
A Company Bringing Old Video Games Back from the Dead - doppp
http://www.fastcompany.com/3053050/app-economy/how-one-company-is-bringing-old-video-games-back-from-the-dead
======
firebones
This is so good, but so tough.

The first interesting computer simulation game I remember playing was on the
Apple II: Tuesday Night Football.

I tried forensically tracing the source. I ran across a listing on an Apple II
archive site, and wanted to port it and share. But being conscious of IP
rights, just having the source wasn't enough. I wanted to track it down. And
in doing so, I ran across Charlie Anderson.

[http://blog.firebones.com/2008/02/10/looking-for-tuesday-
nig...](http://blog.firebones.com/2008/02/10/looking-for-tuesday-night-
football/)

My update to that post:

More digging led me to the author of the original Tuesday Night Football,
Charlie Anderson, and some artifacts related to the original version. It
appears that after a brief life being sold through Apple dealers with
mimeographed manuals and a disk stuffed in a plastic bag, Mr. Anderson was
offered the sum of $1000 against 10% net royalties to assign the copyright of
the game to Automated Simulations, Inc., which rechristened it as Tuesday
Morning Quarterback.

A company acquired another company, and the trail went cold when the rights
landed in some UK company circa 1990.

If ever there were a case for some kind of laws around abandonware and
extending the life of forgotten software, this is it.

~~~
empressplay
We ship Tuesday Night Football as an included program in our free Applesoft
BASIC interpreter Discorunner, if you want to mess around with it.

[http://discorunner.com](http://discorunner.com)

Since it's a BASIC listing and there's some intrinsic educational value in
being distributed in source code form, we believe our distribution of it falls
under fair use.

~~~
firebones
I love the work you do, BTW.

I already had the source, but over time I've acquired an IP conscience that
wouldn't let me go as far as you've gone. (Seeing Charlie Anderson explain to
me stuff about his program that I would have known had I not been using a
pirated copy was a wakeup call, even though he was far from his $1000 and 10%
days.) But perhaps when software is 30+ years old, it is better to seek
forgiveness than ask permission.

Is there any way to contribute to Discorunner? It seemed kind of resource
intensive when I last used it, and wanted to look at source to see if I could
help, but I didn't see any way to contribute.

------
backtoyoujim
That is quite a disclosure on the influence the author had on the business.

