Well I’ve decided to start doing reviews for some rather obscure B-games. Stuff that even the truly hardcore have probably never heard of. 
Stats Screen:
Wow, impressive review, you must really love this game . But after 12 years, maybe it’s Public Domain now… No?
Well, as that link points out, ‘abandonware’ is often not exactly a legal thing… some companies intentionally give away their old software free. Others intentionally don’t, and may re-release the game (don’t all three ‘new’ consoles have ways of buying really really old games on them cheap through download services?)
Anything in between varies a lot on personal morality. As a developer and member of development communities, I can say that a lot of game developers approve of abandonware in the case where the ownership of the game has gotten screwed up - all rights sold to a company that went kaput in a tangle and now NO one seems to have the rights, author dead and unable to process new shareware orders, etc… A lot of people would rather see their game shared for free than see it die and be forgotten. But there are probably some people who don’t feel that way, too.
[ 07-19-2007, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: papillon ]
I doubt the game is abandonware. NEC is still around. Even if that particular division is gone, I’m sure a company that prominent has the property rights stashed somewhere and/or transfered via sales. I think it’s more the case, that NEC - or whomever has the rights - doesn’t have the property as a priority to bother legal actions with, since it’s old and outdated.
Take Gun.Smoke from CAPCOM for example. The game is outdated and they seemingly have no intention to ever reinvest in the title anymore. Thus there are tons of ROM’s floating about that fall into the “abandonware” thing. Now let’s just imagine - off the wall - that someone in CAPCOM suddenly wants to make a high budget Gun.Smoke remake for PS3. Now the original property suddenly becomes a priority. Said person might send the legal hounds out to “cease and desist” all the illegal ROM’s because of intellectual property and trademarking issues. But that isn’t likely to happen, so CAPCOM could careless about the ROM’s…
But the point is they still have the right to do legal things if they wanted and had justification. I think for it to be 100% abandonware, the current property holders have to make a statement saying as such: i.e. CAPCOM says, “We’re making our Gun.Smoke title public property for free. Go wild yo.” Or something like that. 
If someone makes something freely available by deliberately saying ‘we make this public property for free’, then it’s freeware and it’s not abandonware.
Abandonware is like anime fansubbing. Both of them are totally unquestionably illegal. It’s just that, done properly, both activities are EXTREMELY unlikely to get you actually sued in court. Any abandonware site that isn’t stupid takes stuff down immediately when notified, and courts generally don’t look kindly on people who file lawsuits without first issuing cease-and-desists.
Of course, sometimes people are stupid. See the AnimeJunkies fiasco / farce from a few years back – they got issued a C&D by the American cofinancer (and licensor) of a show, and AJ told them to fuck off and how dare they license a show AJ was doing? (There was also more, but you get the point.)
Abandonware always was and forevermore will be a grey area. Some things are sooo close to legit there’s not much difference, and some things are really on thin ice (if that). Abandonware is basically defined as that odd gray space in between piracy and freeware.
So the review I spent 2 hours on gets turned into another piracy rant. 
Sorry! It’s an interesting idea and makes me briefly ponder developing girl-sport-training-sims? But the sport I want to do (figure skating) I can’t quite figure out how the actual performance part of it would be organised gameplay wise. Directly controlling the skater would require complicated 3d that’s a bit over my head, and using your coach powers to put together a program that she then has to pull off with her stats might be confusing trying to define what choices are good choices…
Sorry… my fault… Have some of my most treasured twincest to make up for it:
Sorry. Great review, game sounds really intersting. Thanks for taking the time to do such an extensive writeup. But other than that I … really cannot have any comment other than:
droooooooooooll
or “Man, I wish I understood enough Japanese to play that”
or “Hmm, PP will never ever pick THIS one up”
or “Pleeeeeeease some fannotate this game!”
… Problem here is that most of these are exactly the same things I might have said (or maybe did say) for half a dozen other games that have been written up here. So I don’t really have anything to add we haven’t been over before.
About all I can really recommend is take up figure skating. Or at least start following the sport. That will tell you a whole lot more about how to break the stats out and what makes moves difficult. Knowing very little about figure skating myself, I couldn’t possibly speculate.
EDIT: Actually, there is something I might add. Skate meets are choreographed demonstrations, so there’s two gameplay elements right there: How hard the particular sequence of moves is, and how well practiced the skater is. So you have to make a tradeoff between time spent on the fundamentals (improving base stats) and time spent honing the particular routine. Strong fundamentals but weak practice can make it easier to make mistakes that cost points, weak fundamentals can cause a total failure (or even make a routine impossible).
[ 07-21-2007, 01:26 AM: Message edited by: Nandemonai ]
Oh, I know a good deal about figure skating, but the rules also have to make sense to the player, who may not be as deep into the sport as I am.
I also have vague super-evil ideas of making a casual (non-sim) skating game. except that I’m very busy with Fatal Hearts at the moment and I’ve promised everyone a Cute Knight 2 and so all this talk of skating is mostly hot air. But I love figure skating and there SHOULD be more video games based on it. Cute girls in little skating dresses! What’s not to love?
Its cool everyone. But really though, piracy is the never ending topic here. The main reason I first joined this BBS was because it was supposed to be free of it. Yet it always comes back in one form or another. Can’t we just give it a rest?
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your mailing list.
Are they lesbian stripper cute girls in little skating dresses?
Unlock the secret nude f/f pairs skating competition!
… I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen two girls try to skate pairs/dance. Obviously it’s not competition-legal, but tons of things are done at exhibition for fun that aren’t competition-legal. The difficulty is that pairs skating generally relies on having a much bigger stronger male partner to pick up the tiny little girl and you’re going to have a hard time finding a female skater butch enough.
On the other hand, ice dance isn’t quite so physicaly imbalanced, so I’m pretty sure you COULD field an f/f team, if you could find some couples willing to partner-swap… (Ice dance couples tend to be married.)
Quick websearch turns up a joke pairs program done at a gay skating exhibition, with one girl starting out as a ballerina and the other girl blasting onto ice as a bad biker… also apparently at junior levels, f/f pairs are common in some places because of there being more girls than boys who want to skate…
Gasp! LOLI lesbian skaters!
[ 07-21-2007, 05:44 PM: Message edited by: papillon ]
Unfortunately, the problem with this is there just aren’t enough ninjas to go around. So the pirates can bARRRge their way in here occasionally, matey. You could try banning parrots and eyepatches, but I don’t think I’ve seen many avatars with those.