15/2023 at 2:05 PM, Albert said:

It's pretty trivial to modify a local copy of a website you are viewing. 

 

 

 ..Al

 

Sweet, I found the perfect one for me:

[leech]

6 hours ago, number6 said:

If you want the entire history of legal wrangling I'd be here for years explaining each move.

Let's keep it simple. What I stated is true.

 

Read the comments for additional details

 

This is the followup. Again more details in the comments.

 

You should see many names mentioned and the parts they played. Beyond that, I've known all these folks in some capacity for decades.

 

Further info including a phone convo with Eugene Van Os

 

I agree with Albert. We're in danger of going way off topic here. There is a dedicated forum on AtariAge for Commodore antics. Feel free to ask further questions there in lieu of using this forum. Ditto for Amiga.

 

#6

Glad to see ya here, #6!  I didn't know you floated around AtariAge!

 

Ha, if you made C= into a person, you could make an awesome crime drama around how bad it was treated!

[Wildstar]

One thing I can agree is depending on the country, Commodore trademark has been usurped and is legally contested. Trademarks needs to be actively used in the respective countries for the commercial purposes. However, there are laws regarding reciprocal recognition of trademarks actively used on a global wide market. So there are issues.

 

Another thing I have notice is some people just don't know or understand the legal distinction of "ownership" rights (proprietorship rights) of intellectual properties and that of license. To put it in layman term... licensing is like renting an apartment or renting space in a commercial building. Owning the IP is like owning the building. A licensee is like a tenant and could be "evicted" or essentially the rent agreement terminated... license terminated by the owner. They can't just do it whimsically. 

 

Polabe doesn't sell the rights but they do license... basically leasing the use of the IP to a licensee for commercizing the IP and receive royalties, likely. It would be spelled out in the license agreement. 

 

To turn this topic to something topic related, Atari owns the rights of some IP. In other cases, they may have licenses to IP. They license their IP they own. Sometimes to make a revamped version of games they made or have the IP for. How Atari goes about this would either be a commercial success or not. 

 

In Atari's case, it is part copyright and part trademark. Most likely, not dealing with patents but can't completely rule out patents. 

[KainXavier]

@TrogdarRobusto

I thought of another question for you.  Now that Atari is making hardware again, is there any chance we'll see some kind of official Paddle Controller Adapter for consoles?  I'd totally be cool with some kind of DB9-to-USB solution too since you're already making paddles for the 2600+.

[MrBeefy]

Yeah I don't see Atari doing anything to circumvent their cart slot. It's pretty obvious the idea is to make money off carts. If they were interested in selling ROMs for the 2600+, the cart dumper would be an unnecessary expense.

 

I'm curious to hear about the quality of the paddle controllers. If they make a controller compatible with the 7800 that isn't a Painline controller I could be interested in one of those too.

 

Other than a game like Rikki and Vikki, are there many reasons 7800 wouldn't have good compatibility?

[desiv]

53 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Yeah I don't see Atari doing anything to circumvent their cart slot. It's pretty obvious the idea is to make money off carts. If they were interested in selling ROMs for the 2600+, the cart dumper would be an unnecessary expense.

Other than a game like Rikki and Vikki, are there many reasons 7800 wouldn't have good compatibility?

I would think this is the big issue that would need to be addressed, per Thomas Jentzsch:

Quote

The problem is, that the dumper simply has no access to code inside the cart. This affects Pitfall II, where the dumper can only "see" the first 8K, but not the extra 2K used by the DPC chip. And if affects all other carts which use internal chips. Which are (mainly) bBasic games, using the DPC+ kernel.

 Not sure if there is a way to "preload" what those games need, or if they would have to precache the whole game, which would require a way to do that.  With no SD card, that is trickier...

If there are options for a firmware update, it would be possible to include them in those I suppose, but as mentioned before, they would need permission because even tho the game would only "play" if the cart was inserted, technically the whole game is already on the system...  (Although it could be hidden from the user so they wouldn't know that...)

Edited September 16, 2023 by desiv

[Hastor]

Just a question of how to categorize things honestly. With this acquisition, should all games sold on the AtariAge store, for Atari consoles, be considered to be officially 'licensed by Atari'?

