Electronic Recycle Bin Rescue Super Socket 7 System

My town has a shipping container where you can rid yourself of old electronics like TVs, computer systems and monitors and printers.  The town charges a small fee per item.  Even in my small town there seems to be no lack of residents with old PCs.  Usually the container will have three to four PCs dumped in it by the time it is picked up and sent to a recycling center.  I have been known to explore the leftovers and have taken the occasional graphics or sound card from PCs.

Last week, I saw a system that interested me.  Usually I see stock Dell or HP machines from the mid-2000s, but this system was inside an AT-style enclosure.  My interest was naturally peaked.  The system did not have a cover and I could see a socket 7 motherboard.  There was no heatsink on the CPU, which identified itself as an AMD K6-2 350MHz.  I did not need any more advertising, I had to have this machine.  Three discrete trips to the bin later, I had the CPU, the motherboard on a removable tray, the CPU heatsink and all the header connectors I saw.  I did not take any disk drives, I do not need floppy or CD-ROM drives and there is an unwritten rule about taking hard drives (to protect residents against identity theft.)  I left the case, drives and power supply for the recyclers.

The unknown motherboard

Motherboard Overview :

• Socket 7 or Super Socket 7 CPU
• 3 x DIMM SDRAM
• 2 x IDE, 1 x Floppy
• 1 x VGA (header)
• 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial (header)
• 1 x PCI Audio, Game/MIDI & Modem (header x 2)
• 1 x LAN (header)
• 1 x AT Keyboard connector
• 1 x PCI, 1 x ISA (not shared)
• AT and ATX Power Connectors
• 1 x CPU Fan Header & 1 x Case Fan Header
• 512KB of External L2 Cache (this board supposedly has 2MB : http://www.ebay.com/itm/PC100-VIAGRA-SUPER-SOCKET-7-SOCKET7-MOTHERBOARD-WITH-HEATSINK-MODEM-SOUND-VGA-/221616294322)
• 2 x USB 1.1 ports (via header)

As this is a late AT class motherboard, there are headers and ribbon cables for just about everything.

Identifying the Motherboard :

Not to busy looking from this angle

The VIA Southbridge chip is the VT82C686A (labeled as HT82C686A on this board).  Although the identity of the Northbridge chip is obscured by the headsink, the motherboard has integrated video but no external chip to provide that functionality.  According to the Southbridge reference manual, it was designed to integrate with three VIA Northbridge chips, VT82C598, VT82C501 and VT82C691.  The VT82C598 (Apollo MVP3) is a Super Socket 7 chip which provides AGP, the VT82C501 (Apollo MVP4) is a Super Socket 7 chip has integrated 2D / 3D graphics and the VT82C691 (Apollo Pro) is a Socket 8 / Slot 1 chip.

Obviously, the VT82C691 is not the chip and the VT82C501 looks better than the VT82C598 because the VT82C501 advertises integrated graphics, which fits with my board. Therefore, the Northbridge is a VT82C501.  The MVP4 is otherwise identical to the MVP3.

There is no official name of the motherboard or who manufactured it on the board itself, but judging by this thread it is highly likely a PCChips product.  http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=46530&start=0

The heatsink on PC Chips' boards is very distinctive.  Other manufacturers like ASUS and Gigabyte proudly identify themselves, but PC Chips left their identity to their golden heatsink. It uses a VIAGRA PC100 chipset.  No chipset was ever more unfortunately named and a Google search does not really work well.

This board is not documented in TotalHardware '99.  However, there are board shots of many of PC Chip's motherboards at motherboards.org.  Even in low resolution, these photos correspond almost exactly to my board :
http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/motherboards_d/PC%20Chips/M585LMR/
http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/pcchips/M585LMR.htm

Therefore, my motherboard is a PC Chips M585LMR.  Its PDF manual can be downloaded from here :
http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/manuals/pc%20chips/M585LMR/

There is a thread about the motherboard here : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=44260&p=435581, but without pictures it would be difficult to associate this board with the thread.

Integrated Functionality :

This chip incorporates the Trident Blade 3D AGP 3D Accelerator.   http://www.anandtech.com/show/248

The LAN is provided by the Davicom 9102F chip.  It is a 10/100Mbit PCI-based LAN card, and Windows 9x has drivers for it.  It cannot be disabled, but there is no reason you have to use it except that wasting a PCI slot on a LAN card is silly.

The audio and modem is provided by the SoundPro HT8738AM chip, which has dual functionality.  The audio portion is provided by a core functionally identical to the C-Media CMI8738.  The modem capability is provided by a core fundamentally identical to the PCtel HSP56 MicroModem.  This is a Winmodem, so do not expect good performance.

