Author Topic: Classic Arcade Graphics Price Drop THREAD IS NOW: GROUP PURCHASE N0:2 (Read 44802 times)

Fozzy The Bear · « **on:** February 03, 2007, 04:01:59 am »

Guys!!
Classic Arcade Graphics. Have finally seen the light, that nobody was going to pay them $7000 for their formerly on line collection of arcade artwork. http://www.classicarcadegrafix.com/sunshop/

It seems they couldn't sell it. Just as predicted here.

The price for the entire arcade art collection has now dropped to: $999 USD.

I think now would be a very good time to start a fund so that this forum acquires a copy of all the material they have and makes it available to everyone on here.

Saint!! Please Please Please could this be organised. For the sake of preservation and access to this material in the future for all the members.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

headkaze · « **Reply #1 on:** February 03, 2007, 04:30:13 am »

You must have missed the thread that already raised the money by BYOAC members to buy the collection, but Mame Marquee's beat us to it and has bought it already.

Level42 · « **Reply #2 on:** February 03, 2007, 04:33:04 am »

Hey Fozzy, I don't know where you've been the last couple of weeks but may I point you to this:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=61616.0

Maybe you should PM Joymonkey.....he can bring you up-to-date about this

ArcadeMaze · « **Reply #3 on:** February 03, 2007, 10:40:21 am »

leapinlew · « **Reply #4 on:** February 03, 2007, 10:45:55 am »

Fozzy,

Just so you know, Oscar Controls or Wico are out of business.

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #5 on:** February 03, 2007, 02:28:19 pm »

No I hadn't seen the thread..... I have no idea how I missed something that important.

PM On the way to Joymonkey right now. If this all proves to be a bit of a waste of time, I'll be really disappointed.

If I had $999.00 to spare I'd be buying it myself and just making available to everyone for free.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

leapinlew · « **Reply #6 on:** February 03, 2007, 02:36:25 pm »

Quote from: Fozzy The Bear on February 03, 2007, 02:28:19 pm

No I hadn't seen the thread..... I have no idea how I missed something that important.

PM On the way to Joymonkey right now. If this all proves to be a bit of a waste of time, I'll be really disappointed.

If I had $999.00 to spare I'd be buying it myself and just making available to everyone for free.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Ain't no thing Fozz! You should read the last few pages of the thread. It all works out. Scott from Mamemarquee's bought the collection.

Bobbler · « **Reply #7 on:** February 03, 2007, 04:52:33 pm »

No worries Fozzie, I was going to put into this also (think it was from your original post around Christmas IIRC).

I missed this entire thread too LOL.

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #8 on:** February 03, 2007, 08:20:29 pm »

Quote from: leapinlew on February 03, 2007, 02:36:25 pm

Ain't no thing Fozz! You should read the last few pages of the thread. It all works out. Scott from Mamemarquee's bought the collection.

Yeah... That's great, as it is, and Mame Marquees printing quality is way beter than Classic Arcade Graphics ever was. But that still doesn't give us access to it. Only to order stuff printed. So as far as I'm concerned, that really isn't the ideal result.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

rockin_rick · « **Reply #9 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:16:09 am »

Are they only selling one copy of the artwork? Or are they selling as many copies as they can? Checking their website, they still advertise that the $999 deal....

Rick

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #10 on:** February 04, 2007, 07:14:53 am »

Quote from: rockin_rick on February 04, 2007, 01:16:09 am

Are they only selling one copy of the artwork? Or are they selling as many copies as they can? Checking their website, they still advertise that the $999 deal....

No Rick... They'll sell it to anybody who wants it. They're not selling any exclusive rights or anything like that. If we had the money we could buy it. They would sell it to us.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

jimjim · « **Reply #11 on:** February 04, 2007, 10:38:38 am »

Not to be ignorant, but why would they sell their artwork to people on the forums so anybody can use it for free. I think their business model is set up for individual use and selling it so it can be given out would ruin their business. I would equate it to buying their new "how to" books and scanning them into a PDF file so all the members can learn how to restore their machines.

