Ok, then why don't you check it out & post your findings up on this thread?
We all would like to know:
1) What games are involved & how they obtained the rights to them
2) What the name of this company is
3) Any other details
BTW, I live in the Chicago metro area & work in a near western suburb programming COBOL. We should meet sometime after work, eh?
Firstly, I'd love to meet up. There seem to be a lot of Amiga guys around the Chicago area, and I had thought it would be great to have an Amiga get-together of sorts. I'd love to drag the A2500 out of the closet where the poor thing has been sitting for some time now.
As far this craigslist guy goes, I don't need to contact him to answer your questions. If there's one thing I've learned about talking to people who make large, bogus claims is that they're like the tar-baby--they stick on to you and it's next to impossible to get rid of them.
Now the answers to your questions. For reference, here is his original post:
Here's the deal on this one. We are a small technology company in the western suburbs that owns a ton of old game development content. We have the original and master discs for these applications and we're looking for someone to convert the applications to flash. The flash applications would then be used on a website we create. The right person would be willing to provide the conversion work in exchange for partial ownership in the new site. The new site will be a complimenting business entity to our existing technology company and will be it's own LLC. Please only email if your interested in the terms described here. We are not looking to hire. This is a sweat equity type of project.
The master applications are written for DOS, Windows 95, Amiga, C64, and some others. If your a good flash person this might be a big opportunity. Thanks for looking.
1) What games are involved & how they obtained the rights to them
- Simple. They don't own the rights to anything. They, simply have "master discs," AKA originals--the same ones you and I have. They aren't even really a "they," as I'm sure it's a single person making the outlandish post.
2) What the name of this company is
- There is no company. This is a person who is trying to sound like they have something established, when they probably only have a domain name. It's fun to throw words like "LLC" and "existing technology company" and sound like actually own equity in something.
3) Any other details
- It sounds like this guy has simply played a lot of old games and thinks he's got a great idea to somehow "convert" or emulate the games of his and our past in a flash-based environment. He's going to put up a flash website and cash in on all the Gen-X'ers who want to play "Syndicate" again! Great idea, huh?
The reality is it's simply not possible.
- Technology. The only way to run any kind of old game would be with an environment emulator--which would be better even if you had the original source code! Flash isn't an emulator. It's a vector-graphics based graphical interface for the internet web browsers. The idea of emulating or running a bit-mapped graphics game through flash is like (as the analogy goes) shoving a golf ball through a garden hose, except maybe a bowling ball instead of the golf ball.
- Copyright. Even if a studio/publisher is defunct,
somebody owns the copyright to the content and would like nothing better than to see that somebody is illegally making money off it.
This guy needs to realize that if people want to play old games, you download an emulator and play them.
Cheers.
Chris