Jumpers : 

The only jumpers on this board are JBAT1, JP2, JP4 and JP5.  JBAT1 clears the CMOS memory, JP2 enables and disables the onboard audio and modem functionality and JP4 enables and disables the onboard LAN.  JP5 selects the SPDIF voltage output for the SPDF I/O connector, allowing for 5 volt or .5 volt.  5 volt is suitable to power an optical or TTL output, while 0.5 volts is appropriate for a coaxial peak-to-peak output.  There is also an audio and modem disable in the BIOS, but hardware disable seems better than software disable for completely eliminating the device from Windows.

There is information silkscreened for JP6 (CPU multiplier selection) and JP9 (front side bus speed selection), but no pins or dipswitches on the board to access these selections.  These settings are entirely controlled by the BIOS.

Headers :

Then you look on the other side of the board

This board has lots and lots of pin headers.  Some of them appear to be standard, others are not.  

COM1 : Serial Port, standard 10-pin header (pin 9 is key)

PRINT1 : Parallel Port, standard 26-pin header (pin 26 is key)

VGA : Monitor Display port, standard 16-pin header.  Uncommon but not unknown, pin 16 has no connection)

LAN1 : RJ-45 port module, non-standard.  

DAA1 : Winmodem 2 x RJ-11 module, non-standard.  This does not have a ribbon cable, it attaches directly to the motherboard and its header is positioned so the module aligns with a case slot.  This can be found by searching for PCTel Fax/Modem DAA module

SOUND1 : Game/midi port and line in/out/mic, 26-pin non-standard header.  The first 16 pins of this header are for a gameport, and that is standard (pin 16 not connected).  The subsequent 10 pins are used for the audio jacks, but do not follow the standard for front panel audio designs.  Instead, 4 pins are used for the stereo line in, 4 pins for the stereo line out and 2 pins for the microphone input.  This header adapter appears to be identical : http://www.ebay.com/itm/new-PC-Audio-cable-with-Line-in-Mic-Line-out-for-Asus-Intel-MotherBoard-MORE-/121321453854?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

ATX FORM : PS/2 mouse, Infrared Port, and 2 x USB ports, 18-pin non-standard, pin 14 is the key.  I do not have this particular connector, but it appears identical to the one sold here : http://www.cablesonline.com/usbatxforcar.html

USB1 : USB1.1 x 2 ports, 8-pin semi-standard.  The standard ribbon cable has 10 pins, but pins 9 & 10 are no connected.  A typical adapter should work.  This board supports 4 USB ports between this header and the ATX FORM header.

CD-ROM : Although not labeled as such, there are what appears to be two CD-ROM headers.  One of them has a white snap-in box around the pins.  The white box should have the pins in GLGR format, while the no-box header should have the pins in the LGGR format.  

SPDF I/O : 8-pin header, pin 3 is key.  Provides coaxial spdif input and output and stereo line input with an adapter which I cannot find.

J7 : 2-pin header for CD-ROM SPDIF input.  This cannot be used if the external SPDIF bracket is being used.

J4 : 8-pin header, pin 8 is key.  Not documented in the manual

There is a header, J11, for the switches, LED and speaker.  This header is a little odd.  The 4-pin header for the speaker and the 3-pin header for the Power LED are connected horizontally, but the other LEDs and the Power/Suspend switch are connected vertically.  They all use 2-pins, so this will work.  The silkscreening on the motherboard does not make this crystal clear.  

Special Features :

The motherboard theoretically supports up to 768MB of RAM in its three DIMM slots.  However, not all of this RAM is cacheable.  2MB cache systems can cache up to 508MB, 1MB cache systems up to 254MB and 512KB boards only 127MB.  If for some reason you need more RAM than this, the performance of the extra RAM will suffer.  My system reports itself as having 512KB of RAM, so a single 128MB stick of PC-100 SDRAM will suffice.  PC-66 SDRAM is also supported.

Front side bus speeds supported are 60, 66, 75, 83, 90, 95 and 100MHz.  If the silkscreening is to be believed, this board supports multipliers from 1.5x to 5.5x.  This pretty much encompasses the world of the Socket 7 and Super Socket 7 CPUs, from a Pentium 90 (1.5 x 60) to a K6-2+ at 550MHz.  These CPUs do not have locked multipliers, so for example, my K6-2 350 can be unclocked to 90MHz.  The system can run CPUs with 3.3v to 2.0v core voltages.

The Southbridge chip supports UDMA/66 IDE.  This limits you to 28-bit LBA, so hard disk drives should be no more than 120GB.  Windows 9x also has similar limits.

