Fake history

[Sol_HSA]

The way I see it, it would be super easy to create some fake history, by making a new speccy game today, and then post it online as "I found this tape I had bought in the 80's while cleaning up my parent's stuff" or some such. Given how chaotic the early days were, with anyone being able to whip up something and sell tapes at their local gas station or whatever, it would be completely believable.

Why would someone do such a thing? I have no idea, but it's possible. And I don't think there's any real way to stop that from happening, either.

[jpnz]

Freddie Lakers Airline Capers - backstory, from the other forum, is here

[Daveysloan]

Freddie Lakers Airline Capers - backstory, from the other forum, is here

Love this.

When I read the opening post I was thinking that if someone did that, then there'd be Boffins who would be able to work through the code & discover that it was much more recent.

Must have a crack at the game.

[PeteProdge]

While you could do it, the thing is, it's the era's magazines, adverts and catalogues out there that won't exactly back up your fake history.

Now sure, you could point out it's an obscure game. A REALLY obscure game. Something that did the rounds in your town and all the magazines missed out on. Proper DIY stuff. That could just about work for you. You're not going to be able to pass off the game as a triple-A must-have title. It'd have to be at the level of a CSSCGC entry.

(In a way, I'm kind of glad that my surviving efforts on cheap cassettes are currently in some bin liner over in a small Lincolnshire town. With one exception, they were pretty abysmal.)

[SteveSmith]

Are there any games suspected of doing this? It would be fun to do an investigation.

[Ralf]

Yes, it's possible to do such a fake.

But there aren't any real money to be made from such fake. Yes, you can make a small fortune by forgery of classical paintings and creating
and "unknown" painting of Rembrandt or so and convincing people that it's real. But Spectrum games are different. If you make some fake, amateur, bad, bedroom game supposed to be made in the 80s, you'll get 10-20 pounds for it, no more. The effect is not worth the effort.

Maybe you could earn more if you recreated some big missing title like Mire Mare or Giana Sisters. You may check this story, just remember it was not a fake but a genuine, unknown game discovered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima:_E ... _Mt._Drash

Yet finding Mire Mare after all these years would make people extremely suspicious. Everybody would be checking you very thouroughly and some tiny details could reveal that you cheated.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

As to Giana Sisters, it even got a Crash Smash!

[TMD2003]

Freddie Lakers Airline Capers - backstory, from the other forum, is here

That's the first thing I thought of. Even so, it still came as a surprise that it was Phil Ruston who had done it; I'd only known him from the three Giddy games - two on the Amiga, one for early-2000s PCs - which are all worth a punt. They did at least show that he has a good eye for parody.

[PeteProdge]

As to Giana Sisters, it even got a Crash Smash!

Um... yeah... and the guy who gave it that, later admitted he was pressured by the software company AND Crash's advertising department to do so. Which has tainted Crash's legacy somewhat!

[Ralf]

Speaking of Giana Sisters, I believe it existed, mostly or totally completed. Just unlike versions for other computers it didn't reach the shop before Nintendo threatened the legal action.

Still I guess it was actually slow and bad. The Amstrad CPC version which exists is very slow and Spectrum version probably shared a lot of code with it.

[Andre Leao]

Um... yeah... and the guy who gave it that, later admitted he was pressured by the software company AND Crash's advertising department to do so. Which has tainted Crash's legacy somewhat!

One of the reasons I was a YS guy. And I loved their nonsense Gumour. Hum, and also loved Tzer, Sally and Linda, btw...

[Sol_HSA]

But there aren't any real money to be made from such fake. Yes, you can make a small fortune by forgery of classical paintings and creating
and "unknown" painting of Rembrandt or so and convincing people that it's real. But Spectrum games are different. If you make some fake, amateur, bad, bedroom game supposed to be made in the 80s, you'll get 10-20 pounds for it, no more. The effect is not worth the effort.

Like I stated at first, I don't know why anyone would do such a think.. apart from being a prank.

There is one possible reason, though, and that is to gain fame in a roundabout way.. say it's not you who found the game, but some person seemingly unconnected to you - the game lists you as a credit, so then you can say that okay, I did make a game in the 80's, but it wasn't a big hit. If it turns out to be good, it might make a bit of a splash..

What good said fame would be for you, compared to just releasing the game "today".. like I said, don't know why anyone would go through this.

[Matt_B]

You could fake a game as though it was made during the 80s easily enough. Without the documentary evidence to back it up though, it's kinda pointless.

If there are no magazine adverts or articles referring to it, nobody's going to care. That just leaves a very small set of games that were advertised or previewed, but have never been seen in action.

Faking one of those would put you under the most intense scrutiny. You'd not only have to make the game, but make it in the precise coding style of the developers and without the use of any anachronistic techniques that'd only be used by present day developers, otherwise you'd get called out sharp-ish. That's a lot of work to put in for an April Fool, which is about all it'd be good for.

All in all, it's up there with changing your name by deed poll to Harry S Price.

[zxbruno]

Interesting topic. I wanted to touch this subject before but decided against it, thinking it would make some people feel personally attacked. I think of this anytime someone says they're releasing something they made back in the day but it was lost. Or maybe they say they created the game not planning on sharing it with anyone, until now. There's no way for us to know how much of it is true, and it's not a big deal. If we feel it's more recent, there are those who will take a deeper look and figure it out. But I believe it has happened. It wouldn't be the first time an adult shows up on a forum or public group, claiming something that isn't true.

[Joefish]

I did code two educational games (well, convert to the Speccy) back in my schooldays for a games shop in Kettering that had its own line in business and educational software, but I question whether a copy was ever produced, let alone sold, and my old tapes were thrown out some time after I'd graduated and left home for work (along with all my Action Jack and Mobile Action Command figures and vehicles Fortunately my Dad knew enough not to touch the LEGO! and I found one surviving M.A.C. guy in my brother's box of Playmobil, as his stuff never got thrown out ).
And have you seen the prices people want for Brüder mini diggers these day? A bit more than 10p from the ELC shop!

So I could 're-create' those and offer them up as technical fakes, but I doubt I'd get away with it unless they were the Cassette-50 quality BASIC efforts I knocked out back then.

Anything else I might have done never got finished. I can recall bits of things and if I had the tapes, or even my old UDG sketches on paper, maybe even re-use some of it. But it'd be the tiniest part of any realistic 'game', and probably not worth the effort recovering as I could easily do anything better now.

As mentioned above, anyone could delve through the back-page ads of very early home computer mags for people selling software from home, pick an MIA title, and write something under it. But it'd be treated with a lot of suspicion if it wasn't utter, utter, utter crap! Having said that, if you came up with some radical new visual or audio trick then wrote a rubbish game around it and presented it as a trick by some unknown programmer discovered in 1983 then lost to history, that'd be hilarious.

[+3code]

If tomorrow someone "discovers" in a forgotten tape the remains of The Gianna Sisters or Toki and it's amazing, I will suspect. If it's crap, not so much.

[ketmar]

i bet that the only game that may pass is a crap one. prolly even in BASIC. and there is no reason to do it, because it won't be a "hidden gem", people will barely notice.

the thing is that it's not so hard to spot modern games disguised as old ones. graphical style, programming style, all that. it changed over the years.

and nobody will believe in unknown polished game with good gfx, "almost finished" or something.

but hey, if the game is Really Good, we may pretend that we believe. because why not, good game is a good game! ;-)