Re: Lunar Battle :-0

From: Bill Esquivel <mrb2084_at_pacbell.net>
Date: Thu Aug 06 1998 - 17:29:00 EDT

Well, being the one who found the alpha 1 board and sold it to jess, I can
see where he is coming from. Yes, releasing the data might diminish the
value of the board. But it will in no way drop its value as much as say
releasing the data to 5200 stargate.

Creating a 5200 proto stargate would take all of 5 min if you had the data.
I recently sold my 2600 tempest proto. Trust me, it would would have been
worth 1/4 of what I got for it had I released the data.

Converting alpha 1 will take quite a bit of work to make a pcb. Sure, maybe
a few people would go thru the hassle and make one, but I doubt someone like
clay will go and make a daughter card upgrade. Obviously, the emulators will
make using the data a much easier job. But if you ask, me, the emulators are
junk. There is nothing like playing the real thing.

I don't pay too much attention to the emulators, but I think one group is
holding out data from another. That would REALLY PISS me off! A few years
ago I gladly gave up the data to a few of my rare games. At the time, I
think I had the only barrier and possibly inferno. Recently I have been
trying very hard to find data for use in the emulators. I think I have had
a hand in adding a few more games to the database...

Well, If some emulator group is withholding data, maybe something should be
done to compel them to share? Maybe newly acquired data should be held and
encrypted to keep it away from them. This would be a sad thing to do, but if
it would work to solve future problems, maybe it should be considered..

Jess Askey wrote:

> Al Kossow wrote:
> >
> > Ok, I wasn't going to say anything about this, but since
> > you've given the hint. Neil Bradley's "Retrocade" will
> > eventually have support for Lunar Battle and Alpha 1, but
> > the prom sets for both games will be encrypted, making
> > them useless to anyone else. I haven't asked you for them
> > since I have no personal need for them, and, with a couple
> > of exceptions (like if someone explictly asks me not to)
> > I will always give manuals, schematics, and rom data to
> > anyone who asks me for them, on the "balance of favors"
> > principle.
>
> Yep, absoloutley right. The ROM images for Alpha 1 were scrambled and
> Neil was given the key. I did this in an attempt to keep the game away
> from MAME but it won't stop them from getting it eventually (those guys
> are pretty good!). It was meant to give Retrocade a small edge over MAME
> since Neil was one of the original vector EMUlators (Along with Eric!).
>
> Jess
> --
> Jess M. Askey ********* The Game Archive ***********
> GameArchive/Audio Analyst * Pinball, Video, Parts, Collecting *
> 509 S. 2nd Street Unit B * http://www.gamearchive.com *
> Laramie WY 82070 **************************************
Received on Thu Aug 6 16:26:36 1998

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Jul 31 2003 - 23:00:56 EDT