Just want to throw in my two cents...
Have you guys seriously put any consideration into just offering up the hack to Square-Enix on a silver platter? What I mean is, why not put some serious effort into making it clear to them that they have a lot more to gain by working with you than against you? There are two scenarios I can see playing out: one is good for no one, and the other is good for everybody.
The likely scenario is that SE will refuse to allow the game to be released in any form. SE takes a lot of flack in PR, the Chrono fan base is weakened, the ROM hacking community takes a blow, and 5 years of hard work go down the toilet. Not only that, but there's not any guarantee that can be offered that the game won't find it's way to the internet ANYWAY, maybe months or years down the road, especially since beta-testing had begun and the game was so near to completion. If the game
is leaked down the road, SE sues, and the team is up a crap creek. Honestly I can't see where anyone is benefited from this scenario, in any form.
On the other hand, there's the more unlikely scenario which benefits just about everybody. GIVE the damn game to Square-Enix. I realize that the problem with this is getting SE to agree to it, but hear me out -- what I'm trying to do here is to get you guys to make a strong, concerted argument for this. They may not realize that you'd even be willing to do such a thing; it may be far out of their world-view to think of someone putting so much hard work into something for no profit. Offer it to them for free, making it clear that you're giving them five years of hard work for FREE, on a SILVER PLATTER. Explain that you'll let them have it with no strings attached, all the rights to everything, signed over in their name. They could then thoroughly test it themselves for bugs and story continuity, and release it on the Wii Virtual Console, easily.
IMAGINE how much money they would make off the thing. They could charge $30 a download, people would still buy it.
- Square-Enix gets a huge PR boost and
huge profits for absolutely NO WORK.
- SE appears downright "with it" for what is essentially taking someone else's hard work for a huge profit.
- The Chrono fan base is revived. The world gets to see an amazing game, finally getting a true Chrono sequel.
- The ROM-hacking community thrives off of this awesome news, drawing in new blood from all directions.
It sets a new precedent for how corporations deal with ROM-hacks... let us hack, and steal the best ones from us for a profit!
I do realize its a true long shot, but if some actual communication can be established, I believe this truly is an amazing end to shoot for. This is a corporation - they don't really care about setting an example by striking down illegal tampering with video games... they care about money they might be losing. Offer them a deal they can't refuse, if all they're out for is money.
