Imagic Games Who holds the rights?

[4ever2600]

Does anyone know who the current company is who holds the intellectual rights to the Imagic games for the Atari?

 

Thanks! - D

[SteveW]

I thought Activision inhereted the rights. Imagic games are included in the Activision collections on current consoles.

[4ever2600]

You sure about that? I have Activision anthology for the GBA and there isn't one game on there from Imagic??

[+Random Terrain]

I thought Activision inherited the rights. Imagic games are included in the Activision collections on current consoles.

Why weren't they included in the Game Boy version? I didn't quite understand that.

[keilbaca]

That I don't know... Demon attack on the road would have been awesome.

[4ever2600]

I think you guys are right, they did have some of the other titles on the other versions of the anthology...

 

How about CBS Games or Parker Brothers?

[Lauren Tyler]

I thought Parker Bros. was acquired by Hasbro or Milton Bradley? However, that doesn't necessarily mean the rights to the games went to whichever company acquired them.

[Ferris]

Atari received all the rights to the Parker Brothers games in the mid 1980s. That's why Q*Bert was released by Atari under the Tramiels for the 2600 and published in an Atari cartridge and label. Hasbro released a Q*Bert game with the Atari logo in the late 1990s before passing the baton to Infogrames.

 

So... Infogrames owned those titles.

[Bruce Tomlin]

I thought Activision inhereted the rights. Imagic games are included in the Activision collections on current consoles.

That's why there are blue-label re-relases of three (?) Imagic carts. Because Activision was still making carts when they acquired the Imagic rights.

[SteveW]

Which would explain why I bought a Demon Attack with a blue label and non-silver box from Toys R' Us around 1988.

[birdie3]

Demon attack on the road

 

Was I not reading this headline in a tabloid the other day?

 

 

OK. So if Activision does not own Imagic - who does?

[Tempest]

From what I understand it’s a really confusing thing. Apparently Activision's president at the time was a good friend of Imagic's president. Since Imagic was going under, Activision helped them out by buying some of their game rights. However I don't think it was for all the games, just certain ones (Demon Attack, Atlantis, and Moonsweeper).

 

This question came up once before and I don’t know if it was ever resolved or not.

 

Tempest

[Atariboy]

"Atari received all the rights to the Parker Brothers games in the mid 1980s. That's why Q*Bert was released by Atari under the Tramiels for the 2600 and published in an Atari cartridge and label. Hasbro released a Q*Bert game with the Atari logo in the late 1990s before passing the baton to Infogrames.

 

So... Infogrames owned those titles."

 

Couldn't Atari just have licensed them fom Parker Brothers? Does it necessarily mean they bought the rights to them and currently own them?

[Student Driver]

"Atari received all the rights to the Parker Brothers games in the mid 1980s. That's why Q*Bert was released by Atari under the Tramiels for the 2600 and published in an Atari cartridge and label. Hasbro released a Q*Bert game with the Atari logo in the late 1990s before passing the baton to Infogrames.  

 

So... Infogrames owned those titles."

 

Couldn't Atari just have licensed them fom Parker Brothers? Does it necessarily mean they bought the rights to them and currently own them?

 

Dunno about the early link between Atari Inc. and Parker Bros, but either way, Infogrames would now own the copyrights.

 

Parker Bros. was a division of Kenner, itself a division of Tonka Toys; Kenner/Tonka was purchased by Hasbro in 1991 (IIRC, this was how Hasbro got rights to Q*bert); with their purchase of Atari, Atari copyrights and Parker Bros. copyrights were then held by a single division of a single company. When Infogrames bought Hasbro Interactive, they also acquired Hasbro's library of software copyrights; ergo, Infogrames owns the Parker Bros. copyrights.

 

As an aside, this puts a rather impressive roster of game copyrights under Infograme's control. Atari, Hasbro Interactive, MicroProse, Avalon Hill Software, Galoob, Tigersoft (and Tiger's Game.com copyrights... whee!), Humongous, Parker Bros., Ocean, Imagine (... Play the Game), Cobrasoft, Gremlin, Beam, Accolade, GT Interactive, Paradigm, Eden, Shiny, and Psygnosis, all in addition to their own Infogrames releases.

[4ever2600]

DAMN! That's alot of companies... Does anyone know about CBS Games? That one seems to be a mystery... Thanks

[Klove]

Most, if not all of CBS' title were contracted out to small developement groups / indie programmers. I've spoken to a few of them in the past, and all of these people save for a couple of 'em have confirmed this.

 

Although, if memory serves me correct, I do believe CBS did have one small in-houe group.

