Wata working with Video game history foundation

[MrWunderful | 2,926]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx3yw/sometimes-preserving-video-game-history-requires-partnering-with-the-enemy
 

Good info in here. Curious if Wata is dumping protos people are sending into grade, without people’s approval?

 

They bring up lots of great points. 

[Link | 2,708]

I have some pretty old blank CD-Rs and could easily burn an image, write a title/date/company on it and send it to Wata, boom, 4- or 5-figure "prototype" with which I can dilute the market. Apparently, prior to this relationship, Wata was just shrugging their shoulders, unsarcastically declaring "seems legit" and putting their seal and case on things.

I'd disagree with a prototype owner who took issue with having Frank Cidaldi authenticate their item. And he's explicitly not making the data available outside, so it's not undermining the value exclusivity confers.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Link

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

First, LOL at the title of that article.

Second, Frank Cifaldi is doing god's work. The man does so much for preservation, no grader or any other collector should have any issues with that. It's ridiculous. 

Third, donate to the Video Game History Foundation. 

[MrWunderful | 2,926]

My whole question was, is Wata allowing Frank to dump things, without letting the senders know? 
 

Remove whether or not things “should” be dumped from the equation. 
 

I want to know if Wata is sending someones property (or if you consider someone elses IP ones property because they own the proto) without telling the sender. 
 

Because that is what I got from the article, which may be bullshit or me just not getting the context correct. So I was curious if anyone had other info. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by MrWunderful

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

I'm curious as well. I wonder if there is anyone here who's done the process that might have some insight.

[spacepup | 2,404]

Per Frank, his understanding is that as part of the submission process, people are notified that the prototype will be reviewed/dumped.

He (Frank) has been very upfront about what he is doing and the status of this work, and is providing public information that will be very helpful in the future.

[MrWunderful | 2,926]

1 minute ago, spacepup said:

Per Frank, his understanding is that as part of the submission process, people are notified that the prototype will be reviewed/dumped.

He (Frank) has been very upfront about what he is doing and the status of this work, and is providing public information that will be very helpful in the future.

Thats what I needed to hear, and actually makes sense from a verification standpoint. If you dump it you can verify versions, code changes etc. 

 

Looks like it was a click baity headline that made it seem like Video game history foundation was sliding in at night to dump protos on the sly or something. 

[spacepup | 2,404]

The main point of the article is not really about that.  A lot of this stems from the fact that Frank provided public reports about the prototypes he had reviewed, and there was a slew of angry reactions, criticizing him for 'working' with WATA ("the enemy"), as well as other criticisms that he is 'hoarding' data by not releasing the prototypes publicly.

However, I think he is actually doing a service to the community - both by preserving prototypes that may very well NEVER be preserved in any form without this connection - as well as providing public information about his reviews, which will help future buyers, researchers, etc. have more accurate information about a prototype.

It's not about "helping" WATA or "working with" WATA.  It's about preserving data and providing public information.

[DefaultGen | 5,397]

Anyone complaining about Frank Cifaldi (of literally ALL people doing game preservation work, jesus christ) on Twitter has never heard of a ransom to dump a prototype before. He’s literally doing the opposite of hoarding shit. Without him, these exact prototypes would be sitting in shoeboxes or greedy collector’s shelves undumped.

[a3quit4s | 4,091]

I thought Frank Cifaldi was the dude who appears in the pat contri in Flea Market Madness videos. Is this his son?

[Alder | 243]

I haven't had time to read much into it, but isn't the gist that they are being dumped, just not made public? The owner of the prototype is able to retrieve the ROM by request, but no one else has access to it - and that's what people are upset about?

It'd be nice if there was a stipulation that the ROM would be made publicly available after like 20 years or something. But I responded to one of Frank's tweets with another suggestion. Since people sending games in for grading tend to care about value and exclusivity, a neat compromise would be to have the customer opt-in to have the prototype be made public, and in exchange the game is tagged with some "first discovery" label or something to try to capture it as a piece of history. But I'm sure publishing any data, prototype or not, is a legal can of worms they don't want to get into.

