Re: [stella] Re: a dream

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