License games to produce arcade cabinets

[Jarich]

Hello,

For a project at the university, we are challenged to invent/re-invent something. We chose to re-invent the arcade machine. We need make a full business model canvas for this company. But we would like to know who we could contact to get the licenses or at least, what they cost.

Is anybody willing to help us in our search?

Sincerely,

Jarich Braeckevelt, UGent Student

[TapeWormInYourGut]

Frankly I doubt that you'd get many answers here, since people are either repairing existing hardware or using emulators with unlicensed copies.

You'd have to contact the game's publisher. For example, if you wanted to reproduce Dead or Alive 2, then you'd have to contact Tecmo. In addition, you would then need to contact Sega and work out rights to reproduce the NAOMI hardware which DOA2 runs on. Since it is out of production, you'd pay the manufacturing costs in addition to the license. This will most likely not be worth it unless you have a large amount of NAOMI hardware games which you are reproducing.

Namco usually uses their own hardware. For Namco games you'd have to license the game and rights to reproduce the hardware from the same company.

You are most likely not going to make your money back via reproductions. There won't be demand to meet the manufacturing and licensing cost, which is why they drop out of production in the first place. The best arcade market is to repair existing arcades to like-new condition, or create a new cabinet with used system hardware.

[JDFan]

As stated above - each game would have to be licensed from each copyright holder - (since most of the arcade companies have been sold to other companies or merged etc. etc. etc. over the years just finding out who actually owns the rights to give you legal license to sell the game gets pretty difficult - and those that do own clear licenses (ie. Namco, Atari, Nintendo, etc.) do not typically sell licensing rights as they might decide to re-release a game at any time (ie. the nintendo classic being released soon) - which becomes difficult if they already sold licensing rights - so usually would not be cost effective to get license rights for even a single game and pretty much impossible for full libraries of games.

Another option that some users take would be to purchase a game unit that has a few licensed games (ie. the Jakks plug and play games, an XBOX or Playstation console with games, etc.) and adapt them so that the games could be played ( but even that method usually violates the license terms as they sometimes specifically state in the license agreement that the licenses only include rights to personal use and not for retail purposes.

[yotsuya]

Hello,

For a project at the university, we are challenged to invent/re-invent something. We chose to re-invent the arcade machine. We need make a full business model canvas for this company. But we would like to know who we could contact to get the licenses or at least, what they cost.

Is anybody willing to help us in our search?

Sincerely,

Jarich Braeckevelt, UGent Student

Find a kid working on a programming degree who's making his own game. Create a custom Cabinet for his game. There you go.

[JDFan]

Hello,

For a project at the university, we are challenged to invent/re-invent something. We chose to re-invent the arcade machine. We need make a full business model canvas for this company. But we would like to know who we could contact to get the licenses or at least, what they cost.

Is anybody willing to help us in our search?

Sincerely,

Jarich Braeckevelt, UGent Student

Find a kid working on a programming degree who's making his own game. Create a custom Cabinet for his game. There you go.

^THIS - much simpler and viable route ! -- Or talk with an indy developer that has a game released on the app market that could be adapted to an arcade and talk to them about possible licensing for arcade cabinets

[pbj]

^THIS - much simpler and viable route ! -- Or talk with an indy developer that has a game released on the app market that could be adapted to an arcade and talk to them about possible licensing for arcade cabinets

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too.  Find a game that's already fairly arcade friendly and get in touch with the developer.

I think this guy would probably work with you:

https://www.locomalito.com/maldita_castilla.php

[paigeoliver]

The Letter V Six Times would be a great title to try to license. I believe it is a single developer, works great with arcade controls and has a real retro feel to it. Licensing actual arcade titles is probably going to be a no-go as I imagine Chicago gaming already has exclusive license to anything that could be had at a decent price.

http://thelettervsixtim.es/

[Jarich]

Hello all,

Thanks for all your response, as you guys made it clear to me that licensing will be hard, I also e-mailed some indie developpers.

But also I mailed Taito (Space Invaders), and they look willing to do bussiness, if they can charge us a licensing fee. I'm waiting for their response, because if that fee would not be extremely high, this can be a great start!

[Jarich]

Does anyone know how legal the 19in1 or 60in1 JAMMAboards are?

[Titchgamer]

No more legal than MAME

[thomas_surles]

The Letter V Six Times would be a great title to try to license. I believe it is a single developer, works great with arcade controls and has a real retro feel to it. Licensing actual arcade titles is probably going to be a no-go as I imagine Chicago gaming already has exclusive license to anything that could be had at a decent price.

http://thelettervsixtim.es/

That game is fun on my cab. Also "you have to win the game" 1 or 2

[Haze]

Does anyone know how legal the 19in1 or 60in1 JAMMAboards are?

0%

[Haze]

As others have said, licensing is difficult.

You'd probably be better off getting a team of people together to do simple arcade-style games, but with all new assets and themes.

eg. you could fit Pacman / Crush Roller style gameplay into something with a guy mowing lawns, it's all a similar concept, cover every corner of the maze.  Such things should be relatively cheap to produce and compared to modern games don't require a huge number of assets to be created.

Taito is an interesting one, I've recently seen a brand new looking slim looking Space Invader cabinet on location.   It was clearly full licensed with HD screen, new code (high score tables etc.) and very slightly updated graphics (the background was rendered on the screen, it had a Space Invaders Deluxe style logo butthe gaps between the squares were closer to 1/4 of the regular pixel size than a full pixel)  It had official Taito logos, copyright etc. and I have no reason to doubt it was an official product, but can't find *any* mention of it online (the newest thing I can find mention of is the NesicaXlive version that Japan got in 2011, but I don't think it was that)

So maybe Taito are willing to do small licensing deals for such things, without doing any real promotion of the products themselves.

