Crazy Otto is alive!

Anyone care to comment on the legality of all of this?
Is there any legal risk here as isn't this technically namco property, and will there be any liability for the individual who is releasing the rom?
Just curious... I doubt there's much that can be done... but I would think it would be easier to track down who had copies of the prototypes.
 
Not Namco property... GCI property... which is sort of Atari property... or possibly Midway property... or possibly...
 
Not Namco property... GCI property... which is sort of Atari property... or possibly Midway property... or possibly...
Good point... legal gray area :D
Still, Didn't Namco sue Midway over Ms Pac? Not sure how far Namco would even want to pursue it, considering it's a proto of a game that they never really owned to begin with...
 
Can anyone explain why there's a "legal" issue over this at all, since there are eleventy brazillion games in Mame right now as it is?
 
Can anyone explain why there's a "legal" issue over this at all, since there are eleventy brazillion games in Mame right now as it is?

It's not about MAME. It would be about the distribution of ROMs and the owner of the ROMs. It's all speculation, but none of us would know if it is NAMCO,Midway or CGI property.
 
There's really no telling who Otto belongs too... the whole she-bang is one big legal mess I'd imagine.

GC made the game, licensed/sold it to Midway. Namco sued Midway over the Pac name, Midway handed over the stuff to Namco, GC sued because they felt they owned the Pac "Family" concept... Midway went under, rich guy bought the Midway name and debt...

... So, who owns it? No telling... if it's Namco, we'll never see it as they'd just shove it in a back closet, so to speak, and never let it see the light of day again. Same thing they did with their artwork for the machines... they didn't support their old games, but God forbid you made stencils for the thing!

Midway... no telling how that would pan out... the new owner probably wouldn't care.

GC, if that's the case... then we're probably in luck because I seriously doubt they care about who puts it out or who has it. They probably don't want it being sold without getting a cut, but as far as putting it out for free... ... yeah, I could see them doing that.

The big issue with MAME is that there ARE people that have the machines, they own them legally and MAME is a great resource for finding ROMs for your machines and fixing them. BUT, since there were only a few Crazy Otto test machines, that excuse falls flat on it's face as for as the legality of MAME.

No idea how this is all going to end up... IF... IF IF IF the ROMs get released... get 'em while they're hot, so to speak... that's all I'm saying. There's no telling how long the DL link will work before the courts/companies step in and start try'ng to get their cuts. Burn 'em, back them up, save them, etc etc.

Despite the obvious issues most people have with MAME (Ded. Major Havok becomes MAME'd Street Fighter II Championship World Rainbow Warrior of Justice Hero Edition)... this is one of the cases where MAME really shines.
 
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Pffft... this is a non-issue. I don't think anyone is going to bother with one in over 7000 ROMs being distributed in MAME. Especially when you consider some of the power houses that are still around that MAME has emulated.

If there was any legal danger involved, don't you think Capcom would have stepped up when CPSII or CPSIII was emulated? Or Incredible Technologies when Golden Tee was emulated? Or... or... or... or...
 
Pffft... this is a non-issue. I don't think anyone is going to bother with one in over 7000 ROMs being distributed in MAME. Especially when you consider some of the power houses that are still around that MAME has emulated.

If there was any legal danger involved, don't you think Capcom would have stepped up when CPSII or CPSIII was emulated? Or Incredible Technologies when Golden Tee was emulated? Or... or... or... or...

You're probably right, but I'm just saying I wouldn't be putting any Pac-Man roms on my site... Namco still gets pretty nasty when it comes to it's IP... Most sites that host roms are either off shore, or really small, the larger ones get shut down pretty quick... Credit to MAME, as they are very careful with their emulation and they have so far successfully treaded that legal fine line... and again emulating Crazy Otto in mame would be fine, distribution of the Roms is what I'm wondering about...
It's all well and good that it will be in a future release of Mame, but if you can't find the Roms, it really doesn't matter much.
And I would think it would be pretty easy to find who leaked a prototype rom, as opposed to say someone dumping a common game like Pac Man. I'm guessing there's only a handful of Crazy Otto boards out there, I could be wrong on that, but given the way this has never been released, I would think that there are few boards, and they were well protected.

Edit: just want to say I'm playing devil's advocate here, trying to propose worst case scenarios... I'd hate to see this not see the light of day, and I would love to play this thing...
 
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Not Namco property... GCI property... which is sort of Atari property... or possibly Midway property... or possibly...

I'd be willing to bet that much of the ROMset is byte-identical to pacman... so it really all reverts back to Namco...

Namco really should have patented their hardware... amazing how many games copied the pacman and galaxian video generators....
 
If I recall correctly, Crazy Otto was an "overlay" to the existing code for Pac-Man, just like Super Missile Attack was an overlay for Missile Command.
 
If I recall correctly, Crazy Otto was an "overlay" to the existing code for Pac-Man, just like Super Missile Attack was an overlay for Missile Command.

The proto board they show on the mame site shows just a daughterboard with new ROMs, rather than the overlay/patch scheme used in the final mspac...
 
The proto board they show on the mame site shows just a daughterboard with new ROMs, rather than the overlay/patch scheme used in the final mspac...

If that's the case, then it could explain the delay in adding it to MAME. If it was the same scheme as Ms.Pac, it'd be easy because everything's already there in MAME. If they're having to write something new... could it spell bad things for those wanting to just plug the ROMs into their Ms. Pac boards?
 
If that's the case, then it could explain the delay in adding it to MAME. If it was the same scheme as Ms.Pac, it'd be easy because everything's already there in MAME. If they're having to write something new... could it spell bad things for those wanting to just plug the ROMs into their Ms. Pac boards?

From the looks of it, it didn't have any special banking... just placed extra ROMs in the 0x8000 address space. Same as the bootleg mspacs.
 
Even though Crazy Otto will probably play exactly like Ms Pac, I am very excited to see this game come to light. I remember my brother showing me the Crazy Otto pic from Time Mag back in the day and I was so excited to see a new Pac-Man game and with LEGS lol. I hope Widal/Doyl are able to add this game to the existing Mad-Pac kit they already released some time ago.
 
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