FS: Rights to Acclaim games (200+)!!

What about Blast Lacrosse? That freakin game still gets good money on ebay. It'd be worthwhile to re-release it on psx.

 

...interesting...

 

Question: Lets say that you buy the rights to publish a specific game for a specific platform (Say, the SNES), then create a homebrew emulator for another system (Say, the PS2). Since the game is still running off SNES technology, would that be within your rights?

 

I'm not entirely sure of what you mean, but I think the answer is no.

Do you mean, create an emulator that would allow the ps2 to play a snes game?
Even if it was possible. I think you'd be illegally emulating the snes. And you'd still have to get licensing from Sony, and I doubt Nintendo would be to happy with you distributing an emulator or game on the competitor's hardware.

I think as ASSEMbler has said earlier, it is only that game and only on that platform. Anything else is not within the rights that are currently for sale and would involve further legal and financial deals.

For it to even be feasible, you'd have to put the game on a disc that can be played on something current gen, and then still get all that licensing worked out. But I could be wrong, this is just my understanding of it.

 

that is a great idea. legal loop-holes make me giggle.

 

They haven't even received documentation on which titles have what rights. The file boxes are expected any day now, terms and conditions haven't been set, but it looks like I'll be making a roadtrip to NY next week or the week after.

 

I know more about publishing rights for written works than for video games, but I figure they have to be similar.
Wouldn't the type of rights, and what you can do with them, depend on the rights that Acclaim originally had?
For games based on liscensed characters, like Spider-Man and the Olsen stuff, Acclaim would certainly only have had the right to publish, which might stipulate a particular format (meaning you could not publish on anything other than SNES or Genesis), and which doesn't necessarily include the rights to re-publish (which would let you publish said game on another system at a later date). I figure the Mortal Kombat games fall into this category as well. So for these games, since Acclaim had no claim to the rights of the story and characters, their rights to publish and re-publish the games (especially without compensation to the copyright holders) was probably limited. Getting the rights to these games would only be "usefull" if they include re-publish rights, or if you can renegotiate those rights with the intellectual property holder.
But the games that were created at Acclaim or as a Work for Hire for Acclaim should be completely owned by them, meaning that by buying the rights you completely own the property and can do whith it as you like.
Additionally, a bunch of the older games were on both SNES and Genesis, so even if you were limited to only republishing on those systems, wouldn't you be able to publish a couple of them on one of those MD on a chip joysticks that Jakks Pacific puts out? I bet an MK 1 & 2 joystick would do well.
I'm not an expert or anything, but this is my understanding of these kinds of things.

 

You're right, but every deal is different. Which is why the auction firm is refusing to actually see what the case is with each title. They'll have over 200 file boxes sometime this weekend and are making all potential bidders review everything on their own.

Fun times.

 

Oh man, that could take a while. It's good to get a hands on view of exactly what you are getting... but I imagine the legal double talk and piles of papers is going to be very dull.

Good luck though! I look forward too hearing about the experience.