[elvis]

Find a kid working on a programming degree who's making his own game. Create a custom Cabinet for his game. There you go.

Or modify any existing open source game that's been released under a commercial-friendly license.

You're legally allowed to make any GPL, MIT or BSD licensed code a commercial product, even if you're not the first party developer.  Those licenses have restrictions (under the GPL you have to release you code changes), but those restrictions don't control your ability to sell either the software directly, or a hardware system running that software.

[acvieluf]

Here is a list of games that have been released to the public domain:

http://mamedev.org/roms/

EDIT: JEEZ, i was looking for Exidy games, since i thought they were released to the public domain.  In the process, i completely ignored the GIANT DISCLAIMER on the above link.  Please disregard.   

[BadMouth]

Being the assignment is to reinvent, building cabinets for old games falls short in my opinion.

I think new games are the way to go.  A one-man team would be easiest/cheapest to get licensing from.
You could ask RayB from these here forums if you can use some of his games:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,148058.msg1541841.html#msg1541841
https://itunes.apple.com/us/developer/spore-productions/id577335929

Or if we're really going for a MODERN reimagining.... build an arcade machine that allows the user to cast the screen from their phone to the machine and play with arcade controls, or at least a giant touchscreen.
The games would be playable on both the phone and on the arcade machine, but would cost money on the arcade machine using a pay per play (or chunk of time) model that uses google's billing instead of having to empty money from the machine.  Then the business hosting the machine would get a monthly check from you for a portion of the earnings.
The games could be specifically designed for both, but I like the idea of being able to play ANY game and just making money from the app that links up with the arcade machine.

Want to play your favorite old arcade game at the airport?  Install necessary emulator on your phone, install our app, and our arcade machine can be any game you want it to be. 
Want to play the newest android games instead?  Use the big touchscreen!

[paigeoliver]

Here is a list of games that have been released to the public domain:

http://mamedev.org/roms/

EDIT: JEEZ, i was looking for Exidy games, since i thought they were released to the public domain.  In the process, i completely ignored the GIANT DISCLAIMER on the above link.  Please disregard.   

The restrictions and disclaimers mamedev lists are not accurate. It seemed like they wanted to add their own restrictions. Example, Jay Fenton declared "the ROM images from Robby Roto are hearby declared free for unlimited non-commercial duplication and play by Mame users." way back in 1999. While I can no longer seem to find the original text about some of the other games, they also seemed to be released a little less restrictively than what it says on the Mame site.

However you couldn't make a dollar with any of those games. Fully licensed multicades with great titles fail to earn in most locations.

[ark_ader]

Dave Foley is your man.  He will get you some low cost legal games.

[Jarich]

Hey guys,

I did talk to some indie developpers but it seems like they don't have the time to develop or adjust their games for commercial use...
I will talk to people at the university to maybe get a team of software engineers to make a small game, as they could do it as a project, they might do it free or at least, very low cost.

Thanks for all the ideas, the touchscreen and cast idea is really appealing, but I think it would be better to start up now with something a bit more simple, and then later on, when we have the budget to hire some software engineers, start to make those modern arcade machines!

As far as Taito goes, we did contact them but we have to be started up allready for them to consider us as having a license for their games.

Currently some shop called: arcadewinkel.nl is also doing some major research for us regarding to boards that really are legal, because some boards include a license, or at least they think that som boards do that :p

[elvis]

Dave Foley is your man.  He will get you some low cost legal games.

Bloody hell there's a name I haven't heard in years.  Wonder what he's doing now?

[edit] Oh, a budget streaming video company.  How boring.

[Haze]

Hey guys,

I did talk to some indie developpers but it seems like they don't have the time to develop or adjust their games for commercial use...
I will talk to people at the university to maybe get a team of software engineers to make a small game, as they could do it as a project, they might do it free or at least, very low cost.

Thanks for all the ideas, the touchscreen and cast idea is really appealing, but I think it would be better to start up now with something a bit more simple, and then later on, when we have the budget to hire some software engineers, start to make those modern arcade machines!

As far as Taito goes, we did contact them but we have to be started up allready for them to consider us as having a license for their games.

Currently some shop called: arcadewinkel.nl is also doing some major research for us regarding to boards that really are legal, because some boards include a license, or at least they think that som boards do that :p

Just be weary of the multi-games.

Some of the chinese manufacturers claim to have licenses for the xx-in-1 boards in order to try and make them look more legitimate, they don't, I've even seen fake 'license' paper with some of them where they haven't even managed to correctly spell the names of the manufacturers.

I think it's a direct response to some companies refusing to stock them without such paperwork, but it doesn't make them any more legitimate.

Even things like Ultracade weren't quite above board for every game on offer, hence the joke about Dave Foley.

The only official ones you'll find are very expensive and might have 2 or 3 games at most (for example, Taito did a Qix/Space Invaders 2-in-1, Namco did a Galaga/Pacman/MsPacman 3-in-1, I believe Nintendo did some 2-in-1 with Donkey Kong too)

[yotsuya]

The more I think about it, I think BadMouth has the right idea,  to be honest.  Any one of us can build an arcade cabinet. To reinvent the experience, though, now that would be a great and meaningful university project. Adding LED buttons and joysticks isn't so much reinventing it as it is tricking it out. I like the idea of making it something new.