If they don't mind it being posted for anyody to use, I would donate to help.

fixedpigs · « **Reply #12 on:** February 04, 2007, 10:44:46 am »

from their website...

"No one can argue that the full collection is well worth the $7k price tag, but the price is also out of the reach of many collectors and dealers."

collectors & dealers...

however...it contradicts what is on the main page...

"Complete Digital Artwork Collection Now Available to Dealers for $999 email if interested"

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #13 on:** February 04, 2007, 10:47:14 am »

Quote from: jimjim on February 04, 2007, 10:38:38 am

Not to be ignorant, but why would they sell their artwork to people on the forums so anybody can use it for free.
<SNIP>
If they don't mind it being posted for anyody to use, I would donate to help.

Because they no longer sell it apart from as one single sale item at:$999 they state that they do not hold the copyright on it. They state the following in their sales details:

1) Rights to the artwork we are offering have been abandoned or the rights owners openly allow limited reproductions. Some artwork scans which we are not offering are Trademarked or Copyrighted and the owners have chosen not to permit their redistribution such as some Namco products, Dragon's Lair and Space Ace by Don Bluth, Gottlieb Pinball, Williams Pinball, and Bally Pinball products. If you are interested in obtaining licenses to distribute these, we have included all details in the how-to book.

2) No Non-competition: we will offer this set to anyone that pays the fee. There is no non-competition agreement and no exclusivity.

The second pointer here is the interesting one for us! The sale is not an exclusive one!

Just because Mame Marquees picked up a copy in order to sell printed artwork from it does NOT prevent us from holding a copy and making it freely available to everyone.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Teebor · « **Reply #14 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:00:30 pm »

Not that I can see it of any immediate use to me personally at the moment I am curious in what you are suggesting.

What would be the kind of price tag you would be asking people to pony up?

Although for us UK residents the pound is pretty strong so that can be a good thing right about now.

Everyone chips in £10 (roughly $20) or whatever they can afford?
From the sounds of it there is a lot of data to be transported out afterwards, so would you make it available through torrent? (perhaps through a group like [romsite name redacted]??) Or duplicate it for those who send you a HDD?
I would say that DVD would be pretty much out of the question due to the enormous size of the total files.

Just curious to know a little more.

rockin_rick · « **Reply #15 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:19:43 pm »

The other thread (that was) going about this describes this in more detail. There was talk of a group buy, but I'm not sure of the current state of it since mamemarquees bought a set. The other thread is linked in post 3.

Rick

Teebor · « **Reply #16 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:32:04 pm »

Yeah that was bought by two companies who I doubt are willing to just let people download or have copies freely.

Specially when I can go round the corner and have a print made myself for less than £25 and with shipping and printing fees I could pay more than that with other companies.

TOK · « **Reply #17 on:** February 04, 2007, 02:10:35 pm »

I would love to see this set just make it out onto bittorrent, because once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back. Classicarcadegraphix (whatever) ran into some legal issues with some of the art. Companies like Namco will still protect very old copyrights. Any vendor is going to run into the same issues and have to pull art.

ChadTower · « **Reply #18 on:** February 04, 2007, 02:30:55 pm »

You could never have a 400GB torrent.

JustMichael · « **Reply #19 on:** February 04, 2007, 03:10:19 pm »

I don't know about torrents but I have heard about this thing called "usenet"...

RandyT · « **Reply #20 on:** February 04, 2007, 03:26:43 pm »

Quote from: TOK on February 04, 2007, 02:10:35 pm

I would love to see this set just make it out onto bittorrent, because once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back. Classicarcadegraphix (whatever) ran into some legal issues with some of the art. Companies like Namco will still protect very old copyrights. Any vendor is going to run into the same issues and have to pull art.

I have to agree on this one.....show of hands, how many think CAG just got tired of making money? Anyone? Anyone?