The Trident Blade 3D integrated graphics cannot be disabled.  The integrated graphics will use 4MB or 8MB of system RAM for a frame buffer.  Discrete graphics cards using this chipset may use SGRAM instead of SDRAM.  There is Direct 3D support for 3D accelerated graphics as well as an OpenGL ICD for Quake-engine game support.  There is also hardware support for DVD decoding.  This graphics controller is AGP based, but does not take full advantage of the AGP specification.  When it came to 3D accelerated graphics, an nVIDIA TNT card smoked the Trident, as shown in the Anandtech article linked above.

The Trident adapter supports 640x480x32bit @ 160Hz, 800x600x32bit @ 160Hz, 1024x768x32bit @ 120Hz, 1280x1024x16bit @ 100Hz and 1600x1200x16bit.@ 85Hz.  DOS VGA and SVGA compatibility appears to be solid.

The CMI8738 chip appears to be a quite decent all-rounder.  It supports DirectSound/DirectSound 3D, EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0 with updated drivers.  It provides Head-Related Transfer Functions for 2-speaker 3D positional audio.  It can record and output 24-bit SPDIF and will output 5.1 AC3 from DVDs.  The SOUND1 bracket supports using four speakers by repurposing the line-in connector.

The CMI8738 will emulate a Sound Blaster 16.  It possesses an excellent FM synthesis core.  I do not know if it was licensed from Yamaha, but it sounds very close to a Yamaha YMF-724 FM recording.  If you want to use an ISA card for DOS games and keep the PCI audio, you can move the I/O ports of the Sound Blaster, MPU-401 and/or FM Synthesis to ports that will not be used.  Interestingly, the VIA Southbridge also supports Sound Blaster Pro emulation, but this may be disabled on the motherboard or the chip itself to allow the CMI8738-based chip to be the only on-board audio system.

Expansion :

Meet your expansion options

A typical AT case will have seven or eight card slots.  The motherboard included five header brackets, sound, modem, LAN, VGA and Serial/Parallel.  The manufacturer offered the ATX and SPDIF brackets as optional purchases.  You may not be able use all the headers and both expansion slots, one must be sacrificed in a seven slot case.  Typically the modem is the best choice to go without, especially in today's world.

This board is on the edge of the AT to ATX transition.  Most Socket 7 and even Super Socket 7 boards used the AT form factor, while virtually all Pentium II boards used ATX.  The AT keyboard connector has purple plastic, which is a PC97 requirement.  With the ATX FORM bracket and an ATX power supply, this system becomes a fully ATX compliant computer with its various suspend and sleep functions.  Use of AT power supplies makes fewer of these energy saving options available.  I personally find sleep, suspend and ACPI functions a nuisance.  I prefer to turn a system on and turn a system off rather than worry about whether it will wake itself from sleep.

The board is very small for the period, not much larger than a mini-ITX board.  Even so, very little that an average user may need is left out.  A parallel port and one serial port is provided.  The one serial port is intended for a mouse, and instead of a second serial port you get a built-in (if crappy) modem.  Use the ATX FORM bracket and a PS/2 mouse and you can rescue the serial port for something else.  By adding basic 3D accelerated video and audio and a LAN, there is not a heck of a lot of need for expansion for most people.

The ISA slot is in line with the switch and panel headers, so using long cards with this system may be tricky. The PCI slot is in line with the secondary IDE port, so caution is advised with using a long PCI card.

If you want to use this board for 3D gaming, you may want to add a 3D accelerator.  A Voodoo, Voodoo 2 and PowerVR PCX1 or PCX2 are add-on boards without 2D capabilities.  They should be able to co-exist without difficulty with the on-board video.  Because Voodoo 2 SLI requires 2 PCI slots, the only way you will be able to use Voodoo 2 in SLI is by obtaining a Quantum3D Obsidian 2 X-16 or X-24, which combines two 8MB or 12MB Voodoo 2 boards onto one board.

Building the System :

The 486 motherboard had to get the boot

The K6-2 is recognized as a K6-2 at 350MHz.  You can set the speed, multiplier and core voltage in the BIOS.  For multipliers, you can select 2.0x through 6.0x in 0.5x increments.  For core voltage you can select 2.0-2.5v in 0.1v increments.  Front side bus speeds supported are 60, 66, 75, 83, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 124MHz.  Perhaps a Pentium or a Cyrix CPU would have different settings available.

There is no way this board will fit inside an modern ATX case.  The mounting holes for the motherboard are in different places in an ATX case and there are not enough common holes to give this AT board sufficient support.  Even if you remove the ATX I/O panel to allow you access to the AT keyboard connector, the expansion slot holes in an ATX case do not correspond to the expansion slots on the board.

I'll win no prizes for my cable routing

Getting all the ribbon cables to cooperate with the bracket placement was a bit of a challenge.  Even though no ribbon cable had more than 24 pins, ribbon cables are not the most flexible of connectors.  The floppy drive ribbon cable also connects in the area where the on-board peripherals connect.  I could not get the modem daughterboard, which connects directly to the motherboard without a ribbon cable, to fit in the AT case I have, so I just left it out.