 

For the most part, all of the rights to these games save for the major licenses, have since lapsed back into the original development groups' hands.

 

That is to say... titles like Blue Print and etc, is still owned by the Coin-Op IP owners. As for the the 2600 game code itself, it's owned by the people that developed / programmed it to begin with.

 

If they (the developers), wanted to re-release Blue Print again, say for the 2600, they would in-turn need to go back to the Coin-Op IP owners and licensethe name back in order to re-release the game as Blue Print.

 

Alternatively, the developer could release the game as it is, but under another name. Even then, that could get scary because if the original IP owner were to see this game that look's and plays exactly like Blue Print, only this time it's called "Schematic" or something like that, then.. the Coin-Op IP owner could come back and say that the 2600 developer ripped-off the Blue Print idea / game, and then press legal matters.

 

I know this, as I went through this on Anthology and possibly using Double Dragon. We were going to release it, but only under a different name. "Double Dukes". Mod some of the artwork, etc. Problem was... "No matter how you spiced / spliced it up, it was still Double Dragon." Same game play, etc.

 

That was too risky for us, so we killed it at the last minute. Same goes for Ghostbusters 1 & 2. They were gonna' be "Frik 'n' Frak: Ghosthunters" and "Frik 'n' Frak 2: They're Back!"

 

"Pretty original, eh?"

 

By the way, one of the developers for the CBS games is currently sitting on a 2600 Pink Panther proto, as they're the guys that did it.

 

One day I'll approach him about letting us take a look at it. :-)

 

"One day."

[Klove]

What I stated above here, just a sec ago..

 

I can just about guarantee that's why you won't see the Parker Bros, Milton Bradley, Tiger, Etc. games on this "new" Atari Anthology package.

 

"Boy! That's an original one, eh?"

 

"Atari Anthology."

 

Who would've thought.

[Godzilla]

I still don't see how 'hey atari got the parker brothers rights' helps answer the 'who has the imagic rights' question?

 

I guess the answer is that people like Rob Fulop have them now, for example? (demon attack, comsic ark, fathom for example,)

[Mindfield]

As an aside, this puts a rather impressive roster of game copyrights under Infograme's control.  Atari, Hasbro Interactive, MicroProse, Avalon Hill Software, Galoob, Tigersoft (and Tiger's Game.com copyrights... whee!), Humongous, Parker Bros., Ocean, Imagine (... Play the Game), Cobrasoft, Gremlin, Beam, Accolade, GT Interactive, Paradigm, Eden, Shiny, and Psygnosis, all in addition to their own Infogrames releases.

 

Wasn't "Play The Game" Ultimate (a.k.a. Rare)?

[Godzilla]

Mind: yes. I have their old 'Imhotep' on tape for the c64 :-)

[Student Driver]

Wasn't "Play The Game" Ultimate (a.k.a. Rare)?

 

Oops! Thanks for catching that; I was getting my 80s UK developers/publishers mixed up.

 

Anyway, regarding the Activision/Imagic thing, it seems to have always been assumed that Activision bought Imagic- search on Google Groups for Activision bought Imagic, and there are a ton of references, but no real citations. (There's one guy who sez they were bought by Ocean, but I think he mixed it up with Ocean's purchase of Imagine.) This is the earliest post I can find that mentions Activision owning the rights to Imagic titles.

 

On the WWW, there's a slight mention from, of all places, a Variety Magazine profile:

Dougherty's vidgame roots are deep: his company Imagic was an early game creator bought by Activision in 1984

 

There's also a hint that Activision has rights to Imagic due to the fact that they were able to licence *all* of Imagic's Intellivision releases to Intellivision Productions for the "Intellivision Rocks" release, in exchange for the Intellivision Classics PSX rights. From Intellivision Productions' Imagic page:

Imagic produced software only - no hardware - and all of its games were created in-house - no expensive arcade or movie licenses. The company was thus able to avoid the overhead of competitors Atari, Mattel Electronics and Coleco. But Imagic still couldn't survive the 1983/84 industry crash. The company shut down, with Activision (another software-only company that did survive the crash) acquiring the rights to its games.

 

So... barring a reputable source saying otherwise, I'd wager that Activision truly owns Imagic.

[Malc74]

Wasn't "Play The Game" Ultimate (a.k.a. Rare)?

 

Oops! Thanks for catching that; I was getting my 80s UK developers/publishers mixed up.

 

 

Actually, you were almost right - Imagine's slogan, which was beneath their logo for all their early games (i.e. the ones before they went bust and Ocean acquired the name) was "The Name of the Game"