The Godfather

[walter]

Well,
someone WAS trying to bring this game back to live..... in 2005....

http://www.godfatherpbm.com/abindex.html

[gwj]

I think it's well and truly dead, which is a pity because it was a very good game. A rewrite with modern graphics, a few rules mods and so on and it would have been great.

I wonder who owns the rights now? It would be a good learning project to develop.

[walter]

Hmm, Keith Burnham ( if I spell his name right) was the last moderator in the UK who was running Godfather. The company name was Pagoda games... Maybe Keith knows the current owner?

[gwj]

Hmm, Keith Burnham ( if I spell his name right) was the last moderator in the UK who was running Godfather. The company name was Pagoda games... Maybe Keith knows the current owner?

The rights reverted back to John Merrels (the original author), I believe, after Keith stopped running the game. Then they went to a guy called Bruce (owner of the Godfather web site, which hasn't had an update in years). Bruce intended to start games towards the end of 2007.

Maybe they're back with John? I'll try and follow up - I'm sure I have his details somewhere!

(It's quite possible I'm the only person interested in seeing this game brought up to date, but what the heck!)

[walter]

Nope, your not the only one wanting to play the game again.
Bringing back the game would be a great thing for the pbm players around here.
Keep us posted.

[gwj]

Nope, your not the only one wanting to play the game again.
Bringing back the game would be a great thing for the pbm players around here.
Keep us posted.

Much to my surprise, the first John Merrells I emailed turned out to be the right one. We've been having an interesting exchange throughout the day and I've even had a peek at a bit of the code (which he still had, tucked away after all these years!), so maybe something might come of it after all. I don't think he would do the update himself, but he might authorise someone else to do it - we'll see.

Seems a very nice chap indeed.

[walter]

He!
Thats REALLY good news!
Are you gonna do the job :-)
I hope so!

[gwj]

Wow, a year seems to have gone by!

I have now started a project to create a web-based front end, complete with full graphics. I have also made quite a few changes to the rules to reflect what I felt was missing.

At the moment, this is a purely personal project (mainly to prove to myself that I can do it!), but I've let John know what I'm up to anyway.

[walter]

Are you currently programming the Godfather game then????

Cool..

[gwj]

Yes, but... At the moment it's purely a personal project. I haven't discussed anything about licencing with John - I want to get a "proof of concept" version working first. I may post a test link here in a few weeks, but don't hold me to that!

I also want to see if there's any interest in this, apart from you 'n' me! If there's no real interest, I'd just run it as a game among friends/acquaintances for free.