A reason to hate Pixar | Hacker News Reader

A reason to hate Pixar

arstechnica.com

50 pointsshawndumas21 comments

Hmm, not really sure this is a reason to hate Pixar.

"But they also looked a little too much like the unicycle from the animated short film Red's Dream. At least, that's what Pixar thought."

I think it look exactly like bike from Red's Dream, which was released in 1987 so any similarities might not be accidental. Also, 1994 is around the time they were ramping up for their first movie release and an IPO so I'm sure they had to "fix this" incase there were any questions.

Red Dream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RedPixar.jpg

Uniracers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uniracers_boxart.png

Comparing those 2 pictures, I'm actually amazed at how different they are.

The seat is shaped slightly differently. The Pixar seat has springs and mounting rails, where the other has nothing. The Pixar frame is rounded, the other frame is squared off and looks like it has should pads. The Pixar wheel is spoked. The other has a triangle-like center.

So, the similarities? They both have all the basic parts of a unicycle, and they're red, and the frame is slightly oversized.

Real unicycle: http://www.bikester.co.uk/bicycles/unicycles/unicycles-20-in...

They are both unicycles and red. How different could they be?

Cripes, it's a unicycle... What did they really think could be done about it?

I'm not happy with Pixar about that lawsuit, but I'm more upset with our court system for their part in this.

Mike Dailly, one of the developers at DMA Design, commented, "The problem with Pixar was that they seemed to think that any computer generated unicycle was owned by them."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniracers

A couple years ago I bought an SNES and a few games I liked as a kid: Link to the Past, Metal Warriors, Pilotwings, and Uniracers. I had no idea it was rare or even obscure. We played the hell out of it when I was in middle school. If you can you should get a gamepad and an emulator and try it out; they're totally right about how fun it is.

I absolutely loved Uniracers and Link to the Past in middle school! The latter had neat visuals that didn't sacrifice from the feeling of immense speed it gave...

Do you mean the former?

Yes, sorry-looks like the edit link for that expired. That was meant in regard to Uniracers. I never knew that they had to stop producing the game on account of a lawsuit, that's actually quite sad, as it really was a great game.

The game would let you name each of your Uni's(I think there were 20?), but I got kind of a laugh out of how it would reject a name like "Sonic" or "Sega", with a message of "Not Cool Enough".

Should hate over broad, over reaching, anti-innovation IP laws, not Pixar. The fact that someone can own an idea (look of unicycle) and sue others that use similar idea is totally ludicrous. But, we're indoctrinated to ownership so the jump from real to imaginary property doesn't seem so large.

DMA Design are an interesting company. They created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto from a small office in Dundee, Scotland.

More info about it here:

http://retro.nintendolife.com/news/2010/03/feature_the_makin...

“My total royalty cheques for Unirally amounted to something like seventeen quid. I think I bought pizza. The pioneers of the games industry bought Ferraris and swimming pools on the proceeds of their games. I bought ham and pineapple toppings with extra barbecue sauce on a crispy base.”

I played this to death as a young lad. It was called Unirally in the UK, and the split screen mode rivalled Mario Kart in competitive excitement (and rage). My cousin and I used to have grudge matches every time we fired up the SNES. Didn't realise it was a relative rarity.

My brother and I were hooked on this game for the longest time. I wish I had held onto it.

I hope that someone open sources the code for this game. It was a blast to play back when I was a kid, and I'd like to see this game get rediscovered.

Awesome vid. I'd totally buy this for my iPhone.

I had no idea this was a rare game. I loved playing this game as a kid. One of my most-played SNES cartridges I believe.

It seems to me like a copy of the Sonic The Hedgehog concept for the SNES.

Positively wrong.

I would argue against the article in that Uniracers was a racing game. There were tracks, laps, and everything else you would expect to find in a racing game. What made it a trick game was the fact that doing a trick would make you go faster, and continuing to do tricks while racing was the key to victory in the later levels. The game also featured stunt levels where the focus was completely on doing stunts, usually in some type of half pipe level. However speed was also key here, because doing more successful tricks led to you moving faster, which gave you more air, which let you do more tricks, which let you get the gold medal.

Uniracers allowed you to enter your own name for your save file. There was a rudimentary profanity filter, however interestingly if you tried to enter Sega or Sonic as a name, "Not cool enough." One of the tours also featured a "Hedgehog Mode" which made the game unreasonably slow, slower than "Slow Motion" mode.

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