comstock@tymix.UUCP (Dave Comstock) (01/24/86)
As a former Atari employee (as is Mike Mahar, hi Mike!) with current contacts at both ATARI CORP. (purchased from Warner by Jack Tramiel) and ATARI GAMES, INC. (I'll check on that name), I feel qualified to address the confusion. When Jack Tramiel approached Warner, he was ONLY interested in the home computer operation; he didn't care about the arcade game area AT ALL. The organization of Atari at the time he talked to Warner was such that a clear split could be made between the arcade game area and everything else (home computers, Atarisoft programs, home videogames). To the best of my knowledge, Tramiel bought 100% of the things I classified as "everything else". Part of the deal, however, states that Warner can purchase a significant part of Tramiel's parent company, Tramiel Technologies, and vice versa. The upshot of all of this is that Jack Tramiel owns the rights to produce home versions of anything that the arcade game designers released before he bought the company. This includes, I believe, games such as I Robot, Major Havoc, Cloak & Dagger, Asteroids, Battlezone, etc. In addition, the rights to produce home versions of games such as PACMAN, Defender, and DigDug which Warner purchased from other companies were included in the deal. Shortly after the deal was struck, Tramiel sold the rights to some of these games to another company (Datasoft comes to mind). Datasoft has begun selling copies of the games on diskette for the ATARI eight-bit machines, the C64, etc. Warner continued searching for a buyer for the arcade games area. About six months (rough guess) after the Tramiel deal, Warner sold 51% of the arcade games company (still called Atari, Inc.) to NAMCO, the Japanese company that produced the PACMAN and DigDug arcade games, along with many others. All rights to arcade games produced after the Tramiel deal are the sole property of the Warner/NAMCO company, which has apparently been christened Atari Games, Inc. Atari Games, Inc. can do whatever they want with the home rights to new games except produce home versions themselves (they can't directly compete with Tramiel's company for several years). They can sell the rights to Electronic Arts (as they did with Marble Madness) or even Commodore! To answer your questions about Gauntlet, if the rights haven't already been sold, they will be soon. I suspect that Tramiel isn't interested, but Electronic Arts, Synapse, Broderbund, or some other company will buy them. Depending on the company that buys the rights, the home version could be available on any or all machine(s). Hope this (LOOOONG) posting was of interest! David Comstock Tymnet, Inc. P.S. I'll try to get more info on the Gauntlet rights this weekend.