[projectaon] Re: [Fwd: Re: [WOS] Reproduction of certain data]

  • From: Simon Osborne <outspaced@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 15:53:28 +0000

Timothy Pederick wrote:

The MSX platform was a standard (rather than a brand) for home
computers. It was big in Japan and several other countries, but never
really tried to pit itself against Commodore et al. in the
English-speaking world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

I'm guessing the chance of finding a copy of the Mirror of Death in MSX format, released or otherwise, is going to be hugely unlikely, then.


FYI I'm packaging the SID file of David Whittaker's music for The Mirror
of Death with both the Spectrum and the C64 versions of the game.

Excellent! I went looking for it in the High Voltage SID Collection (http://www.hvsc.c64.org/) when I read this; it's there, and it's rather good. :)

I'm just full of trivia and URLs today, aren't I?

I was aware of the High Voltage site, but your URL might be of interest to others! ;-) Now, if you can find me a link to the AY music from "The Mirror of Death", and/or of the Spectrum 128K game "Wild West Seymour" I'd be most obliged.


How about I do something useful and offer to contact Jon Hare, then? Let
me know (off-list?) if there's any particular form I should follow, or
any other information I should be after. (I remember the general idea
from the Great Illustrator Hunt, but then I was never one of the letter
writers for that...)

The method is fairly straightforward, but the contact E-mail usually needs quite a lot of tweaking to get it "just right".


This is the E-mail I sent out to the illustrators of The Magnamund Companion--obviously much of it is irrelevant, but some of it will be useful:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Mr _____

I am writing on behalf of Project Aon, a group of admirers of the fictional world of Magnamund, including The Magnamund Companion that you helped illustrate. If you are not the same _____ that illustrated part of this book, we would still appreciate a reply so that we can make note of it and refrain from disturbing you again in the future. (Your contact details, in case you were wondering, were found on your website ______.)

You may be aware that The Magnamund Companion has gone out of print, and that the copyright to the text has reverted to the author, Joe Dever, and the copyrights for the illustrations have reverted to the various illustrators involved.

In December 1999, Mr. Dever contacted some of his long-time fans who have maintained web sites devoted to Magnamund, granting them permission to make web editions of related books available, provided it was not done for any form of commercial profit. His grant, however, was limited strictly to the text, and does not cover the illustrations you drew without your explicit permission. We are doing our best to ensure that The Magnamund Companion does not become completely unavailable and have already published many of the original gamebooks.

We are, therefore, seeking your permission to incorporate your original illustrations into the Project Aon edition of The Magnamund Companion which will be distributed free-of-charge to appreciative fans everywhere.

We offer the promise that Project Aon will never profit financially from its availability in any way and that your permission to incorporate the images will be explicitly acknowledged immediately following the dedication of individual title. So far, Brian Williams, Gary Chalk and Melvyn Grant have all given their permission for us to distribute their work.

It is our hope that this broad availability will serve to make a new generation of fans aware of the titles which we have found to be so enjoyable.

Please let us know whether or not we have your permission to include your work in this way. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. The volunteers of Project Aon can be reached most simply through our contact web page:

http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Contact

If you would rather, feel free to mail me back, and I will pass the substance of your remarks on to the remainder of the staff.

[If you have received this message more than once by various means, please forgive us for being dogged. We just wanted to make sure to get in touch with you.]

On behalf of Project Aon, I thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

_______________

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Regarding contacting Jon Hare, the following list of things might be helpful to mention:

* Why/when did development on "The Ice Halls of Terror" stop? Was it complete or only half-finished?
* Brief description of the game (if he remembers after twenty years!). Were there any interesting features?
* Does the game still exist? If so, how could we go about getting hold of a copy of the unreleased program?
* Does he know anything about the Audiogenic game "Lone Wolf--The Mirror of Death"? How might we go about finding copies of the Atari/Amiga/MSX versions?


Also, Martijn from World of Spectrum has asked us:

"If you do get contact with him, would you please consider asking him to
get in touch with me? I'd love to make the necessary database corrections
to show his involvement in Spectrum games writing, but I simply haven't
seen his name in the credits. This happened more often and we strive for
perfection  :-)  Apart from that, I'd be interested in his opinion regarding
free distribution of these games (the Copyright project we run)."

Conversely, you may wish to run a request for feedback past him before actually asking him any questions. If you prefer, Tim, you could knock up a draft copy then post it to the list for any feedback before sending. Thanks for volunteering for this. :-)

--
Simon Osborne


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