Good news NES fans – the Unofficial NES/Famicom Visual Compendium is live again after creator Sam Dyer of Bitmap Books settled the copyright claim that Nintendo had filed against his Kickstarter project. The campaign had been frozen on 30th June 2016 with only 23 hours to go. The clock has now resumed, giving any potential backers until 7pm BST on Friday 22nd July to commit their pledges.
Not that the project is in any peril as a mammoth £170,000 ($225,000) of the original £25,000 ($33,000) target has already been raised and most of the pledge goals already reached. This is great news for backers as, like Sam’s previous Kickstarter projects, these stretch goals reward all backers with extra pages, improved quality materials and extra bonus items included with the book.
The Unofficial NES/Famicom Visual Compendium is actually the sixth Kickstarter project from Bitmap Books, all of which have been runaway successes. It’s particularly notable for me as the Amiga Visual Compendium was the very first project I backed on Kickstarter and is probably the best one I’ve ever backed in terms of quality of the finished project and standard of the regular updates. However the NES was the formative console of my childhood, so I was especially upset when Kickstarter informed me it was the subject of an intellectual property dispute.
Luckily, Sam had taken legal advice before launching the campaign (and had already spoken to Nintendo UK), so there was a reasonable degree of confidence that things would work out after he made a few more tweaks. Crucially though – and I can’t stress this enough – he kept all backers in the loop with regular messages during the dispute process. Even when there was no news to report, he made sure he checked in to reassure everyone he was still there and the issue was being worked on.
A happy ending all round. Coming just after the announcement of the upcoming NES Mini, this is a great month for all retro Nintendo fans!
