StooB wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2020 6:04 pm
Why is there "no choice but to make assumptions"?
Because we don't have the complete contractual history of every Spectrum game.
StooB wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2020 6:04 pm
The database should stick to the actual facts and nothing else. If Manic Miner appears in a list of titles published by Grandslam - which we know is 100% incorrect - then that does seem "unreasonable" to me! What does it say about the credibility of the data if it can't get the details of one of the most famous games on the platform right?
Manic Miner is a great illustration of the problem. Not only is it one of the most famous Spectrum games, it is also one of the very few whose contractual arrangements have been openly discussed. Yet we actually know very little about its contractual arrangements. Who currently owns or has distribution rights to Manic Miner? I think Steve Wilcox will claim he does, but I doubt he could back it up. Even for the period where we do have information on Manic Miner, we have little more than the word of a young Matthew Smith, who seems not exactly to have been on top of these things.
In any case, this is one of the most clear-cut cases. What do we know about the contractual arrangements for Program Pack 4?
If you are able to establish all of this information reliably for every Spectrum title, then great, but it seems an impossible ask to me.