English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Why didn't Commodore buy bankrupt Cinemaware in 1991?

ImmortalA1000 · 26 November 2022, 16:42

tl;dr version-Because Irving Gould was a greedy scumbag and his managers were clueless idiots.

NEC purchased a 20% stake in Cinemaware in exchange for the $700,000 shitshow of a CD game It Came from the Desert for PC Engine CD. This ultimately bankrupt them. It's a shit FMV game (crap acting, crap story) and FMV on the PC-E is a shit idea technically.

Instead of shoving CDTV out there as a set top box idiotic campaign Commodore should have only sold CDTV with a mouse and keyboard (and produced a Workbench CD-ROM) AND purchase Cinemaware for peanuts in 1991 when that shitshow of an idea for NEC killed them.

A 50mb hard disk install sized type of update with a much bigger game map and much more to do/places to see in the game (on CD-ROM obviously) of Amiga It Came from the Desert with CDDA extra speech/audio and HAM6 static screens and streamed blitter objects over 32/64 colour static backgrounds for simulated FMV type sections would have saved the machine. It would have been a killer app CDTV title on the scale of Defender of the Crown demo on Amiga 1000 in 1985/86. Would have cost a lot less than the below B movie direct to VHS bullshit NEC PC Engine CD version they did and a lot less embarrassing to play.

International Soccer sold a hell of a lot of Commodore 64s in the EU (didn't hurt that it cost HALF the price of Atari VCS Realsports Soccer on cartridge either), Jelly Monsters/Starbattle sold a lot of VIC-20s too. Commodore made f^#kall worth mentioning for Amiga.

Ah well.

(520ST was dead as a format by Summer 1991 so no point Atari buying it, STE was a shit update).

26 November 2022, 16:42	#1
ImmortalA1000 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: london/england Posts: 1,347	Why didn't Commodore buy bankrupt Cinemaware in 1991? tl;dr version-Because Irving Gould was a greedy scumbag and his managers were clueless idiots. NEC purchased a 20% stake in Cinemaware in exchange for the $700,000 shitshow of a CD game It Came from the Desert for PC Engine CD. This ultimately bankrupt them. It's a shit FMV game (crap acting, crap story) and FMV on the PC-E is a shit idea technically. Instead of shoving CDTV out there as a set top box idiotic campaign Commodore should have only sold CDTV with a mouse and keyboard (and produced a Workbench CD-ROM) AND purchase Cinemaware for peanuts in 1991 when that shitshow of an idea for NEC killed them. A 50mb hard disk install sized type of update with a much bigger game map and much more to do/places to see in the game (on CD-ROM obviously) of Amiga It Came from the Desert with CDDA extra speech/audio and HAM6 static screens and streamed blitter objects over 32/64 colour static backgrounds for simulated FMV type sections would have saved the machine. It would have been a killer app CDTV title on the scale of Defender of the Crown demo on Amiga 1000 in 1985/86. Would have cost a lot less than the below B movie direct to VHS bullshit NEC PC Engine CD version they did and a lot less embarrassing to play. International Soccer sold a hell of a lot of Commodore 64s in the EU (didn't hurt that it cost HALF the price of Atari VCS Realsports Soccer on cartridge either), Jelly Monsters/Starbattle sold a lot of VIC-20s too. Commodore made f^#kall worth mentioning for Amiga. Ah well. (520ST was dead as a format by Summer 1991 so no point Atari buying it, STE was a shit update).