I honestly was never sure if some of them were or not already, as many certainly appeared official and I figured AtariAge was too big to just use logos willy nilly and get away with it, but I'm not 100% sure. This question applies to all such games to, from Atari stuff like Tempest for 5200, to physical homebrew/indie stuff like Grizzards.

[M-S]

You repeatedly said this should be discussed in another thread but you keep posting it here, I don't think Atari should have any problems with names now, they have just started doing 2600 stuff, it's going to be a long way until they do something with computers beyond 8-bit, and even more until they bother about the ones they don't completely own.

But to my question, @TrogdarRobusto , there's a company known as Tectoy which has been releasing the Flashback consoles in Brazil, they also have been releasing Sega products ever since the Master System, are they a partner of Atari directly or just a partner of AtGames?

It doesn't sound like it's related to the topic, but I just need to know that first.

Edited September 16, 2023 by M-S
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[Wildstar]

23 minutes ago, Hastor said:

Just a question of how to categorize things honestly. With this acquisition, should all games sold on the AtariAge store, for Atari consoles, be considered to be officially 'licensed by Atari'?

I honestly was never sure if some of them were or not already, as many certainly appeared official and I figured AtariAge was too big to just use logos willy nilly and get away with it, but I'm not 100% sure. This question applies to all such games to, from Atari stuff like Tempest for 5200, to physical homebrew/indie stuff like Grizzards.

Not necessarily. Reason you saw stuff like 'licensed by Nintendo' for example on the NES, was that Nintendo exclusively made the cartridges and not only manufactured the cartridges for their own games but also the third party game developers and they sold all the games made including the third party developed games. The developers then got their royalties.  

 

If Atari was making cartridges and put third party developed game on it, Atari would have to license the game and pay a royalty. This arrangement does nor have to be exclusive to cartridges. It would be that they function in the role of publisher.

 

A mere online storefront does not establish the role of publisher.  It involves more than that to establish a developer-publisher relationship much like author-publisher relationship with books.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Wildstar

[Wildstar]

In cases, of Steam and itch.io, Google playstore, etc. they are a hybrid of online store and publisher because the games are not in physical media form, they have license to copy to facilitate sales and pay royalties. The essence of a developer-publisher relationships centers around a developer a license to make copies of the licensed content to sell to customers and/or stores (where the stores then sell to customers). 

 

Does the AtariAge store fit the hybrid store-publisher description? 

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Wildstar

[Wildstar]

I would argue that it could. In a pure storefront description, the store must purchase a number of copies of a game from the publisher or developer (in case of self-publishing) to fill the store inventory. There would be a finite number of copies in stock. An online storefront functioning as purely a storefront, the number of pay per downloads would be limited to how many copies the store purchased to then resell the same manner as a brick and mortar store. 

 

It is likely AtariAge is a hybrid store and publisher. 

 

[Wildstar]

If what I describe for stores sounds like retail store... that is true but wholesale distributors are more or less the same dealing in much higher volume with volume discount deals. Then sell to retail stores and customers. Retail stores might get some discount in buying some volume but usually still marked up a little from what they paid but less than someone buying at single unit pricing. Retailer might resell at around the same price up to listed msrp. Some cases, higher than that in some off beat places. 

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

@Wildstar: Dude...  This is not the thread for these discussions.  Feel free to start a new thread and migrate things over there, but kindly stop using this thread in lieu of a more appropriate one.

 

Thank you.

[Wildstar]

1 hour ago, x=usr(1536) said:

@Wildstar: Dude...  This is not the thread for these discussions.  Feel free to start a new thread and migrate things over there, but kindly stop using this thread in lieu of a more appropriate one.

 

Thank you.

[deleted by me].... 

Edited September 17, 2023 by Wildstar

[GrizzLee]

 
 

As a child of the “Atari Age” before the internet, I wish you the best Albert. I thank your passion to make AA what it is today. 
 

I'm excited for the future. 

