Elektronite: copyrights for Lode Runner under discussion with Ubisoft 
 
09/01/2006 
 
Elektronite is discussing with Broderbound and Ubisoft representatives to define the opportunity to develop Lode Runner on Intellivision. 

http://www.intellivisionworld.com/News/News_Detail.asp?iwNws=63



Hello friends!
I am very interesting with Your projects about to porting the best old games to Intellivision platform.
I have the site http://lodedome.no-ip.com/ dedicated the LodeRunner game.
http://www.intellivisionworld.com/ContactUs/


Elektronite is a no-profit project founded in 2005.

The scope of this project is to help all the developers interest in programming new applications for Intellivision, by supplying for free development kits, artistic support for box and overlays arts, support for the implementation of the hardware, support for the implementation of the packages, beta testing, programming guides, forums and a distribution channel for publishing.
INTERVIEW
Valter Prette

The makeINTVgame! operation has expanded and now has several 
new brands to support the growing Intellivision retro-gaming scene!

 

MT> Why do you have such interest and passion for the Intellivision console?
VP> The Intellivision was my first console ever. I was young that time and honestly it was not my request to receive a game console for Christmas. I wasn't even used to arcades. The Intellivision was a surprise for me, a kind of shock: I just start playing and after that day, I never stopped. 

MT> Are you a retrocollector in general?
VP> After the Inty, I did become a C64 collector, then Amiga fan, and now I collect almost every major console, from Vectrex to PS2. Thanks to Intellivision that started all. My preferred system of all time is the Amiga, but as retrocollector I must mention Vectrex as the first choice. I also like emulation, and appreciate the amazing offerings towards emulation on the PSP.


MT> How did you begin the IntellivisionWorld project?
VP> That is curious After longtime thinking about a remake of my precedent web site makeINTVgame, that was dismissed due to my work load I was in my office, connected to internet and looking around for news on Intellivision sites. I found intellivisionworld.com, just opened by Pierluca Bianchi and I was surprised to find such site to be made in Italy!! I contacted Pierluca the same day and we decide to collaborate. After then, I took back all my contacts and start working hard to do something much more important and difficult than my first attempt: it was just the right moment to do this because I did understand that the Intellivision underground was dispersed and several historical web sites (like Giga Intellivision) where closing!


MT> Why are so few games for Intellivision being released?
VP> There are two major issues: the technical aspect and the economic aspect. Technically, the Intellivision is more complex to program than a VCS2600, so there are not as many casual developers that make the effort to learn the process. When you have to move to the hardware, you discover that producing Inty carts is much more difficult and more expensive than VCS2600, due to a non standard chipset and voltage. In fact, you need to study new chipset architecture or to license the one made by Chad Shell for the Intellicart. Even resolving the technical problems, you have to face the cost of your cartridge will be very high, surely too much for a single prototype cart. You need to produce hundreds of carts to lower the costs. This is the same problem we have at Elektronite: the games we plan to develop will probably result in a loss of money for us, instead of a rewarding project 


MT> Which is the most difficult issue you have to face in developing Inty games?
VP> Finding developers that have enough time! We can approximately consider 8-10 developers available worldwide for homebrew games, and most of them have very little free time. Also, as I said, the high cost of production! In fact, if we consider those difficulties, it looks kind of crazy to get involved in Intellivision development.


MT> Why the name Elektronite?
VP> Because we want to give the impression that a new energy is given to the Inty underground. We want to give the idea that our products are explosive: not just casual demos, but professional work that will surprise the collectors.

MT> What you plan to do by founding Elektronite?
VP> We have basically five guidelines:

- Contact as many developers as possible around the world and convince them to collaborate with us.
- Build up a online laboratory and tech newsgroup for developers, where to share infos and experiences to produce tools that we want to deliver to everyone interested in programming the Inty
- Collaborate with professional painters and graphic designers to produce box arts, advertising and web arts that remind the original quality
- Reengineering of the hardware production process and especially find out a cheap solution to produce cart shells, that are a major bottleneck at the moment.
- Obtain copyrights for classic games from the software houses, and port as many as possible to Inty. For this marketing process I'm working very hard, and the first results are finally there thanks to Llamasoft and Cinemaware.

MT> Which games are you considering for development?
VP> There are many titles that I'm working for. My first step is to contact original developer to have infos and technical help. The second step is to find the actual owner of the copyrights of the game, and call them to ask permission to officially develop the game.

At the moment, we obtained permission/copyrights for Hover Bovver, Gridrunner, Attack of Mutant Camels, Defender of the Crown and Monster Masher. Many more are under discussion with softcoms: I can say some titles, but please consider those are still "marketing in process": we may start working on them, or we may not. Some titles are: Lode Runner, MULE, Archon, The Pawn, Quest for the Rings, Civilization. There are several more that I'm not allowed to speak about at the moment.

Of course we do not intend to develop only classic games: we are interested in new game design, and that's why we affiliate with the Minigame Compo, to push people propose their ideas.

MT> How many people are working with you on this project?
VP> The people that worked on this project from the beginning are just me and Pierluca Bianchi. We take care of the web site, news, graphics, marketing and legal issues.

A few months after opening, we started a constant collaboration with David Harley, who provides me with much info, mail contacts and the extraordinary contents of the Intellivision Library that we plan to integrate in the web site. This guy is a never ending help for me. This is all. 

Off course there must be people to develop: for the game development, I have daily contact with several programmers, that will work on the games according to their time schedule: my role is to find interesting project to propose them. We also started a collaboration with Intelligentvision for the hardware issues, and this was somehow mandatory since those guys, and J.Zbiciak in particular, are simply the major expert worldwide about eprom assembling for this console. For so few people there is a huge amount of work to do complete, but we are passionate and we believe in this project.

http://www.gooddealgames.com/interviews/int_Prette.html