Date   : Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:20:23 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Beebem question / game copyright question

I've just been contacted by a UK TV company who want to show someone
playing an old game on classic hardware.

For various reasons (screen sync being the main one) it'll be rigged,
with a machine behind the scenes running XP and driving an old monitor.
(I've tried to talk them into running the real thing! :-)

BBC emulation seems like a good choice when it comes to retro looks...
(Speccy's a bit clunky, and I don't like C64s ;)

Questions:

  a) Can BeebEm run full-screen under XP without any modern Windows
borders etc.?  (I'd try that myself if I have a Windows machine here :)

  b) Copyright issues on classic games. Running one of the "greats" on
the emulator would seem like a good choice - something like Repton,
Manic Miner, Citadel etc.   Issue there is copyright. Are any of these
out of copyright, or if not does anyone have contact details for the
relevant people in order to get permission? Doing things legally is
obviously a priority when it comes to TV...

  c) Of course buying a copy of the original media would also presumably
cover these people when making a disk image of the media to run on an
emulator. Which begs the question; is anyone still selling the media
other than the stuff found in a cupboard that appears on EBay?

cheers

Jules