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

I thought this was public knowledge, Wata has been doing this for years. Their prototype submissions are closed at the moment but previously you were able to submit a prototype and choose between 2 different prices depending on the result you wanted. It was $1XX to have it dumped / preserved and encased with a PRO grading. Or you could pay $3XX and get a complete writeup of all differences from the retail release in addition to the dumping and encasing.

Wata has nothing to do with this process, they send everything out to Frank at Video Game History Foundation and Frank does everything, then sends it back to Wata for encasing.

I've been emailing with Frank all week about preserving my prototypes, I have over 100 NES alone with some being the only copy known of unreleased games. I think it's a great foundation but my issue is with Frank himself, I can never get an answer from him about how I go about submitting them. As soon as I ask how to get the process started, he turns into a ghost, it has happened twice now. I'm going to start looking elsewhere for ways to preserve mine which is a shame because I would much prefer having them preserved with the rest of what he has.

[Gulag Joe | 582]

Turn these proto ROMs into NFTs and sell them on HA

[inasuma | 1,203]

Real quick comment on the topic of “dumping without owner’s permission”.

The “owner” in this case (the person submitting to wata) only owns the license to the prototype and not the actual IP. Which means Frank has as little right to dump as the owner per most license agreements... But this is all kind of moot anyway though because game companies have no reason to pursue damages when there are so few prototypes in circulation.

What I mean to say here is there’s no “moral” or “legal” wrong being committed by Frank dumping. Heck, not even really an ethical one.

Anywho, just another fun way I saw folks getting mad about nothing on Twitter. lol

[tidaldreams | 654]

thats the foundation that the pink gorilla chick runs right

iirc she also helped josh hamblin auction off his stadium events, who runs the wata games FB group.

makes perfect sense to me!

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

8 hours ago, tidaldreams said:

thats the foundation that the pink gorilla chick runs right

iirc she also helped josh hamblin auction off his stadium events, who runs the wata games FB group.

makes perfect sense to me!

She was hired by them. Frank Cifaldi founded them.

[Tanooki | 4,929]

13 hours ago, inasuma said:

Real quick comment on the topic of “dumping without owner’s permission”.

The “owner” in this case (the person submitting to wata) only owns the license to the prototype and not the actual IP. Which means Frank has as little right to dump as the owner per most license agreements... But this is all kind of moot anyway though because game companies have no reason to pursue damages when there are so few prototypes in circulation.

Technically, almost 100% chance it's just stolen property and the "owner" of the prototype doesn't actually own the file, had the rights to obtain or own it, transfer it, duplicate, anything. They own at best what hardware the prototype rests on, but the files are utterly illegal to even have as they're the IP owners property being trafficked illegally here.

Uncomfortable truth, unless said proto owner paid for the rights or utter ownership(like Piko Interactive does) that most people love to just conveniently ignore completely.  Buying a prototype without getting it from the actual legal owner is no better than buying black market goods out of the back of a truck in some alley.

[ExplodedHamster | 404]

Goods that are 35 years old and no longer made for profit, yes. 

Edited May 5, 2022 by ExplodedHamster

[inasuma | 1,203]

8 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Technically, almost 100% chance it's just stolen property and the "owner" of the prototype doesn't actually own the file, had the rights to obtain or own it, transfer it, duplicate, anything. They own at best what hardware the prototype rests on, but the files are utterly illegal to even have as they're the IP owners property being trafficked illegally here.

Uncomfortable truth, unless said proto owner paid for the rights or utter ownership(like Piko Interactive does) that most people love to just conveniently ignore completely.  Buying a prototype without getting it from the actual legal owner is no better than buying black market goods out of the back of a truck in some alley.

Fair point. Perhaps I’m giving too generous of a discount haha

[Tyree_Cooper | 741]

yeah throw those criminal proto owners in jail, and give them protos to me, i mean temporarily