| Posted By
MMS
on 2020-03-31
17:26:05
 |  Conversions are illegal?
I just saw German Elder News from Synergy made in 1993.
I was reading the text, when I saw the followings in the sectinon Hungarian news about Nukeman
"HE ATTACKS SYNERGY IN A HARD WAY
& HE SELLS ILLEGAL C-64-CONVERSIONS FOR
A LOT OF MONEY IN GERMANY) I HAD ENOUGH
OF NUKEMAN AND HIS MEGALOMANIA. "
He repeated two or three times that these conversions are illegal.
I started to think about it, and maybe it is true, that there are no German-made C64 conversions.
At that time (~1990) there were no software companies released any serious game for the 264 series, and AFAIS just demos and newspapers cannot get a computer alive, it requires quality games too.
Certainly there were original games developed, but except of few talented guys/team (Skoro, Kichy, TCFS, Csabo, Luca, FIRE, Assasins and some more) these are not comparable to AAA C64 games. And certainly it is evident, that developing such a game takes much much more time that converting an original C64 (or Spectrum) version, but the later also requires the deep knowledge of both systems and high programming skills (OK, maybe text adventures are a little easier).
When the game (and certainly any 8bit) games are out of sales, I see no harm made to the company.
Although I understand conversions using the original artwork, code, maybe even music, but the company had no plan to make it to the platform, so it is a job done instead of them (free).
I remember when saw MB, Pigmy, Csory, Crown conversions, how exciting was to get such big names on +4.
I think those converted games were essential to keep the interest in 264 computers alive, and still the conversions are more than welcomed.
(I realized, that ex-Synergy Skoro not converted any game, so it could be a kind of "rule" at Synergy to not touch original legal code?)
So my question: why the conversions were treated so badly by Synergy (not questionning their great contribution to the scene, especially Solder, Hannes) and also: what is your view on the subject?
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Posted By
Stinaris
on 2020-03-31
18:02:54
 | Re: Conversions are illegal?
Technically they are.
But I guess the numbers are so small that the original copyright holders can’t be bothered to act.
Someone as big and careful of their IP will always act as it’s not about the money necessarily.
Just my tuppence.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2020-04-01
06:18:08
| Re: Conversions are illegal?
there are no German-made C64 conversions
So Ceekay is not German. Good to know. 
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Posted By
SVS
on 2020-04-01
09:01:47
 | Re: Conversions are illegal?
I was a swapper too, back in the days, and what I remember is that rumors said that Nukeman used to request the convertions from Hungarian coders that worked hard to them. Then he was solding them to a lot of people around Europe.
Since all us we had very little money :-/ , this behavior did annoyed us. In fact many of Plus/4 community had to maintain lists and to send disks over snail mail, had to learn techniques and coding just in order to have another more title to swap.
But, since Nukeman himself is registered in this site, he can explain the real facts.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2020-04-01
10:39:55
 | Re: Conversions are illegal?
Oh well...the Nukeman's situation should be described as a bit more complex than that 
Clues are everywhere in the magazines of the era, and a good point where to start should be Elder News 01 and, most of all, Elder News 02, the latter describing the funny story of the nightime's prank call, haha! 
The diaspora between Synergy and its ex-member Nukeman basically begins about our blonde hero "selling pd-software" in Germany, if we have to copycat The Elder's words. In that time, Nukeman also moved in to spread and sell at 50DM the Csory's SIDcard, and The Elder (and probably Solder) insinuated that the hardware would consume part of the rastertime, maybe in order to boycott a potential competitor to their forthcoming SIDcard (ironically, they will be accused of the same bug, so they had to release a demo to prove that was not true, Ninja 3 Demo). What happened to the Csory's SIDcard then? I would expect to see tons of those along all the Germany, but...
The polemics about illegal C64 conversions did follow close after this initial squabble just like an addon, and that's weird to say the least, because several other C64 conversions had already been released in the past, for the delight of any Plus/4 user and with no bellringing.
Now we need to write a premise I missed. In Germany, law was quite tough against piracy, and since the early times, that was the reason for the continuous change of nicknames by various sceners, crackers especially; we also have tangible witnesses of the era, see (and read) Florasoft's history, or Musical Madness by Fusion forced to change nick from TTL due a police intervention into his house. Probably, that's the reason why I tried for years to have an interview with Fusion and he fefused any further contact. We're talking about a nation so ready to intervene on a relatively young medium (the home computer video games) to censor large sellers like Commando as well as the limited selling Bridgehead, the nation forbidden to dozens of Italian publishers free to hack original games to be sold in big packs thru the Italian newsstands, apart one, Systems, that used to released original software only and was able to release German editions of their collection Software Club.
Conversions are not legal but tolerated. Plus/4 conversions have numbers so limited that they go unnoticed, and usually most of the copyrights owners had already gone bankrupt and gone. Almost immediately, the art of conversion was seen as a tribute from fans, and not as a case of broken rights, and this view has become more evident as time passed.
About recent times, we had to circumvent some basic guidelines about the rights while creating Pets Rescue, perpetually with the doubt that he did not do enough to distance himself from the "progenitor of the genre". Somebody, on the countrary, aimed to *that* original on C64, in order to convert it as close as the father game, and it has been shut down by big-N.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2020-04-01
14:31:47
| Re: Conversions are illegal?
Thank you for the insight!
Ceekay: correct, and sorry to forgot him, though the only game I owned from him was the really great Katateka; from most of his releases I owned the original Pigmy version, sent by the master himself :-)
And I am really sorry to forget our German friends contributed in the last years lot of quality stuffs landed on the toplist.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2020-04-02
09:16:37
| Re: Conversions are illegal?
ALERT! ALERT! Illegal German C16 to C64 conversion detected! Ghost Town Plus  
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2020-04-09
06:52:43
 | Re: Conversions are illegal?
off topic: Ceekay's Karateka is a piece of rubbish, you can't play it throughout..
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