Putty Squad for Amiga CD32 request thread.

[Amigajay]

Many thanks to all involved in getting this running for the CD32, i will get around to burning it when i plug all my stuff back after clearing out upstairs!

[mc68060]

I think it's quite a hint that Aladdin CD32 is released along Putty Squad CD32 because it confirms that old conspiracy theory that the real reason why Putty Squad was never released was that it was heavily based on the work John Twiddy did for Virgin (Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, finally Aladdin). System3 was probably afraid of being sued by Virgin so they ditched Putty Squad for the Amiga. I think this is quite a plausible conspiracy theory... all the other 'official' stories by Mark Cale (e.g that it was canned because they couldn't find dealers who would stock it) don't really sound believable to me because they surely had a hit game in their hands and it would've made some money. Maybe it really was just legal concerns because Putty used major parts from the Aladdin engine (remember that there is also this old Aladdin beta with Putty backgrounds) and both games were to be released at pretty much the same time (December 1994) so maybe System3 was afraid of Virgin suing them.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by mc68060

I think it's quite a hint that Aladdin CD32 is released along Putty Squad CD32 because it confirms that old conspiracy theory that the real reason why Putty Squad was never released was that it was heavily based on the work John Twiddy did for Virgin (Global Gladiators, Cool Spot, finally Aladdin). System3 was probably afraid of being sued by Virgin so they ditched Putty Squad for the Amiga. I think this is quite a plausible conspiracy theory... all the other 'official' stories by Mark Cale (e.g that it was canned because they couldn't find dealers who would stock it) don't really sound believable to me because they surely had a hit game in their hands and it would've made some money. Maybe it really was just legal concerns because Putty used major parts from the Aladdin engine (remember that there is also this old Aladdin beta with Putty backgrounds) and both games were to be released at pretty much the same time (December 1994) so maybe System3 was afraid of Virgin suing them.

In short. No.

Basically, whilst Twiddy was comissioned to write Aladdin for Virgin and Cool Spot and Global Gladiators, Virgin at no point would try and lay a copyright claim on every single code aspect of the game engine used for those games.

They would need someone to examine the source code or to examine the assembled code for each game to make a proclamation such as that, and quite simply, they didnt have anyone.

Virgin did NOTHING in house on Amiga, EVERYTHING was outsourced.

Part of the contract may well have meant John Twiddy had to submit a copy of everything he did, the likelihood is he didnt, as in the case of all those games for Virgin, the Amiga versions were ALL based on existing Megadrive conversions, if any version was to be kept, it would be that version, not Amiga.

Putty Squad uses the same basic game engine to drive the logic and graphics plotting, but Virgin would potentially hold a copyright over the WHOLE product, not each and every element that makes the game.

Are the graphics the same? No
Is the music the same? No
Are the game mechanics 100% the same? No

The days when a publisher can hold a copyright over routines to extract map data and draw a level onscreen, or a sort routine for blitting bobs means that a developer would have to write core routines hundreds of different ways, just to not fall fould of copyright.

That never happened, and it never will.

[mc68060]

But if somebody took an existing engine and just replaced gfx, levels, and music, the original author of that engine surely would not accept this... of course it's highly unlikely that Virgin would ever have taken notice of it but still, there is a risk.

I don't know but as I said, the official explanation never sounded plausible to me. The game was finished, it received rave reviews. I don't see why they didn't publish it. It's hardly believable that a release would have been a money-losing business for System3.

[mc68060]

...and of course if they deemed it too risky to publish it on their own they also had the option to sell the Amiga license of Putty to interested parties like clickBOOM, Epic Marketing or Alive Mediasoft who all were interested in the license AFAIR. But they never did which is not very clever from an economic point of view. Why not sell the Amiga license and take the money you get for it? This would've been a completely risk-free endeavour. System3 gets the money and all risks are with the publisher.

[Amigajay]

Probably because those publishers you mentioned were shafting alot of devs in the latter days, theres no way System 3 were gonna let them take most of the money and it was too risky to self publish post 1995.