MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: What ever happened to the Crazy Otto project?

> No. It was the prerogative of "the owner" to start a career based off of stealing
> Namco's IP, hacking it up illegally and then tricking a confused court system into
> dragging things out long enough for the real IP owners to throw their hands up in the
> air and buy them out so they could leave the pain in the ass and go back to Japan.
> Decades later when the anniversary editions came out they had the retard nuts to sue
> Namco again based off of the previous lawsuit agreement. I guess today they are kinda
> paranoid about releasing a rom set that only they have since even they can't come up
> with a distorted way of arguing that they "own" it in court since it was bought by
> the company who already owned it in the 80's lawsuit. It would be funny to watch the
> same thing try to play out today. It would be like some guy hacking World of Warcraft
> to make it run faster and change some of the face graphics and title screen to look
> unprofessional, and then try to sell it. You wouldn't know this because you ignore
> pertinent information that comes up on the forum if it doesn't plug directly into
> your agenda and also you suffer from Ass Burgers Syndrome making you a socially
> inept.

I would disagree with that characterization of the birth of Ms. Pacman/Crazy Otto
1. GCC created Crazy Otto as a speedup kit for Pac-Man. These were 100% legal. It's not like Crazy Kong where someone was taking Nintendo's ROMs and making them run on Scramble hardware. To run Crazy Otto, you had to have a real Pac-Man cabinet. The modification is with a daughterboard that requires the original ROMs be present. Namco/Midway wasn't losing any money because neither had a Pac-Man successor to sell and it wasn't like people couldn't buy a Crazy Otto cabinet INSTEAD of Pac-Man. This would be no different than rooting your smartphone (or for you older folks who had an Amiga, those Mac emulators that required you plug in real Mac ROMs to work). Think of Ms. Pac-Man as the first total conversion like say Counter Strike.
2. GCC approached Midway and asked for legal permission to distribute Crazy Otto mod boards. This was part of GCC's agreement with Atari. Atari tried to sue GCC over a Missile Command speedup kit and Atari ultimately decided they would rather hire GCC than sue them. GCC would go on to make a good chunk Atari's console releases over the next few years and also designed the Atari 7800 (after Atari botched the 5200). Crazy Otto wasn't the start of GCC's career (they already had a job) and it wasn't the end (again, they made tons of money from and for Atari). If you look at their other accomplishments, you can see they weren't a group of no-talent hacks.
3. Midway liked what they saw in Crazy Otto and decided to hire GCC to make Crazy Otto an official Pac-Man product. Unbeknowst to GCC, Midway was desperate for a sequel to Pac-Man when GCC approached them. Namco was working on the less successful Super Pac-Man, but that was not going to arrive in time to help Midway's sagging sales.
4. If anyone is to blame it is Midway. GCC didn't know Midway didn't have the legal authority to authorize a Pac-Man sequel. GCC was hired by Midway to make a Ms Pac-Man out of Crazy Otto and that's why Midway was sued by Namco instead of GCC. How Namco settled the suit is fuzzy in terms to what legal rights GCC had over its creation. GCC's contract with Midway said GCC had rights to the concept of the Pac-Man extended family, but since Namco and Midway settled (making Ms. Pac-Man part of the official Pac-Man family) where did that leave GCC? Namco was originally mad about Ms. Pac-Man, but it wasn't mad enough to ban its sale once they saw how much money it was raking in. They happily made it an official Namco product and used it (not regular or Super Pac-Man) when they made those retro half-Galaga cabinets.