IMHO, there had to be some legal pressure placed upon them to prompt them to sell the collection and the book, rather than to continue their current business model. I'm guessing there is a fine legal line between selling the art as "derivative or archival" in digital form and actually selling finished products including the protected imagery. But I've been wrong before.

I'm no lawyer, and I certainly can't speak for the copyright owners, but I'm going to guess that the corporate types would have a lot less problems with enthusiasts printing out the work for themselves to make their own art or to restore their own machines. Selling the finished decals / marquees as a product would most likely be viewed quite differently, which is why that passage about "acquiring rights from the copyright holders" is part of the book they are selling. Joe Blow with a big printer should take that one seriously to avoid similar problems.

RandyT

ChadTower · « **Reply #21 on:** February 04, 2007, 05:14:26 pm »

Quote from: JustMichael on February 04, 2007, 03:10:19 pm

I don't know about torrents but I have heard about this thing called "usenet"...

Which also wouldn't deal with a 400gb collection.

Teebor · « **Reply #22 on:** February 04, 2007, 06:07:15 pm »

Other than the overall download time for the whole collection a torrent is probably the best way to handle the file. You (as the user) would be able to prioritise the files that you would require, also by making it a part of a ratio tracker would encourage more people to upload thereby increasing the potential for better downloads.

Although the downside of it being the size it is would put a lot of people off getting it for fear of being booted from the tracker, so it ultimately would have to become a "free" download (no ratio hit)

Besides its not much worse than trying to maintain a laserdisc or Tosec collection, a complete romset, extras, and chd's iirc is only a 1/4 of the total size again.

its more efficient than trying to copy it to a big bag load of HDD's and posting them out to everyone around the world who wants it

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #23 on:** February 04, 2007, 06:55:12 pm »

Quote from: Teebor on February 04, 2007, 06:07:15 pm

its more efficient than trying to copy it to a big bag load of HDD's and posting them out to everyone around the world who wants it

How exactly do you work that one out?? It takes a full day and sometimes more just to download a 4.7Gig DVD. What are you suggesting here... That people who want it should spend more than 1/3 of a year of on-line time just to download it! Just how is that more efficient.

The ideal model IMHO is that same one that is applied to Mame Roms.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

shardian · « **Reply #24 on:** February 05, 2007, 12:09:37 am »

Quote from: Teebor on February 04, 2007, 06:07:15 pm

its more efficient than trying to copy it to a big bag load of HDD's and posting them out to everyone around the world who wants it

Yeah noone would ever do that...

korendog · « **Reply #25 on:** February 05, 2007, 01:24:25 am »

Fozzy let's do this! I'm in for $25. All we need is 40 more peeps. I'll even organize it and copy the collection to hard drives. I work for the post office and it wouldn't be that much to ship a hard drive around the US or even abroad. I think starting a torrent with it is not a bad idea either. Whatever works. What I see is a bunch of peeps on here that say it can't be done.....I say it can! Let's stop worrying about a few little issues and make it happen for pete's sake!
If you are in post here and when we get 40 takers we'll do it up.

Loki · « **Reply #26 on:** February 05, 2007, 02:13:03 am »

Would be really nice to see this all available for everyone

I guess the best way to share it would be a website where you have to register and get a max number of MB per week or month to download the files.
This way you'll prevent people from downloading nonstop and keeps it fast for everyone who wants something.
Using different mirrors would also be nice so there won't be any downtimes.

For collectors you can make torrents and put them on the same site.
Distributing it in parts works pretty well I think... 1 file of 400GB is crazy

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #27 on:** February 05, 2007, 07:13:23 am »

Quote from: korendog on February 05, 2007, 01:24:25 am

Fozzy let's do this! I'm in for $25. All we need is 40 more peeps.

