Subject: Re: [stella] Re: a dream From: Glenn Saunders <krishna@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 20:16:09 -0800 (PST) |
On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Piero Cavina wrote: > Does this mean that they gave up after just one attempt..? I wouldn't say "gave up". Calls were made, and a trip to Los Angeles was in the cards, but it just never materialized. I have heard that Activision is "cold on emulator product". Action Pack 3 sold pitifully, in part due to poor choice in titles and next to no promotion. But companies such as this are always quick to blame the age of these titles first and to see any sales for them as being only due to nostalgia fad-ism. Still, I would agree that on the PC market, commercial emulator product is dead. It's still viable on the playstation. Also bear in mind that the PS is a 33mhz RISC processor with relatively weak 2D performance. It is not a speed demon. Think of the speed necessary on the PC to properly emulate a 2600. The person I spoke to regarding the PS emulation was convinced he could write it, but ONLY THROUGH HAND-TUNED MIPS ASSEMBLY. A Jaguar might actually emulate a 2600 better than a PS due to the multiple processors that can split up the tasks. I don't think it's something that Activision could whip up quickly on its own. Assembly, as you know, is a dying art and those who still practice it are paid handsomely for their rare skills compared to run-of-the-mill C coders. > Things could have changed since then. There's the documentary. > Retro-compilations for the psx are selling, otherwise Namco wouldn't be I agree that Activision should consider a disc for the PS, but they have already been consulted on that issue and are at best, ambivalent. > releasing volume 6, and Williams/Atari/Midway (I still haven't understood > who makes these things.. :-) their 3rd.. The biggest problem is this: What do _I_ have to contribute to such a project that these companies couldn't very well do themselves? If you look at Action Pack, the thing is a totally bare bones presentation compared to Stella Gets a New Brain. It was this way because presentation (aside from the box) is considered unimportant in the game business. I do not own the rights to the titles in question, so I have no bargaining power. Bill Heineman was going to provide the emulators and split the royalties with Cyberpunks but he was reluctant to show or share the emulator so I don't know what state it's in, not to mention the ever-improving freeware emulators it competes with. Essentially if Activision wanted to release such a product, they wouldn't need me to do it. What multimedia you see on the Midway collections was added IN SPITE of Midway, not because it was part of the original idea. So I wouldn't expect Activision to see the connection between my interview footage and increased sales for "Action Pack Gold", as they called this vaporware product. > I wasn't dreaming of the Atari catalogue. Just activision, Starpath and > home-brew. Activision's already been done, and Starpath is still too obscure outside of RGVC. You need more stuff. A year ago, the ENTIRE Atari catalog would have been enough value to coax Action Pack v.1-level sales, IMHO. These days not even that would probably make it viable on the PC platform, but it might fly on PSX. The bottom line is this. I'm tired of being Don Quixote. Whenever you create a compilation CD such as this using material owned by others, you are beholden to their whims. It constrains you and sucks potential profit away. I have too much debt to concern myself with projects that will take a lot of my time and not $reward$ me. Right now I'd rather finish the documentary, get a direct to video release out, and see if I can generate some momentum and get the cable companies to notice it and either buy it off me or pay me to re-edit on higher-end equipment, and maybe use the rest of the footage to build a series out of it. I'd like to do one followup CD which would serve many purposes: rerelease the Starpath games throw leftover footage from the documentary onto it (probably audio-only) give completed new 2600 titles the deluxe treatment. I also have some multimedia from the documentary, most notably Larry Wagner's 20 year old notes, which are the Dead Sea Scrolls of the VCS. But this would probably only be worth my while if Atari and Bridgestone agreed that Cyberpunks could at least make SOME profit off of it (due to our unique contributions). -- Stella list is Administered by krishna@xxxxxxxxxxxx <Glenn Saunders> Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/stella.html +-shameless plugs-------------------------------------------------------+ | Stella documentary at http://www.primenet.com/~krishna | | Nick's VCS links via http://www.primenet.com/~nickb/atariprg.htm | | Write the best game, win framed autographs of famous Atari alumni!! | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Current Thread |
---|
|
<- Previous | Index | Next -> |
---|---|---|
Re: [stella] Re: a dream, Greg Miller | Thread | Re: [stella] Re: a dream, Greg Miller |
Re: [stella] Games to be shown in t, Erik Mooney | Date | Re: [stella] thump, thump..., Chris Cracknell |
Month |