I'm sure Yuki and Murakun get emails all the time about Cocoron.
I don't understand why someone would NOT want to share that? I mean, if it were me, I would RIP that bad boy, and upload it. I just don't get it. I mean, even by him/her sharing it via the internet, it wouldn't take away from whatever value it has.
Selfish? You damn commies. While it sucks that no one will be able to see more from the game (or play it for that matter), the person who has it actually spent his resources (time, money, etc.) to obtain it and it is his property now, no one is entitled to it.
What else is new in the Turbo world? Well, a lot of fuss over unreleased prototypes, that's what. The first was Marble Madness -- uh, no, that's not right... The first big one was Space Fantasy Zone actually, with a lot of secret money pooling, plotting, international transactions... and of course the inevitable unauthorized ISO leak. Okay, the first recent one was Marble Madness -- quite an interesting unreleased TG game since the arcade original was so revolutionary and popular. Well, the seller was shopping it around and showed a couple screens from the game, hoping for an interested buyer to make a large offer. Unfortunately, the topic quickly got mired in requests and discussion that the game ROM simply be released -- for free. In the end, nothing happened, and so Turbo gamers are yet again without one of the rare pieces of gaming history. But who is at fault at times like these when trades go sour? Well I, personally, am in the "release it for free" camp, but I also consider demands for "t3h R0hmz" as white noise that a seller has to ignore in any transaction. If a guy is trying to get money back on his (possible) original investment of a prototype, then it's already at too late a stage to ask for a ROM dump for free. The best thing is to form a team, pool your money, BUY the thing, and then show your altruism by getting it dumped publicly. That's what groups like Lost Levels have done over the years as a response to a non-ideal situation. The other interesting bit of news shows how the proto trade conducts itself most of the time in Japan. Dino Force, the unreleased game by mostly clueless Uni Post as a possible follow-up to their (intentionally) underselling Circus Lido, showed up as a prototype last year. The agent for the owner of this proto was shopping the game around collectors' sites like Assembler and the PCEngineFX forums with crap teaser screenshots of the game and no stated selling price. Interested people had to bid in a secret auction. The owner then suddenly decided against this and chose instead to sell the game on consignment through a shop in Japan. No selling price was stated but the agent had posted short gameplay videos of the games in response to forum members' requests for more information on the game they were being asked to buy. By short, I mean 3 seconds of gameplay (in a 1-minute video!) with a flashing logo and text overlaid to obscure as much of the view of the screen as possible. AND THEN! When interested buyers (in this second deal) complained about too much of the game being revealed through the videos, the agent summarily stopped making them. The Dino Force deal then soured. Some French bidders apparently complained (about the price?) to the shop handling the deal and the owner cancelled the sale outright. I'd say this is quite illustrative of the difference in how manic collectors in East and West view prototypes. In Japan, owners build up contacts, relationships, and walls of secrecy before any details are revealed. If a sale happens, it will, more often than not, happen behind closed doors. Price tags are far higher than in the West, whether a private auction or not. Usually information is the enemy of a high sale value, hence videos are short, photos are mosaiced, and details about condition and level of completion are scant. In many Western collectors' circles, this sort of thing is anathema. A video showing just how much of Dino Force is playable would help raise its value; conversely, an auction expecting a game to be bought sight-unseen would languish on eBay for weeks (months?) if the seller is too frugal with details. Also, the game would have at least a fair chance of getting a nice, wide, public release and expose on proto websites. (I'm just sayin'.)--- The first prototype cartridge I ever laid hands on was Robocop on the NES. I didn't pay much for it, and at least it was different from the final NES game in some respects. It was exciting to own an earlier version of a game, but the excitement only goes so far. You can document the differences on a website that people will look at for 5 minutes then go back to their usual lives. If you and only you own the proto, you can try to discuss the differences in gameplay with others but they are one-way conversations. Imagine being a game developer with a fully finished game that no-one buys. Nobody's enjoying the game, discussing its minutiae, or praising its qualities. That's not happiness -- quite the opposite, in fact. I think it kinda shows that the existential worth of a game is whether many people can play it. Owning the average proto is the same situation. If you didn't buy it as an investment to sell at a larger value later or because you absolutely love the game series, why hold on to it? I don't mean to sound like a Communist or anything, but rare protos ought to be enjoyed -- at last -- by everyone. Thanks for reading my editorial! Chris Covell
Topic: Yuki & possible PC Cocoron playthrough (Read 778 times)
