![]() ![]() “People had gotten rather bored with the game, or they had gotten really good with the game, because it was relatively simple and repetitive.” Macrae and Curran knew the game needed some modification if they wanted to keep making money with Missile Command. “The coin collecting on them had fallen dramatically,” Macrae explains. However, by spring break of the duo’s senior year the title had lost people’s interest. It initially proved to be so popular on the MIT campus that Macrae and Curran purchased three machines. The Atari game had exploded onto the arcade scene in July of 1980. Macrae and Curran’s first attempt at modding a game was the result of waning enthusiasm over Missile Command. Macrae and Curran practically owned MIT’s arcade. The machine proved to be so profitable that Macrae asked Curran to join him as a business partner, and the two expanded the business to more than 20 pinball machines and arcade cabinets. Nothing if not an entrepreneur, Macrae set the machine up on campus hoping he could earn a little pocket change. Except this was 1977, so it was pinball eating away their pocket change, not Street Fighter.ĭuring his sophomore year Macrae inherited a pinball machine from his older brother. As students, Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran spent a fair number of quarters in the arcade during their off hours. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has changed a lot in the last three decades, but one thing has stayed the same: Its students still take time away from their busy class schedules to blow off steam with video games. Pac-Man games still on store shelves.Part One: Hacking The Arcade Hacking The Arcade Luckily for retro arcade fans, there are already a number of licensed Ms. ![]() To wit, is so irritated by the fact that AtGames has entered into a contract with the GCC Individuals-an arrangement BNEA hoped to exploit for its own benefit through deceit and bad faith-that it has ordered its lawyers to attack AtGames by any means possible."Īs the complicated case winds its way through the courts, it seems unlikely anyone will be able to navigate the licensing issues at play and release any new official Ms. In its lawsuit, Bandai Namco says it never approved the release of those modified NES versions, and it cites this as an example of AtGames' "improper and wrongful conduct." Advertisementįurther Reading MAME for the masses? “Legends” arcade cabinet could thread that needleIn a letter obtained by Polygon, AtGames' lawyer called Bandai Namco's lawsuit "another transparent effort to punish AtGames for entering into its August 2019 agreement with the GCC individuals, to sully AtGames’ reputation, to disrupt AtGames’ business relationships and to artificially manufacture leverage in the ongoing negotiations between the parties. That early review version contained authentic emulated arcade ROMs of a selection of Namco classics, while the final release contained only downgraded NES versions ("The early review version could not make it to production, even though it was anticipated it would," AtGames said in a tweet at the time). The company has a reputation in the game industry for bargain-basement retro hardware releases like the Sega Genesis Flashback console (which preceded the much-improved Sega Genesis Mini that AtGames had nothing to do with).ĪtGames was also embroiled in controversy last year when it sent a misleading version of its Bandai Namco Flashback plug-and-play console to reviewers. AtGames alleged bad actsįurther Reading Sega Genesis Mini review: $80 delivers a ton of blast-processing funIf you recognize the name AtGames, it's probably not for good reasons. "As part of our ongoing initiative to be caretakers of important cultural touchstones, we are privileged to gain these valuable rights pertaining to the iconic Ms. That agreement was on the verge of being signed, Bandai Namco says, when AtGames swooped in and acquired GCC's royalty rights for itself this fall. Bally Midway retained the copyright and trademark rights to the game and its characters, though, which Bandai Namco eventually reacquired in the intervening years.Īccording to a federal lawsuit filed by Bandai Namco this week, the company had been negotiating with the successors to that GCC deal in order to "resolve the relationship" the two companies had with the game (presumably to acquire the royalty rights under the Bandai Namco umbrella). Pac-Man, Diablo dissected by their original devsAs part of the Crazy Otto licensing deal, GCC received the right to a perpetual royalty payment whenever a Ms. ![]()
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