Well actually I'd be in for $50 USD.....

but, as I understand it a group purchase has already been organised, see the other thread, and I'm advised that matters with that are in progress...... I'm afraid that's all I know right now.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Teebor · « **Reply #28 on:** February 05, 2007, 09:02:36 am »

Quote from: Fozzy The Bear on February 04, 2007, 06:55:12 pm

Quote from: Teebor on February 04, 2007, 06:07:15 pm
its more efficient than trying to copy it to a big bag load of HDD's and posting them out to everyone around the world who wants it

How exactly do you work that one out?? It takes a full day and sometimes more just to download a 4.7Gig DVD. What are you suggesting here... That people who want it should spend more than 1/3 of a year of on-line time just to download it! Just how is that more efficient.

The ideal model IMHO is that same one that is applied to Mame Roms.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Simple, It is unlikely that you are going to want to download use and print EVERY file in the document all at once, so you download the torrent file, load it into your torrent client and then prioritise the file(s) you want over the rest of them as I said before.

As for decent downloads I have downloaded a dvd rip in well under a day, the quickest thing I have ever downloaded was a 400MB file in under an hour. And if thats the speed I get on my ropey old NTL line imagine what I could get on a decent internet connection.

Besides, do you want 50+ HDD's turning up on your doorstep all wanting cloning? or let people download the parts of the file that they want with the overall goal of eventually downloading the whole thing?

CheffoJeffo · « **Reply #29 on:** February 05, 2007, 09:22:43 am »

What Fozzy said ...

Quote from: JoyMonkey on February 05, 2007, 08:09:28 am

Eventually most of the artwork will be available to the BYOAC community in one form or another. Right now most of us that originally donated have access to the artwork, but as a courtesy to Classic Arcade Graffix we'd prefer not to turn around and give his product to the whole community for free straight away; doing so would completely devalue the artwork that he's put a serious amount of time and effort into and wouldn't be fair on him, or others that have bought the artwork as business investments (like MameMarquees).
I'm putting together a web-gallery with low/medium resolution versions of everything, so everyone gets to take a look at the artwork.

Cheers

ChadTower · « **Reply #30 on:** February 05, 2007, 09:30:54 am »

The speed of a download is nowadays more dependent on the server than the client. Doesn't matter if you're on a T1 if the other person is on a 128k DSL line (or worse).

A 400GB collection would most likely be all RARed up for packaging and compression. That would make prioritization within the torrent useless.

steveh · « **Reply #31 on:** February 05, 2007, 10:54:20 am »

400gb would be near impossible to distribute efficiently. how many of us have 400gb of free space available on a single drive, to dedicate storing these images? I know i do not. i have over a tb of storage and could in no way open up 400gb of storage

RandyT · « **Reply #32 on:** February 05, 2007, 11:02:23 am »

Quote from: ChadTower on February 05, 2007, 09:30:54 am

A 400GB collection would most likely be all RARed up for packaging and compression. That would make prioritization within the torrent useless.

Take a look at the attached file listing. As I suspected, the drive appears to be organized in a "ready to work" fashion, which mean that the collection is uncompressed. The total number of bytes shown in the file list is 369,008,207,156 and the files are mostly PSD and TIF.

This collection will probably be under 200 gigs compressed, in case that matters to anyone.

RandyT

ChadTower · « **Reply #33 on:** February 05, 2007, 11:06:21 am »

It's better, but really, that doesn't help much. In order to extract a compressed archive you need as much as 3x the free space as the size of the archive. You need enough for it to dump to %temp% (or your OS' equivalent) during decompression and you need enough space to copy that extracted image out to your destination. So, worst case is you need over a terabyte to extract the whole 400GB... even at 200GB, you'd need a few hundred GB.

Of course, there are other scenarios, such as opening up the archive and only pulling a few things out... but let's just face the reality that most home PCs simply aren't up to dealing with that amount of data.

RandyT · « **Reply #34 on:** February 05, 2007, 11:34:56 am »

Quote from: ChadTower on February 05, 2007, 11:06:21 am

It's better, but really, that doesn't help much.

