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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 11, 2012 13:06:36 GMT -5
Ahh, the golden age of games, where you could make anything about anything. This time, a 2D platformer/racer with unicycles. Unfairly pulled from shelves and ceased production because of legal wranglings. It's a rather good game. www.hardcoregaming101.net/unirally/unirally.htm |
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Post by ReyVGM on Aug 11, 2012 13:19:17 GMT -5
Actually, people still make anything about anything, the problem is that they do it for the iphone  |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 11, 2012 13:27:21 GMT -5
Wait, you means telephones play something other than Snake now? Perhaps I should finally get a new one...
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Post by Wildcat on Aug 11, 2012 14:02:13 GMT -5
Hm, I had no idea Uniracers got tied up in litigation, especially with Pixar of all things. Fascinating.
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Post by lanceboyle94 on Aug 11, 2012 18:06:08 GMT -5
This taught me two things:
Pixar are a bunch of dicks and DMA was controversial before the GTA games.
Also I know of this one through ScrewAttack's Video Game Vault vid on it ("It was IN-SANITY!")
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Post by jjmcjj on Aug 11, 2012 23:23:43 GMT -5
That lawsuit over the game's depiction of a unicycle reminds of the recent idiocy around the London Olympics where anything with "London" and "2012" in its name is somehow infringing on anything branded by the 2012 Olympics.
I had no idea Uniracers was a rarity. I always had the impression it was one of the more common titles for the system in fact, though I can't recall the last time I actually witnessed a physical copy of the game. Never played it, I mainly know it from being on one of those SNES game posters I used to have, which also depicted DKC and Illusion of Gaia among a few others.
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mpx
Full Member
Posts: 130
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Post by mpx on Aug 12, 2012 13:00:21 GMT -5
Hm did you read last coment on Nintendo Life?
#30
noclothes said:
Amazing that, all these years later, the guys at DMA still find it necessary to mischaracterize Pixar's lawsuit and how it went down. Dailly says, "We modelled the unicycle exactly, based on a real life unicycle. The problem with Pixar was that they seemed to think that any computer generated unicycle was owned by them. They took footage from Red's Dream and compared it to Unirally and the unicycles were virtually the same; this isn't a big surprise as there’s not a lot of ways you can bring life to a unicycle without looking like the one Pixar did. The judge - being the moron that he was - agreed. While it was a unicycle, and did look similar, I think he should have looked at the game as a whole. If he had, then he would have noticed that the game was a completely different environment, and the ‘character’ of the unicycle just wasn't the same.”
In fact, you need to go no further than the court records, which are public, to see that virtually none of this is true. No "moron judge" ever decided (or had an opportunity to decide) anything; the copying was apparently so demonstrable and obvious that Nintendo (which is not known for backing down from a fight) capitulated almost immediately after the case was brought, before any judge had an opportunity to look at the evidence, much less make a decision, even a preliminary one.
Pixar's claim was not that they owned the concept of animated unicycles, or even that the unicycles looked the same. The claim was that the animation of the Uniracers cycles (particularly for turns, acceleration, and deceleration) was slavishly copied, frame by frame, from the animation of Red, the unicycle in "Red's Dream." There are, in fact, a multitude of ways that a unicycle could be animated, but DMA chose (as Pixar had) to anthropomorphise their cycles by making the seat analogous to the "head," and, for example, having the seat pivot in anticipation of the cycle's turns, so that it would appear that the cycle was "looking where it was about to be going," and to have the seat/head "crane its neck" forward as the cycle leaned in the direction of travel, in order to give the appearance of "intelligence" to the cycles. The problem wasn't so much that the unicycles were "computer generated," or "looked alike," but rather that DMA appeared to have replicated Pixar's specific animation choices in order to convey the personality of the cycles, rather than coming up with their own expression.
