“Legal pressure from Atari has caused some titles to be removed by Apple from the App Store, including ‘Vector Tanks’ by Black Powder Media, gamesindustry.biz reported on Tuesday,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“The developer asserts that Atari has a ‘special relationship’ with Apple, which has led to applications being pulled without a chance for rebuttal or further evaluation,” Marsal reports. “Black Power Media’s ‘Vector Tanks’ is a wireframe 3D game that resembles Atari’s ‘Battlezone.'”
Marsal reports, “The developer even claims they previously attempted to contact Atari to license their intellectual property for ‘Vector Tanks,’ but they could not be reached. He said the company seems ‘to have fallen off the planet.'”
Read more in the full article, including Black Powder Media’s plans for the third installment of the tank game, here.
Man I love Vector Tanks! Glad I nabbed my copy long ago! The next best one IMHO to the iOS versions was the old Atari Lynx (R.I.P) Battlezone 2000.
Loved Battlezone back in the day. Or Red Baron, another Atari wireframe game, a lot harder to play (3d) and very uncommon, at least in the area where I lived then.
Should add that “Spectre” was a great game, also very similar to Battlezone, for Macs running OS 9.
Worth keeping an old PPC Mac around for.
I remember complimenting the author of Spectre and actually getting a personal reply. And yes, I keep a number of old machines around just for the purpose of revisiting some of my old loves. What I wouldn’t give for a universal emulator!
Speaking of Atari Lynx, Slime World would make a fantastic iPhone app.
Actually it would & in higher res too boot! I’ve still got one & need to break it out one day. Lol I know there’s quite a few of them that would rock on iOS, not to mention a few select Atari Jaguar games too! Odd ball ones like Flip Out comes to mind and AVP.
It is reassuring to know that if you fall of the planet, attorneys can still exert pressure “on your behalf”, heh heh heh …
LOL! Good one!
I don’t think they tried very hard to find them though.
Right click on the word Atari.
Choose “look Up in Dictionary”.
Select Wikipedia.
Click on Atari, SA link allocated by Parent in the “About” box.
Click on http://www.atari.com allocated in “About” box.
Hey presto http://www.atari.com/
Takes about 8 seconds.
Yea but all they seem to have is a contact in France for shareholders, (I’m assuming there’s no one there that can help with copywriter issues) or support regarding a console game.
Q – I’d like to talk to someone regarding licensing intellectual property.
A – Um . . . is it plugged in?
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