Slashdot Mirror
Xbox Arcade Crystal Quest Maker Interviewed
Xbox Live Arcade is, so far, the easiest thing to point to as a complete success for the Xbox 360. The number of excellent games (some of them quite original) released for the service since the system's launch is very impressive. Gamecloud has an interview with Patrick Buckland, founder of Stainless Games. Stainless created Crystal Quest, the most recent addition to the Xbox Live Arcade. From the article: "Gamecloud - How did using the Xbox 360 Live Arcade to distribute the game come about? Patrick Buckland - It's a marriage made in heaven. We are going to do a downloadable PC version as well, but you get into the whole piracy issue again. Xbox 360 Live Arcade is just SO perfect for classic games - and for new games as well, as you'll see in the future from Stainless."
I released XQuest back in 1994-ish. The gameplay was vaguely similar to Crystal Quest, but the graphics, sound etc were all original. Buckland claimed I'd violated his copyright and asked me to pull the game. I played nice and changed aspects of the game that he'd claimed were too similar to Crystal Quest but he still waved copyright-infringement threats at me and demanded I stop distributing XQuest.
Eventually I called his bluff and he gave up, but the whole experience left a bit of a bitter taste. Interesting to see that he's now made some more money from the franchise...