I think you are underestimating just how complex a thing this can be.

the "individuals" you speak of, do you mean the games creators?

If so, the persons in question may not even have the legal position to say "yes or no".

If they were smart and/or lucky, they would have had a contract saying "all" rights revert back to author after X years or in the event of the publishing company going out of business.

if not, they still may hold the intellectual copyright but NOT the publishing rights, and as soon as you publish you infringe the latter.

If a large company hold the copyright, they will most definitely NOT just say yes to you without it going through their lawyers and that, even if they can be arsed to do it will take some serious time.
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Well "abandonware" is not a legal term, and not a grey area BY LAW. It IS however, in "legal practice".
(As a parallel: Possession and sale of marijuana IS an offense in the Netherlands. However, the police and courts "tolerate" coffeeshops, and policemen do not have the right to search someone on the street - and thus nobody gets persecuted for possession.)
You just don't see police raiding c64 game download centers, or 8-bit demoscene parties.

What I meant was that even without express permission, it is EXTREMELY unlikely to actually get sued and fined. It is somewhat likely that someone will come along and tell you to cease and desist, but that isn't necessarily going to happen either.

As for the copyright holders, well it can be anyone, ranging from some vogon who bought it in a pack along with all assets of five other liquidated companies, and doesn't give a damn (may be swayed by the prospect of revenue, having a portfolio of finished iPhone games is a good thing, free flash may not fly but eg. paid iOS may - expect a "job interview" in the best case), a retired businessman who doesn't give a shit anymore (you may even get it), or some crazy idiot copyright troll like the infamous EDGE (no chance).

Hmm...well, I'm pretty dubious about my chances of getting a mail back from some of the individuals I've written to *sigh*, so at this point it's looking like I'll take your advice to go ahead and clone away. I'll keep you guys updated on the conversion progress here on the board. I'll probably even use the original sprites as placeholders until the final stage of development, so you might get a kick out of that.
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Well, for posterity, if anyone should stumble onto this thread in the future.
For your information these C64 originals are the ones that I'm most interested in converting (basically my fav games):

Hawkeye,
Last Ninja,
Barbarian 2,
Nexus,
Exploding Fist II,
Lords Of Chaos,
Druid II: Enlightenment,
Commando,
Friday 13th,
Saboteur,
Mission Impossible,
Project Firestart,
Usagi Yojimbo

If you have any info regarding the licenses to these games, or perhaps knowledge of some leads to their whereabouts, or are in fact the original author, please contact me at krisfoxton AT gmail.com
-Thanks!

And thank you guys at Lemon64 board for your help so far. Will post again soon!

Last Ninja and Impossible Mission would be off the table, as both are owned by System 3 (it licensed the latter for a remake a few years ago). EA are still active, so no Project Firestart. And the Gollops are still writing games, so no Lords of Chaos. You'd probably have a hard time writing a new Usagi game without a license from Dark Horse (who publish the comic).
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...and of course more obviously Commando isn't just a C64 game it's a Capcom arcade license and Friday the 13th is a horror movie franchise owned by New Line Cinema who merged with Warner Bros.

This thread has been an interesting read.

I refrained from 'publishing' TSRI's Jars' Revenge as an official RGCD cartridge for sale via our site for the reason that Atari recently used the Yars Revenge IP again for a terrible shoot em up (that had nothing in common with the original franchise).

That's why the few copies I had made were offered first exclusively to the people on my RGCD mailing list, and then the last few were sold over the pirate/bootleg-friendly ebay.

I only worried about this because of Atari being notoriously protective of their assets, the fact that the game used the title screen image from the gameboy color version of the game and of course because it is an active IP.

Now, Fortress of Narzod didn't worry me so much, as the game was coded and designed for a completely different aspect screen, the graphics were drawn from scratch (rather than being vectors) and it was simply based on the look-and-feel of the vectrex version.

Using the same name is a bit risky, but I don't think MB are that fussed over protecting their vectrex assets, and the franchise has been dead for decades.

However, Martin Piper has recently expressed an interest in selling a cartridge version of Berzerk Redux... Now again, the legality of this has me worried from a publishers perspective. Is having 'Redux' on the end enough to get past the Atari radar? Unlike Jars, which featured a directly ripped and converted gameboy graphic, Martin's game was completely created from scratch (so it would be guilty of copying the look-and-feel rather than code or assets). I just don't know if it's worth the risk - despite it being one of my favourite C64 games in recent years.

It's certainly a grey area.

I would be interested in getting a Berzerk Redux, even if not official.
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Grey area for sure..
This thread has been like pissing in the wind for me, but at the same time a great learning experience, lol!