[sl0re]

@TrogdarRobusto

I guess I'd suggest trying to get a little shelf space in retail video game stores (target, GameStop, et cetera). Even if it's just enought for 4 or 5 games. Do some multi cart 2600 game packs to be add ons for 2600+ purchases. Later if we talk you into 130xe repos you can rotate through some classic games on carts too. The audience isn't as big but one exists. Just had a contractor notice my atari 800 and start asking about how he could get one / loved his as a kid... plus with fujinet you have wireless and with a big atr on the sd card a virtual hard drive... Pretty easy to use and desk isn't cluttered with accessories (disk drives) anymore. 

 

As to the hotel; I'd be in just because there are few good arcades. Dave and Busters is all there is chain wise and they don't really have many good games. Like people go to casinos hotels just to gamble and have dinner (without staying) I could see some people doing something similar with a arcade hotel. 

 

Last of all I think Atari has a window right now if they can take advantage of it. Modern gamers are complaining right now games look good but aren't actually fun to play. If you sell a system for the price of a AAA game and games for $8 instead of $80... Pointing out your games are actually fun..

some people might try Atari out. 

Edited September 17, 2023 by sl0re

[leech]

24 minutes ago, sl0re said:

Pretty easy to use and desk isn't cluttered with accessories (disk drives) anymore. 

But the stack of 810s looks so awesome!  The Tower of Power before Segas!  4x810s would look cool...

[+jgkspsx]

20 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Other than a game like Rikki and Vikki, are there many reasons 7800 wouldn't have good compatibility?

No, other than the emulators are not quite as solid as Stella. Pokey sound is the major problem and presumably that isn’t hard to emulate.

[Spriggy]

On 9/17/2023 at 5:21 AM, KainXavier said:

@TrogdarRobusto

I thought of another question for you.  Now that Atari is making hardware again, is there any chance we'll see some kind of official Paddle Controller Adapter for consoles?  I'd totally be cool with some kind of DB9-to-USB solution too since you're already making paddles for the 2600+.

https://www.retronicdesign.com/en/specifications/

[+chriswhit]

what happens to Atariage if Atari should fall? I notice a lot of people dissatisfied with games and hardware releases saying money grab but look at what there spending vs whats coming in. I get the feelings some have and why many good home brewers dont wanna help and sell games to atari but we only doom ourselves here. If atari falls so does this community. Everyone's pride is gonna make atariage crumble with atari. they offered to pay us for our tallents and I believe there learning and trying but they cant hire someone that doesn't wanna be. there spending big and only have the ability to produce what there knowledge allows them to. I think if we all gave them a chance we might be surprised. If we don't we gotta find a new domain and laws make a store legality questionable to support a new site. I know there's other reasons some don't like atari but to me it looks like if we don't swallow pride and step up atari wont improve and were the ones that loose in the end where they own it all. whats to say they dont buy the rest of whats left to aquire. Maybe I'm clueless whats everyone else think?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

16 minutes ago, chriswhit said:

I notice a lot of people dissatisfied with games and hardware releases saying money grab but look at what there spending vs whats coming in. I get the feelings some have and why many good home brewers dont wanna help and sell games to atari but we only doom ourselves here. If atari falls so does this community. Everyone's pride is gonna make atariage crumble with atari.

You put the blame on the wrong people. When Atari fails (again), it is solely Atari's fault (again). Personally, I won't feel responsible for a second.

16 minutes ago, chriswhit said:

they offered to pay us for our tallents and I believe there learning and trying but they cant hire someone that doesn't wanna be. there spending big and only have the ability to produce what there knowledge allows them to. I think if we all gave them a chance we might be surprised. If we don't we gotta find a new domain and laws make a store legality questionable to support a new site. I know there's other reasons some don't like atari but to me it looks like if we don't swallow pride and step up atari wont improve and were the ones that loose in the end where they own it all. whats to say they dont buy the rest of whats left to aquire. Maybe I'm clueless whats everyone else think?

This is less about pride but much more about logic. A listed company is obliged to act in the interests of its shareholders. Period. Everything else is just warm words. So why should I support the interests and profit of greedy shareholders with my labor of love? If Atari is interested into our work, they should hire and pay adequately.

[+jgkspsx]

12 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

If Atari is interested into our work, they should hire and pay adequately.

Didn’t they try to do that and you told them no? Just asking.

 

Also, I don’t know if it seems like a good idea for a company to hire somebody who has an overt smoldering hatred of them.