[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > (and Jim, if you want to banish me for my statements, I'll go quietly..*sniff!*
No banishment necesary. :)
The funny thing is, while I certainly wasn't advocating forgery, I wasn't making a joke either. I'm very serious when I ask: How could you tell it was a forgery? Personally, I can't see how you could. The Akalabeth label was so crude to begin with that it most likely could be forged effortlessly, unlike most "professional" games. And that is both intriguing and a wee bit ominous at the same time.
I posed the same question to a guy I met this weekend at Midwest Gaming Classic who owned a TON of Atari prototypes and loaner/beta carts, and his answer was a bit more reassuring (over half he got directly from the programmer, the rest have little identifying marks, etc.) But for the few that he could not verify, I asked if he could tell, honestly, if they were authentic (and he had paid as much as $800 for some). He admitted that, no, he couldn't, and if it was proven they were forgeries he didn't want to know :)
I would hope that the response to such paranoia, if I'm instilling that in people, is better validity, background, and "pedigree" controls. I would hate to see a hoarding, secretive underground society response instead, where the only way to see a game cover was to travel to the guy's house, or view a JPG that is so obscured by watermarks that you can't make out the text or artwork.
Sorry to wax this way -- The con I just came back from had some people paying for tables out of their own pocket *just to show off their collection*, they weren't even selling anything. And one guy, who owned every single Lynx game (in multiples necessary to play multiplayer, even), had them all out for public playing, including 8 Lynx units! It was very refreshing to see that kind of mentality for a change.
So there's my $0.02. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
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