It also doesn't help things that the author of this article didn't look to the source material, saying "Pixar accused DMA of copying the idea and promptly sued." Pixar didn't accuse DMA of copying an idea. Pixar accused DMA of having copied the specific expression embodied in Pixar's animation of Red... and apparently Nintendo (which at the time dwarfed Pixar in size and resources, and could easily have defended itself and DMA if there were any doubts about Pixar's claims) felt it was sufficiently obvious that Pixar was right that Nintendo opted to immediately take the product off the market rather than go before a judge.
It's easy and fun to blame "moron judges" for outcomes you don't like; everyone knows that judges make mistakes, and it's compelling to claim to have been the victim of such a mistake. Here, though, the fact that Nintendo backed down to tiny little Pixar rather than risk putting the evidence in front of a judge, speaks pretty loudly.
Mar 11, 2012
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Post by Narushima on Aug 12, 2012 14:37:16 GMT -5
A letter is missing here:
"Whenever you perform a stunt, you get a burst of speed. The more elaborate the stunt[...]"
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Post by nickz on Aug 12, 2012 16:34:03 GMT -5
Hm did you read last coment on Nintendo Life? #30 noclothes said: Amazing that, all these years later, the guys at DMA still find it necessary to mischaracterize Pixar's lawsuit and how it went down. Dailly says, "We modelled the unicycle exactly, based on a real life unicycle. The problem with Pixar was that they seemed to think that any computer generated unicycle was owned by them. They took footage from Red's Dream and compared it to Unirally and the unicycles were virtually the same; this isn't a big surprise as there’s not a lot of ways you can bring life to a unicycle without looking like the one Pixar did. The judge - being the moron that he was - agreed. While it was a unicycle, and did look similar, I think he should have looked at the game as a whole. If he had, then he would have noticed that the game was a completely different environment, and the ‘character’ of the unicycle just wasn't the same.” In fact, you need to go no further than the court records, which are public, to see that virtually none of this is true. No "moron judge" ever decided (or had an opportunity to decide) anything; the copying was apparently so demonstrable and obvious that Nintendo (which is not known for backing down from a fight) capitulated almost immediately after the case was brought, before any judge had an opportunity to look at the evidence, much less make a decision, even a preliminary one. Pixar's claim was not that they owned the concept of animated unicycles, or even that the unicycles looked the same. The claim was that the animation of the Uniracers cycles (particularly for turns, acceleration, and deceleration) was slavishly copied, frame by frame, from the animation of Red, the unicycle in "Red's Dream." There are, in fact, a multitude of ways that a unicycle could be animated, but DMA chose (as Pixar had) to anthropomorphise their cycles by making the seat analogous to the "head," and, for example, having the seat pivot in anticipation of the cycle's turns, so that it would appear that the cycle was "looking where it was about to be going," and to have the seat/head "crane its neck" forward as the cycle leaned in the direction of travel, in order to give the appearance of "intelligence" to the cycles. The problem wasn't so much that the unicycles were "computer generated," or "looked alike," but rather that DMA appeared to have replicated Pixar's specific animation choices in order to convey the personality of the cycles, rather than coming up with their own expression. It also doesn't help things that the author of this article didn't look to the source material, saying "Pixar accused DMA of copying the idea and promptly sued." Pixar didn't accuse DMA of copying an idea. Pixar accused DMA of having copied the specific expression embodied in Pixar's animation of Red... and apparently Nintendo (which at the time dwarfed Pixar in size and resources, and could easily have defended itself and DMA if there were any doubts about Pixar's claims) felt it was sufficiently obvious that Pixar was right that Nintendo opted to immediately take the product off the market rather than go before a judge. It's easy and fun to blame "moron judges" for outcomes you don't like; everyone knows that judges make mistakes, and it's compelling to claim to have been the victim of such a mistake. Here, though, the fact that Nintendo backed down to tiny little Pixar rather than risk putting the evidence in front of a judge, speaks pretty loudly. Mar 11, 2012 I did not read the last comment Nintendo Life, but now I kind of wish I did. I'll have to look into this stuff more and possibly rewrite some of it. If the suit was over copied frames of animation, I might have to spend a lot of time trying to get the exact frames of Unirally and Red's Dream and get a comparison. For now, I'm going to leave the article the way it is because I'm fairly busy at the moment. Once I'm done with everything I can look into this some more now that I know more about the court case and try to look at the case from this new perspective. |
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Post by jorpho on Aug 12, 2012 20:26:07 GMT -5
A letter is missing here: "Whenever you perform a stunt, you get a burst of speed. The more elaborate the stunt[...]" Fixed it and a couple of other itty bitty things. |
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Aug 13, 2012 1:15:30 GMT -5
Just to say, in Nick's defence, I copied the quotes from Nintendo Life to add gravitas to his original descriptions of the court case - my belief being, if you quote the source directly there's less chance of mistakes made if you try to paraphrase it. Looks like that was a mistake!
