a good read. in my mind clears up past rhetoric...

[danny_galaga]

http://www.retroblast.com/articles/TSR_editorial.html

[Grasshopper]

A very biased article IMHO. It could have been written by Foley himself.

Stung into action the MAME developers bit the bullet and took hold of their responsibility, and through last-minute negotiations with UltraCade took over the control of the MAME trademark, a resulting disclaimer removed all ambiguous statements stating clearly that the open-score code can not be used for financial gain and not with illegally acquired ROM's - slamming the door in the face of the MAME based cabinets open to prosecution of illegal representation.

I still don't think we're getting the full story here. If the MAME developers weren't threatened in some way by Foley when why did they go to the time, trouble and possible expense of getting the MAME logo trademarked? They weren't distributing the ROMs so they weren't doing anything illegal themselves. Why are they now effectively working for Ultracade? Did Foley use stick, carrot, or a mixture of the two?

Ultracade is not a charity. If a commercial organisation asked me to do something that was likely to enhance their profits then I'd expect to be compensated in some way. Indeed if it wasn't for the efforts of emulator developers there probably wouldn't even be a retro scene and Ultracade might not exist.

We've only really heard the views of one developer (haze) and he was a little hazy (please excuse the pun). I'd also be interested to know where the other developers stand on this issue especially Nicola Salmoria.

[KevSteele]

The author of the article, Kevin Williams, is friends with David Foley, so there is probably at least a small bit of bias in the article.

That said, this was a complicated and nasty bit of business all around, and you're right: we haven't gotten the full story of what went down, and I doubt we ever will.

Luckily, MAMEdevs are now better protected, as is the MAME project itself. I just hope this sad episode is behind us now...

[MYX]

Well apparently they read our posts. SO READ THIS JERK OFFS!!! You know, I do not want to buy a XYZ companies greatest hits. Usually I want two or 3 games out of the 20 that are sold.  I do not want to play it on my xbox. I do not want to play it on my GBA. I want to play it on in a cabinet as originally played. Usually there are differences in the games offered in the compilation sets. Or they are called new enhancements. We don't want enhancements or changes. We want what we had as kids. This is great for you. You need to do nothing but make the original roms available to us. The work is already done. No R&D to figure out how to make it. Just sell it (at a reasonable fee) and let us do the rest. If these companies were smart and realized that there IS a market there, and they would distribute the games (roms) so that we could download for a small fee. Heck, the Star Rom site is charging about $5 for the good stuff. That is 20 plays in the arcade if you were chucking quarters into the machine. I can afford 5 bucks.
The comparison was to Napster. Napster reorganized and now you can walk into a Target and buy a gift card for x amount of dollars for downloads. Why not do the same thing for our arcade games. I am about to build a cabinet. I have actually written money into my budget to buy about 15 games from StarRoms. If other companies would sell the roms. I would buy em'. I am buying games for my consoles. There is apattern here. I want to play games and I will pay for them. I am about to put down $1500 to just build a cabinet to play games in. We are willing to put out some dollars to get our games.
Also, I have to buy games for my xbox, gba, nintendo... from the store. This is a product we can buy through download. You do not need to pay for a store front, packaging, shipping,  or support. We just download it and put it to work in MAME.
The question I do have is how do we then get the rights to use games that are from companies that ARE dead. That DO NOT get royalties. That have no way to distribute the games even if they wanted to. How do we get these without worry of prosicution.

Damn there are enough crazy things in this world like Terrorists running around blowing things up and jets sliding off runnways, and now I have to now also worry about some idiot spying on me to see if I am playing their videogames. Get a life. Crap man!

[RayB]

Well said MYX. You sum it up clearly. It's the same problem the music industry had. People downloaded illegally because there was no alternative. RIAA fought tooth and nail INSTEAD of investing in building an infrastructure for selling what the consumer wanted. Then finally iTunes and others were able to come to life and as proven are successfully SELLING downloads.

ROMs need the same thing. People will usually do the honest thing if A. they can afford to and B. there's a means to.  Hmmm I guess maybe iRoms has a future after all.

[Crazy Cooter]

The author of the article, Kevin Williams, is friends with David Foley, so there is probably at least a small bit of bias in the article.

Kevin Williams owns "The Stinger Report" and used to work for INSKOR Entertainment, Infogrames, etc.  Now he has his own business(es?).  I've got into it with him before.  I quoted him as part of a discussion with him and he gave me the "that's not what I said".  Then turned around two seconds later and said "That's copyrighted by me and you have to remove the quote".  I told him either he said it or he didn't.  He dropped the subject, but he's far from a good source for information on this topic.  It's really too bad that people like him and Foley are even given a place to "legitimize" these claims that have zero research behind them.

His take on the MAME thing is exactly like Foley's.  That's why there's no real information in that article.  He doesn't reference the federal statutes broken by Foley by filing a trademark application under false pretense, he doesn't show any laws that have been broken by the MAMEdevs, he doesn't do anything but spin the whole topic.  The article couldn't have been more biased if Foley wrote it himself.  There's zero information or fact in it.

FWIW:  UltraCade = Arcade Legends = Ultimate Arcade = Chicago Gaming = Hyperware = ??  Like I said before... just changing the sign outside.

