[geeks] Dos and similar games

Thu Aug 3 19:11:55 CDT 2006

On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 05:29:31PM -0600, Dan Duncan wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> > It all started with a 17 year old who had to get up in the middle of
> > his game to answer the call of nature.........
> 
> So.... waterproof then?

No, just battery operated. :-)
> 
> I would certainly like to see something that offers what other devices don't,
> but don't miss out on including some of the popular things they DO offer as well.

Anything will be considered. Please suggest.

> Consider a number of popular emulators out there to let you run still more
> games.  I have mame, Frodo (a c64 emulator), and a gameboy emulator on
> my cellphone although I've never bothered to populate them. 

The problem with Nintendo is that except for the Nintendo supplied emulators
for their machines, ALL of them are of no legal use. Nintendo has never allowed
anyone to sell their games as software, they were always sold as cartridges
except for maybe 100 games which were sold as cards with the programing read
via bar-code. 

Since no one could legaly read the cartridges, and the fair use provisions
of copyright law don't apply to ROM chips, the only thing a Nintendo emulator
can play is a handfull of games written by independent developers that never
actually ever were legally played in a gameboy. If they ever were put into
cartridges, they were not licensed by Nintendo and infringed upon their
hardware and software patents.

There were several devices that were based upon Gameboy emulation such
as the original GamePark unit, which was never sold outside of Korea,
and the Tapware Zodiac. Tapware distanced themselves from the emulator
by aranging for someone to do it and release it as public domain
software under the GPL.

The GPL does not protect you from patent infringment suits, and the day
Nintendo received their patent, they sent him and Tapware a cease and desist
letter. In the end they did cease and desist, the emulator was never released.
I have no idea what he did with the advance shareware fees he collected.
Tapware tried to retask the Zodiac as a Linux device, but went out of business
in a few months. 

> I almost never play
> actual xbox games on my xbox.  I play emulated games in mame, nintendo,
> etc.  The main xbox game I actually play is the Atari Anthology which
> is Atari games.  Some of the Atari 2600 games have nearly painful pixel
> sizes on a 1080i tv screen but some of the Atari arcade games with vector
> graphics look wonderful.  Tempest in 1080i is sweet!

I have the PC version.

> For a small portable device I enjoy the odd minute here and there with something
> I can pick up for a while and resume right where I left off.  I mostly play card
> and dice games on my cellphone with the odd puzzle game I can find thrown in.
> I've moved from sudoku to kakuro now.  I used to think sudoku was addictive...

Think of one that plays 90% of all the DOS games, and around 95% of the Windows
ones that make sense to play on a handheld. Along with it licensed copies of
MAME games (again there are almost no legal ROM images extant). If we
can get them C-64 and other game system licenses. Ones we will not get
are obviously Nintendo and Apple. 

> I guess it depends on your target market.  As much screen as you can get without
> making the device too bulky or too fragile is a must if you want us visually-impaired
> over-21 crowd to buy them.  I like the idea of the Nintendo DS for more screen real
> estate but it doesn't feel very refined to me.

Screens are a big issue. Right now it would be a 1/4VGA (320x240) LCD or TFT
screen, in a year it will be an OLED screen, in two or three it will be an
OLED 800x600 or 1024x768 or the HDTV equivlaent of them. 

> If it's somehow hackable to run Linux (and/or a BSD!) you'll sell some more devices
> but I guess it depends on whether you hope to make money from selling the devices
> or selling/licensing games.  Microsoft hasn't made much off my xbox purchase.  :)

First. The box was designed to run Linux. We run DOS games under DOSEMU and
the rare ones that won't run on it we will use an X86 emulator. Performance
will be around 286/386 level with the total system emulator, but that's
ok, the problematic games were usually of XT vintage.

Windows games would run under a special version of WINE which would be folded
back into the general release version. WINE is LGPLed so it would be delayed
around six months.

There would be a Linux tool kit which could be downloaded and there also
would be a special version with the tool kit included on a CD, some printed
docs and a few other goodies. I don't think many would be sold, they would
be given out to people with "good ideas".

Hardware hacking would be encouraged by our warranty. If you damage a unit,
you send back the pieces and for our cost plus postage, we return a new
one with the same serial number and DRM key.

Yes, it would support DRM, but it will not be needed except to run
games the publisher wanted to DRM protect. If people bought lots of
them it would be popular among publishers, if not, it would not be used.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667  Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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