The comparison pic at the end, with snide remark at the judge's expense was all my doing (because I love nothing more than waving the bird at the man).
I tried to find the court records, which I assumed would be public record, but how do you even begin to search? I tried "Nintendo Pixar DMA court case" in Google over and over, with nothing. I had hoped to find the judge's name, Google that, and put pictures of him up as mockery. Now the question is: was there ever a judge?
ALSO! Unless someone can find these court records, which can act as hard evidence, I think it might be worth contacting Dailly again and asking him about this. Even if the court records disagree I also think it's worth keeping Dailly's original statement, and simply putting a counter statement afterwards. I have to admit, I am sceptical of a single public comments quote, from some random anon called Noclothes. Right now the only source I can find on the matter is Dailly. Which isn't to say he didn't make a mistake - just that we need stronger counter evidence than a random public comment.
Nick, if you want anything changed drop me an email and I'll get on it as soon as I am able.
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Post by Narushima on Aug 13, 2012 8:40:04 GMT -5
[...]if you quote the source directly there's less chance of mistakes made if you try to paraphrase it. Quoting the source directly is indeed a good idea, but Daily's quote is a second-hand source of the trial, so that couldn't work to begin with. To find the records, I guess you'd need to find in which court it happened, go to their website and see if there are archives available, or call them to get a copy. |
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Post by nickz on Aug 13, 2012 8:46:52 GMT -5
Narushima and Jorpho- Thanks. I didn't catch that typo either.
Sketcz- I like the extra stuff you added. Once I find anything on the court records (findings, links, etc) I'll see if any revisions need to be made. Thanks.
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Post by billparker on Aug 13, 2012 20:16:46 GMT -5
Why didn't you make any mention of this games soundtrack and sound effects? This bugs me a lot. I know Uniracers isn't deep enough to get a multiple page write up, but this seems like an incomplete article when compared to just about any other write-up on this website. This game is full of interesting animations and is actually fairly impressive graphics-wise, but this article gives the impression that the only reason I should care about the game is because of a lawsuit.
I do commend the author for mentioning the lawsuit. I loved this game and never knew about it. However, when I read an article on hg101, I really expect a bunch of "so-and-so composed the music and also worked on games x, y, and z" and an in-depth look at the game. I expected to be reading about the unique startup menus and an explanation of that weird graph you get at the end of every race, not a simple summary of gameplay and one trivial fact about the game.
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Post by nickz on Aug 13, 2012 22:05:09 GMT -5
Why didn't you make any mention of this games soundtrack and sound effects? This bugs me a lot. I know Uniracers isn't deep enough to get a multiple page write up, but this seems like an incomplete article when compared to just about any other write-up on this website. This game is full of interesting animations and is actually fairly impressive graphics-wise, but this article gives the impression that the only reason I should care about the game is because of a lawsuit. I do commend the author for mentioning the lawsuit. I loved this game and never knew about it. However, when I read an article on hg101, I really expect a bunch of "so-and-so composed the music and also worked on games x, y, and z" and an in-depth look at the game. I expected to be reading about the unique startup menus and an explanation of that weird graph you get at the end of every race, not a simple summary of gameplay and one trivial fact about the game. I apologize for the article not feeling complete. I'm going to be sure to make note of your suggestions when revising. Hopefully this can turn into a better article. |
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