Someone picked up the rights to TV Sports Hockey: prayers answered

[Gredler]

Starbreeze, developer of some rad licensed titles where little hope resided, picked up the rights to the TV Sports series ( and a few other crappier IPs)

http://www.starbreeze.com/2016/05/starbreeze-acquires-rights-cinemawares-classic-video-game-catalogue-including-came-dessert-defender-crown-wings/

The Cinemaware brand
Defender of the Crown
Wings
The King of Chicago
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon
Lords of the Rising Sun
Rocket Ranger
It Came from the Desert
It Came from the Desert II: Antheads
SDI
TV Sports: Basketball
TV Sports: Baseball
TV Sports: Boxing
TV Sports: Football
TV Sports: Hockey

Long story short, dreams do come true. "TV Sports Hockey 2: The Goalies Retribution" will become a reality!!!

[SignOfZeta]

How the hell is that even a thing? How am I going to know that it's a TV Sports game as opposed to any other non-licensed sports game? The name is barely copyrightable.

Although, a non-licensed sports game revival might actually get me to buy video games again...

[ParanoiaDragon]

Forget TV Sports, I'd be all over a new Lords of the Rising Sun!

[esteban]

Ha! Many years ago I was curious about the state of Cinemaware IP. At the time, the current IP holder had a website and I saved all of the "trivia" that cycled through the homepage.

IIRC, only a few products were released...

[Necromancer]

“The classic Cinemaware games are concepts that still in this day are epic imaginations. We will make them excel in excellent VR-experiences at our location based IMAX centers."

I was excited until I read that bit.  Still, I can dream that they'll scrounge up a rom of TV Sports Baseball and release it on new hueys.

[Black Tiger]

I'm only excited about Defender of the Crown for Intellivision.

[xelement5x]

Someone on Sega16 mentioned this as well and questioned what this means for the new It Came From the Desert release those people are trying to put out.

[seieienbu]

Well, better than just languishing away in the Konami basement I guess.

[TheClash603]

Someone who knows how to make hucards should reach out to these guys and see if...

A.)  They got TV Sports Baseball code or just the name?

B.)  If they do have the game, if some sort of distribution agreement could be made.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Another game they may have is the cd TV Sports Collection(or whatever it was called).  That would be even easier to produce, not to mention there was a TV Sports Boxing at one point that never saw the light of day IIRC.

[Punch]

[TheClash603]

I did not know any of that stuff and that was a good read.  Thank you for putting it on the site I actually visit too!

Funny he didn't mention the bugs, even though there was no way to know they would be removed.  Is this common review practice when the review copy isn't 100%?

[ParanoiaDragon]

Hmm, interesting.  Also, in looking for videos, I found one that has the programmer(Nigel Spencer) for the game talking a lil bit about it in the comments.

[esteban]

Is this common review practice when the review copy isn't 100%?

Of course.

You also wonder if most reviewers actually play(ed) the games beyond Point X.

Anyway, we have TV SPORTS Baseball EPROM out there in someone's collection (where is he? He posted here years ago...) and CLASH603 SHOULD BE PLAYING IT. 

And so should we all.

I don't care if it is bug-ridden.

[esteban]

If you want to play TV Sports Baseball, go play Bo Jackson baseball. The PC version even used the same graphics.

Don't take my word on it.  I once interviewed Chris Bienek, the guy who wrote the Turbo Play review for TV Sports Baseball. I was saving it for the day I had time to work on DoxPhile again, but I realize now that the day may never come. Here is an excerpt.

TurboPlay was published by the same company that produced VideoGames & Computer Entertainment magazine. I was a freelance game reviewer for VG&CE, and when TurboPlay started, we were asked to write two different reviews of every TG-16 game (one for each magazine). I eventually got hired full-time at VG&CE when Donn Nauert left, and when I took over his job, I also inherited his position as Senior Editor of TurboPlay.

I loved the TG-16...still do! We had good relationships with NEC, Hudson Soft and TTI, and we also had Japanese correspondents who shared information with us, so I got to see a lot of what was going on with the PC Engine scene. It wasn't easy to keep up with that stuff before the Internet went mainstream!

I did get to play a lot of games that never came out in the U.S., but most of them were Japanese titles that had already been released over there. TV Sports Baseball was unique because it was developed in the U.S. and never came out anywhere. I think the reason it was cancelled was because it kept getting delayed, and the delays were caused by a lot of bugs. So much so that some of our contacts at TTI used to refer to the game as "TV Sports Bugball." I found a lot of weird bugs and polishing issues that TTI admitted they knew about. One of the bigger problems was the fact that you could get hit by a pitch whenever you wanted to! I don't remember exactly how it was done, but I figured it out when I was working on the review; there was a certain point in the pitch count where the CPU pitcher would always throw a certain type of pitch, and all you had to do was position the batter at a certain spot to get hit and go to first. I didn't mention the bugs when I wrote about the game because I was assured that they would be fixed before the game was released; I was kind of glad that it got canceled. It wasn't a terrible game, it just needed some more work.

I assume you know that the game did come out for the Amiga computer. It looked almost identical to the TG-16 game. There were also several other baseball games that re-used assets from TV Sports Baseball; the PC version of Bo Jackson Baseball was one of them.

- Chris B.

You're welcome.

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