So,

Barbarian 2 might be on the cards, am I wrong? Seems like no-one has a clue about Palace outside of what is written on Wikipedia.
-I actually started building a prototype for that one last night for a laugh.
My dad bought me my C64 on the strength of a demo of this game, so this one has some sentimental value.

Nexus and Saboteur-
anybody got any info on them? I'm actually wondering if they truly merit working on; they were both a little unique and more my preference than mosts.
I just mailed the original Fist II coder, he's on here, might be able to get some info about that one soo.
Hawkeye Thalamus Andy has yet to get back to me yet.


p.s Totally unrelated, but wasn't the ship in P.Firestart called 'Prometheus', same as the ship in the new Alien movie? isn't that just the most bizarre coincidence?

Good point Mayhem. I completely forgot that it was a licensed game and not an actual Atari product.

Well, I think that I'll risk it for Bezerk Redux then, and release it in the proper manner. I'll let Martin know. Still, Jars' - even with the tongue-in-cheek German rename - will have to stay off the radar (although I'll probably sell another small batch over ebay in the future).

My advice on this matter? Ditch all the previously mentioned games and do Forbidden Forest instead, contact Paul Norman directly via his website http://www.waycoolway.com/digit/ he seems a real cool dude and is still quite active in the Java scene

Hey you know what's funny is that when I first mentally compiled the list of games I wouldn't mind working on, Forbidden Forest was actually one of them (horror games are actually my niche), but I remember Googling the game a while back and I uncovered a demo the guy had released; a modern day remake in 3d, so at the time I thought perhaps he was still using the license actively and henceforth left it off the list.

F.Forest wouldn't be such a stretch for me to convert. I've actually got the basic character design&animation structure already in one of my games (Ultra Sports Archery), and on my blog you can find a ton of meshes for horror characters in games.

Maybe I will write to Paul Norman then. Thanks for the lead.

Referring back to (an authorised) cartridge conversion of Martin Piper's Berzerk Redux, there are also these points to consider.

* Berzerk Redux doesn't actually use any directly ripped assets from the original arcade. Everything has been recreated to fit the C64's specifications.
* The levels are random, and the algorithm to create the levels is completely original.
* The name suggests that it is not the same game as the original.

It does however, copy the 'look and feel' of the game, recreated from the perspective of the coder by playing the arcade game via MAME (which itself could be argued to be an 'interpretation' of the arcade game).

Making a cartridge version of a recently coded C64 game that's a 'clone' of arcade game is completely different to say, downloading a game like Uridium from gamebase and selling cartridges of that.

You're taking a chance since as many have pointed out, there's no such thing as 'abandonware' as copyrights last virtually a lifetime. When a software company goes bankrupt its assets (including intellectual property) get transferred in an effort to recoup any money owed to creditors via liquidation. Since the copyrights are over 20 years old the IP for those titles may have changed hands numerous times to the point where tracking the current owner is highly unlikely. The current owner may not even be aware of individual copyrights that old, merely 'a collection of copyrights' aquired from an equities firm that aquired it from another equities firm that aquired it from a holding company etc. etc..

You could publish your game(s) and never hear anything..

On the other hand you could find yourself a defendant in a lawsuit from some copyright troll claiming thousands or more in damages. Most copyright infringement cases I have read about involving individuals claim damages only if the infringer profitted otherwise a cease-and-desist was usually sufficient.

The point is copyrights don't just vanish into thin air just because the original publishers are no longer around, SOMEONE owns those IP rights. Whether they are aware of that and choose to pursue infringers is another matter.

Bottom line you are in the clear only if you receive written permission from the current owner, otherwise you are gambling. Best advice I can give is talk to someone who is an expert in IP law in your country. Specifically you want to know about liability i.e., what's the worst that can happen to me if I go ahead and publish these games without permission?
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Ok thanks for all the comments - I've taken it all into consideration, and will remove any non-original or clone games (that I don't have permission to publish) from the line up when relaunching the rgcd shop in April.

This means no Fortress of Narzod, no Jars Revenge, and no Berzerk Redux.

After some research, it seems that GCE (who created Narzod) were part of MB Games, who then were taken over by Hasbro. So I guess the rights to this (and other vectrex games) lies with Hasbro, who I'm 99% sure will never permit me to sell a C64 conversion of their game.

This is a real shame, as peiselulli has just finished making a 64kb cart containing both Minestorm and Spike, and now I'll have to break the news to him that even as C64 conversions, we won't be able to officially publish the cartridge. Not looking forward to that

It's a shame...

Yeah, it's also worth mentioning that if I did contact Hasbro and notify them of the conversion, they are such a powerful company that if they DID even honour my contact with a reply, it would most likely be a no *and* a cease-and-desist regarding the free distribution of the games. So I think it's best to keep under the radar on this one.

Smaller games companies - sure, but I'm not taking on Hasbro.