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Topic: http://www.atari.com/us/starcontrol/ (Read 17684 times)
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ptx
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I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
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What's going on there? Just a little promotional game? The patent specimens have screen shots of it too...
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Novus
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I found some background information from the developers. Combining the fact that this was a rush job (4 days from Atari requesting it to delivery!) with the recent renewal of the "Star Control" trademark, I suspect this is Atari legal manoeuvring to avoid losing the trademark.
As for the game itself, while the gameplay resembles Star Control melee closely, it ignores anything that could be construed as TFB IP. Given Accolade's attempts to get rid of TFB's ideas from Star Control (see SC3 and the cancelled StarCon), and the "Star Control Preview" bit in the title, there is also a distinct possibility that Atari is planning to revive or reimagine Star Control without TFB, but aren't willing to commit quite yet.
Edit: It seems Star Control is only one of many games on Atari Play, a bunch of official Atari retro remakes. The rest at least seem to be reasonably accurate remakes (or possibly even emulations; haven't looked that closely).
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« Last Edit: March 21, 2008, 05:47:09 pm by Novus »
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Novus
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I am 99% convinced that this indeed a ploy to keep the trademark safe from abandonment claims.
Commisioning it to be created in 4 days, "pretty lenient requirements", putting it on a site with "classic games" without even the slightest attempt to make it look or feel like the original, there is little room for doubt that they just wanted to have "something" there.
The contrast between a rushed Flash game that only vaguely resembles the original (Star Control) and a Java-based emulation of the original (the Missile Command applet seems to spend much of its time doing low-level bit manipulation on a 64 KB memory dump, and the rest, that I haven't examined in detail, all look very much like the originals) is quite clear.
In any case, examining the trademark documents is quite interesting, in particular the "Combined Declaration of Use In Commerce & Application For Renewal of Registration of A Mark Under Sections 8 & 9" of Tuesday 2007-09-18. As ptx mentioned, the specimens used to demonstrate "use in commerce" are, in fact, this particular Flash game (or to be exact, a printout of the webpage showing the title screen of the game!) that, according to HTTP header info on the Flash file, was last modified on the server on 2007-09-21. This looks a lot like the game was written over the weekend so that Atari's legal department could prove on Tuesday that they are using the trademark, after which the game was "released" by adding it to Atari Play.
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guesst
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So what? That's why this project is called the Ur-Quan Masters. I mean, Atari has done enough to drag "Star Control" through the mud, not limited to this little stunt, that an official sequel by TFB could be named "Fwiffo's Revenge" and be just as successful. Possibly more so with a title like that.
Still, it's a decidedly puerile move on Atari's part.
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« Last Edit: March 22, 2008, 06:54:39 pm by guesst »
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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I tried it. It was bad. A little better than E.T., I guess. Not as good as SC3. I wouldn't hold it against the contractor, due to the time constraint, though it seems kind of numbskulled of them to make a new game in a language they had never used, in two days. But I wasn't there. Maybe flash is just really good for putting out crappy games like that really fast even if you don't know what you're doing, but too limited to use for anything serious.
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Novus
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Given the ridiculous time limit imposed by Atari on Iocaine, I'm surprised the game is playable at all. I suspect Flash just happens to make it easy to do things like this, but pulling this off in two days of development is still impressive. Actually, come to think of it, it does remind me quite a lot of Star Control... on the ZX Spectrum. With prettier graphics.
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Arne
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I wonder what would've happened if they had missed the deadline... I might have... on purpose. Ooops.
Gameplay could've been more even with just 2 days. There are speedcoding contests where people crank out very impressive stuff in 48hrs. However, the interface around this game is pretty polished, something which is usually not the case with speed coded games afaik.
On a sidenote, I'm not really worried about Atari or TfB doing a terrible Star Control sequel. What I'm worried about is a moderately bad/good one which isn't as easy to dismiss as say, CD-i Zelda or SC3 was.
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« Last Edit: March 23, 2008, 03:40:59 pm by Arne »
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Neonlare
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Nut Case for Star Control
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As dire as this action might be, the game itself isn't horrid. It's bland, sure, but within a 4 day deadline it is still impressive, albeit more could have been added to it than what is currently in (also, sound samples are glitchy). Atari have never been very good with developers, ever since their 2600 days, when they wouldn't credit individual programmers on games. I wonder what TfB think on this matter.
Hell, it might actually boost the chances of them making a comeback, what with them trying to keep control over the name. Someone is bound to write about this eventually. Infact it might be a good idea to inform the Kotaku staff about this, they'd sure as hell post about this on their blog (they did so with the Iranian properganda posters).
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"would newton's law theory actually work if a Chmmr Avatar did a backwards pelvic thrust towards a planet and would this constitute an X=Y-0 in the part it ran straight into a Supox Blade and lasted long enough to survive?" - Elerium (as Valaggar)
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Shiver
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He also asked what the fan base thinks, but in the context of his mail I'm not sure what part exactly he's asking us about.
As much as I'd like to say "BLACKLIST ATARI", games with their logo stamped across them tend to come from smaller developers. I like The Witcher. If a sequel came out, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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I expected there to be a point to this link. Yup, it looks like a corporate code of ethics. No mention of things like this, nor would I expect there to be. Corporate codes of ethics are to protect the corporation from embarrassment or litigation due to actions taken on the initiative of its employees; they are not there to tie the corporation's hands back from squeezing every last little bit of juice out of the legal system.
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Pages: [1] 2 3
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