RetroYoungen
11-06-2003, 07:41 PM
I know thatthis topic has been brought up before, but TBH, I don't really want to go looking for it. Sorry.
I was walking around the mall today when I came across one of the vendors in the center, you know, the guys who get i everybody's way. Most of them are jewelry or cell phones, but this one was for two game "systems": one was a devoted ping-pong console, the other was one of those combo packs that had two controllers and a lightgun.
The main controller (I think it had all of the games in it, don't know for sure) was almost exactly an N64 three-prong, the other a generic gamepad. But the thing that really got me was the games he was showing, most of them NES; Kung-Fu, Duck Hunt, even Contra, and the entire time I was thinking that a lot of those games are licenses that the companies still hold, Contra being the most notable off-hand. A lot of them had different names (like Galaza instead of Galaga, something weird for Kung-Fu), a few just the original game title (though they dropped the "Super" from Super Mario Bros.).
Maybe I'm missing something, as some of these I'm sure have become public-domain, but what about Super Mario and Contra? Aren't those names and games still licensed? Was this device copyright infringement?
I was walking around the mall today when I came across one of the vendors in the center, you know, the guys who get i everybody's way. Most of them are jewelry or cell phones, but this one was for two game "systems": one was a devoted ping-pong console, the other was one of those combo packs that had two controllers and a lightgun.
The main controller (I think it had all of the games in it, don't know for sure) was almost exactly an N64 three-prong, the other a generic gamepad. But the thing that really got me was the games he was showing, most of them NES; Kung-Fu, Duck Hunt, even Contra, and the entire time I was thinking that a lot of those games are licenses that the companies still hold, Contra being the most notable off-hand. A lot of them had different names (like Galaza instead of Galaga, something weird for Kung-Fu), a few just the original game title (though they dropped the "Super" from Super Mario Bros.).
Maybe I'm missing something, as some of these I'm sure have become public-domain, but what about Super Mario and Contra? Aren't those names and games still licensed? Was this device copyright infringement?