50 DVD's or 100? 200gig drive or 400gig drvie? Which is faster / cheaper ?

But really, if someone were to try to make this collection available to those who needed something specific, I don't think the "lump" transfer is viable. I think it's achievable, just not easy. Then there's the "who really owns the rights to a collection of copyrighted / abandoned works" thing, which I'm still really fuzzy on, but would guess that you can't sell / protect that which you do not own.

In any event, I would again urge caution to anyone who is considering doing what CAG was. A restoration business is one that owns the original machines and would probably have better legal footing to reproduce the artwork for them in-house. If the art was used as a foundation and modified significantly, that might squeak you through too. But offering a "catalog" of printed works to anyone who asks for them is a real ballsy / stupid move that will probably attract some unwanted attention. And god help you if one of your customers is building knock-off machines with your prints all over them

.

Again, IANAL, but I would hate to see someone get their ass in a sling because of the way this collection is being marketed.

RandyT

ChadTower · « **Reply #35 on:** February 05, 2007, 11:44:33 am »

Quote from: RandyT on February 05, 2007, 11:34:56 am

50 DVD's or 100? 200gig drive or 400gig drvie? Which is faster / cheaper ?

When you're talking 400gb raw and 200gb compressed/archived, the logistics of working with a 200gb archive are probably enough to make it not worth doing. The better way would probably be a bunch of single archives at 2-4GB each (NOT one archive split on 4gb).

RandyT · « **Reply #36 on:** February 05, 2007, 12:07:45 pm »

Quote from: ChadTower on February 05, 2007, 11:44:33 am

Quote from: RandyT on February 05, 2007, 11:34:56 am
50 DVD's or 100? 200gig drive or 400gig drvie? Which is faster / cheaper ?
When you're talking 400gb raw and 200gb compressed/archived, the logistics of working with a 200gb archive are probably enough to make it not worth doing. The better way would probably be a bunch of single archives at 2-4GB each (NOT one archive split on 4gb).

Anyone who makes an archive that big would need his head examined. I'm talking about compressing the individual files. There would be no benefit to handling something that large in a single lump.

RandyT

Fozzy The Bear · « **Reply #37 on:** February 05, 2007, 12:25:58 pm »

Quote from: steveh on February 05, 2007, 10:54:20 am

400gb would be near impossible to distribute efficiently. how many of us have 400gb of free space available on a single drive

Dude! a 500gb external hard drive on a USB connection costs under £120 at retail price and significantly less from some suppliers.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

ChadTower · « **Reply #38 on:** February 05, 2007, 12:55:33 pm »

Quote from: RandyT on February 05, 2007, 12:07:45 pm

Anyone who makes an archive that big would need his head examined. I'm talking about compressing the individual files. There would be no benefit to handling something that large in a single lump.

Distribution in a single lump is much easier than in hundreds of individual ones.

JoyMonkey · « **Reply #39 on:** February 05, 2007, 01:03:34 pm »

Quote from: JoyMonkey on February 05, 2007, 08:09:28 am

Eventually most of the artwork will be available to the BYOAC community in one form or another. Right now most of us that originally donated have access to the artwork, but as a courtesy to Classic Arcade Graffix we'd prefer not to turn around and give his product to the whole community for free straight away; doing so would completely devalue the artwork that he's put a serious amount of time and effort into and wouldn't be fair on him, or others that have bought the artwork as business investments (like MameMarquees).
I'm putting together a web-gallery with low/medium resolution versions of everything, so everyone gets to take a look at the artwork.

To add to what I posted in the other thread, here's the site I've been putting together:
http://artwork.joymonkey.com

Uploading everything is pretty tedious, but eventually everything will be up there and people outside of the original group buy will be able to browse through low-resolution versions of everything, then request the specific pieces they're looking for in full res.

The way I see it, it's better to have a quick look at a piece of sideart and decide if it's what you want that to download a 2gb version of the same image only to see it's not what you had in mind.

Again, none of this is going to happen overnight, but eventually I hope it will work out in everyones favor without stepping on anyones toes.


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