Ultima Revived

Sierpinski writes: "Wired.com has an article about a group of people who are trying to bring back some of the classic (older) games. I don't know what a lot of you gamers are into now... personally I'm into Max Payne and the like, but I still remember those old favorites. Thought some of you slashdotters would like to know." We've mentioned one of these games already, but I see The Bard's Tale is coming back from the dead too.

Re:I can't see these _not_ getting foxed.

[Lord_Pall]

Origin doesn't own the rights to anything... they aren't even a seperate company anymore.. (And really haven't been for 10 years or so)

All ip for all licenses/products/properties for any game produced by any company owned by EA is owned by EA directly..

Richard Garriott retains the rights to Lord British, but sold the rights to Ultima and everything else Origin had produced when the company was sold in the early 90's..

Which makes the quote from the article even more amusing :

""EA owns the rights to Ultima and all of its characters, and in this case, no permission was requested or granted," said Jeff Brown, an Electronic Arts spokesman. "As for Richard Garriott's approval, that's like getting permission from Toto to remake The Wizard of Oz.""

I'd love to see the rereleases(and maybe one for M.U.L.E. but I get the feeling EA will fox them pretty quickly.. (Fox is the term coined after the shutdown of Aliens Doom by the fox movie studio)

Re:Highly amusing

[Telemachos]

You should not always believe what you read in the press :) Either Jeff Brown simply forgot or EA has some serious communication problems within their ranks. When we started out on this project I contacted Richard Garriott which at that time was creative director for Origin and as such I would say it it safe to assume that he speaks the voice of the company as whole. When Richard Garriott later left Origin I sent a letter to a Ms. Lisa Tensfeldt which works within EA's legal department. In that letter I expained what we was doing and our concern that we might now be violating EAs copyrights after Richard Garriott had left the company. As they never replied to that letter we felt it safe to assume that there was no problems. - Kasper Fauerby aka. Telemachos www.peroxide.dk

Spiderweb Software

[CaptainCarrot]

Old-fashioned Ultima-style games with a more modern interface and look-&-feel are being produced right now! Check out Spiderweb Software [spiderwebsoftware.com]. The games are all shareware -- crippleware, actually -- that let you get through about 1/3 of the way through play before you're forced to register to continue. But at $25, it's not all that painful to register.