Doug Duba used to run Chicago Gaming, which was an offshoot of a cabinet company called Churchill Cabinets something or another.  They make the cabinets for Foley.  AFAIK, Foley has jumped on this now and *may* be in deep with Cabinet building.

IMHO, that article should be pulled.  Kevin, if you want an article that has facts & documents, let me know.  It's about time somebody wrote an article about it that shows in Black & White what happened.

--- added ---

iroms has no future.  There are too many better and easier ways to do it.  5 years ago, maybe.  Now?  No way.

[KevSteele]

[IMHO, that article should be pulled.

[Crowquill]

Wow--propaganda! Everything in this is either untrue or a fraction of the truth. This one really struck me:

"The MAME Development team originally created the emulator to allow owners of broken arcade cabinets to run their machines again, and compile list of salvaged ROM code."

Apparently everything in these guys' world revolves around how to make money off of cabinets using emulation. He has no concept that people are curious how the hardware works and investigate that through emulation. Once again, the altruistic Mr. Foley was just looking out for everyone, he has no stake in making money off of MAME. He wasn't claiming something he didn't create to further his business.

Napster was a file distribution system. MAME is an emulator. Of course MAME is just as guilty in giving users illegal ROMs. Isn't that a logical conclusion to everyone else?

I seriously think ultracade is still a good idea. While "Ms Pac-Man vs. Galga" are strong enough to make money on their own, it's good to see a bunch of great games that can't combined into one cabinet. It's a shame it's run by a @!#?@!

As far as the console games go, I think Capcom finally has the right idea--release a good quantity of games onto one collection. It's on my christmas list.

 

[Crazy Cooter]

[IMHO, that article should be pulled.  Kevin, if you want an article that has facts & documents, let me know.  It's about time somebody wrote an article about it that shows in Black & White what happened.

The article is presented as an "editorial" from Kevin Williams and the Stinger Report, and as such expresses his opinions. I'd be more than happy - thrilled, even - to see a comprehensive article covering this situation and all that occurred.

Heck, I'm paying for articles, so you can even earn something while you're at it.

Kevin

Cool.  I'll work on it over the next couple days.  I want to make sure everything is well documented, so I'll take my time (and make sure I'm not biased either... otherwise it's a waste of time).

[KevSteele]

Sounds great - I look forward to seeing it and putting it up on RetroBlast!

[Orclord]

Me to.....

Although I'm sure it will only enforce my views on the wanker....

Or maybe not....

But I doubt that very much...

 

[brophog]

Can't we get this moved to a more appropriate board.

[markrvp]

That whole article was Bull ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

[Pipercub]

In a technical sense they may be right. But the reality is that their product does not suit my desires or needs. If MAME did not exist I would simply have only dedicated machines and no multi-machines. An absence of MAME would never lead me to purchase their products. And clearly because I own dedicated machines that I already have oppertunity to play in MAME, MAME has not stopped my from buying. Of course these machines already gave the manufacturere their profits 20 plus years ago and my buying them doesn't do anything for them. Bottom line is, there is no huge market out there that MAME is denying them. Let them burn all the money they want trying to fight a foe that doesn't exist. MAME users will still have their MAME machines.

And that is what this is all about, trying to make  a poor product profitable by preventing alternatives. A good product will sell regardless of emulation alternatives. And under their plan a bad product will always have the phantom excuse of failing because of emulators. Atari came out with the Flashback 1, a crummy product in terms of game quality so I only bought one and only for it's novelty. Having an actual 7800 and several emulators did not influence my decision. Had the Flashback 1's novelty not been valuable to me Iwouldn't have bought it. Then Atari came out with the AWESOME flashback II and delivered on all the promises of making a legacy hardware unit. I already have 2600s, emulators and ALL of those games ROM images. Yet I have bought 10 FB2s (just bought 2 this morning for Xmass gifts) the others were as gifts, being able to always have one NIB, playing etc. But Atari sold me $250 worth of product despite me having the emulators and ROMs because it was a good product.

[danny_galaga]

A very biased article IMHO. It could have been written by Foley himself.

Stung into action the MAME developers bit the bullet and took hold of their responsibility, and through last-minute negotiations with UltraCade took over the control of the MAME trademark, a resulting disclaimer removed all ambiguous statements stating clearly that the open-score code can not be used for financial gain and not with illegally acquired ROM's - slamming the door in the face of the MAME based cabinets open to prosecution of illegal representation.

I still don't think we're getting the full story here. If the MAME developers weren't threatened in some way by Foley when why did they go to the time, trouble and possible expense of getting the MAME logo trademarked? They weren't distributing the ROMs so they weren't doing anything illegal themselves. Why are they now effectively working for Ultracade? Did Foley use stick, carrot, or a mixture of the two?

you're own quote says its so. i thought it was obvious from the article that MAME was coerced into action...

[jlml]

I just played an Ultracade machine for the first time. Awful frameskipping (makes Joust etc impossible), atrocious buggy menu, illogical button placement (cramp festival, shooters almost unplayable for long periods), ugly cabinet. It's so badly designed, that you would think it was intentional...