Original Post
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Sep 21, 2020 • 04:45 Profile Photo KGRAMR

A recent article by Frank Gasking of Games That Weren’t went up on NintendoLife, talking about the history of Boss Game Studios’ unreleased Virtual Tank for the VB. It turns out that there may be a surviving prototype of the game in the hands of a former BGS named Seth…
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/09/feature_the_story_of_virtual_tank_a_lost_virtual_boy_successor_to_ataris_battlezone

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  1. v-tank2.png

  2. v-tank1.png

6 Replies
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Sep 21, 2020 • 08:30 Profile Photo Goemon

“Unfortunately, Nintendo will not allow the release of the prototype as it is copyright protected, something that Seth cannot break. ” That is horse shit and somebody really needs to tell him this.
The copyright is with Bossgames. Nintendo has nothing to do with that.

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Sep 21, 2020 • 09:07 Profile Photo KR155E

Boss Game Studios is defunct and presumably it is unknown who is now the owner of their intellectual property? I doubt that, whoever owns it know, would have a problem with the prototype being released. Nintendo certainly should not have any business with this. I am in contact with Seth and will ask him.

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Sep 21, 2020 • 09:19 Profile Photo Goemon

Nintendo has nothing to do with unreleased 3rd party games especially if that game was not even approved by Lotcheck.
In this case we are also talking about software almost 30 years old. NDAs from that time are probably expired anyway. They won’t last a lifetime. The plain game binary does not contain problematic stuff. The source code or the VB SDK could be a problem. Nintendo is probably not even aware that this game exists.
What happens to the game is entirely up to the developer.

Nobody can or should force a release of course thats fully up to Seth but it is tiring that Nintendo or ages old NDAs are always used as a excuse not to release stuff.

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Sep 21, 2020 • 09:42 Profile Photo Goemon

That said, I really like the Top Gear games on the N64.
Bossgames did very well there 🙂

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Sep 21, 2020 • 15:53 Profile Photo KR155E

Indeed, Top Gear Rally was ace, I have fond memories of it! Most of all, my friends and I enjoyed the car panting feature.

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Sep 23, 2020 • 02:58 Profile Photo Tanooki

Top Gear Rally was my favorite of those more serious style racers, World Driver was too which they also worked on if I remember right. I think what was said there is a line of crap just to pass the buck. Unless Nintendo when boss games folded either bought the rights to some/all of their stuff, or they have a good means of influence to force such a thing it’s just an excuse so there’s not a wall of begging and hammering to get that put out there. If you blame Nintendo you know whining will get you nowhere vs if he says he has it and just doesn’t feel like it.

 

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