Lots of ribbon cables

I originally could not get the board started.  I tried an AT power supply and an ATX power supply, but neither seemed to work.  I thought I had a dead board and was beginning to believe I had wasted my time.  I looked at the trace side of the board and it appeared that the ATX traces did not make any sense where the AT traces did.  The AT connector is not keyed, making inserting the connectors a bit tricky.  Once I realized that the ground wires (black) are always together and in the middle with the AT connectors, I was able to start the board.

The ATX connector still did not work.  The silkscreening for the switch/LED block was a little confusing.  I did not realize until I found and read the manual that the 2-pin connectors were to be inserted vertically, not horizontally.  I figured they were inserted vertically just as the other connectors, which is how they are inserted in my ASUS P3B-F.  Once I inserted the power switch connector vertically in the last pair of pins, the board fired right up.

So much for that AWE32 I wanted to put into the ISA slot

If you want to use an ISA card that extends over the switch/LED pins, you will have difficulties with the LED and power and reset switches due to the lack of clearance.

The system did not come with any RAM, so I grabbed a 64MB and later a 128MB stick of PC-100 SDRAM I had lying around, the system did not have any trouble with the RAM.

Installing the OS and Drivers :

I was only prepared to use a 540MB hard drive for experimentation.  I decided to use Windows 95 for a change, since it is smaller and faster with lower end hardware than Windows 98.  I have a Windows 95 OSR2.1 CD, which I found out was not bootable.  A truly fresh install will require a boot disk with a DOS CD driver and MSCDEX.  Installing the operating system was fast and easy.  Getting the drivers to work, well that was not easy.

A streamlined boot screen

The chief difficulty is finding the right drivers for this board.  Originally the board came with a drivers CD with drivers for the LAN, Video, Sound, Modem and IDE Bus Master.  Of course I did not have this CD, so I had to search for the drivers online.  I managed to find them, thanks mostly to Driver Guide.  Installing the Sound and Bus Master drivers was easy.

Only 512KB of External Cache, I want my money back!

Installing the LAN driver was not so easy.  Even though the chip used is a Davicom 9102F, there is more than one driver set for it.  The driver set that finally worked for me was not easy to find.  It has folders for win95, win95osr2 and win98.  Even with this driver, I still got a yellow exclamation mark in Driver Properties.  What finally worked was deleting the "Unsupported Device PCI LAN" after installing the driver. Once the driver was installed properly, the LAN was well-behaved.  Connecting to a Network Drive was not a problem.

The OS installed in the exposed system

Finding a good video driver for this motherboard has been a more difficult trial.  The Blade 3D does support Direct3D, so hardware accelerated games should be possible.  The first drivers I tried refused to give me anything but standard VGA capabilities.  The second set gave me full 2D capabilities at first, but not 3D capabilities.  The first set identifies the video chipset as a Trident Blade3D, but the second set identifies itself as a Trident CyberBlade i7 AGP.  It seems that like the LAN adapter, different drivers may be required depending on whether you have a standalone expansion card or an embedded solution.  Even Windows 98SE is unlikely to have video drivers for this adapter as implied here :  http://www.anandtech.com/show/253/3.

You have to install the card using the setup program, not the Add/Remove Hardware, in order to obtain full 3D capabilities.  I had a non-working Diamond Monster 3D in the system, and it seems that it was blocking the Trident setup program from working.  Unfortunately, the pickiness of the drivers means that they really cannot be upgraded.

Windows 95 stripped of all its nonsense

The graphics adapter was able to run 3dmark99, so it should be able to run Direct 3D and OpenGL games from the mid-to-late 90s reasonably well.  Glide-only and Glide-preferred games have another system to run on.

Metroid II - Return of the Sidescrolling Action/Adventure Exploration Game

Original Game Boy Palette

Metroid II was released during a relative drought of quality first party titles from Nintendo for the Game Boy.  Nintendo had released all the launch games for the system in July of 1989, Alleyway, Super Mario Land, Tennis and Tetris, but after that its releases had dropped substantially while its third party licensees like Konami and Capcom picked up the slack.  While Nintendo released other games like Golf, Solar Striker, Qix, Radar Mission and F-1 Race during 1990 and 1991, it was not until Metroid II was released in November of 1991 that one was really reassured that Nintendo was going to give its handheld system its best.  More classics, like Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land, Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Donkey Kong would follow about once a year thereafter.

Original Game Boy Palette

Metroid II helped cement the fact that certain premium games would have battery backed RAM.  Almost every classic game Nintendo developed for its cartridge systems thereafter would also have the extra battery backed RAM. The extra RAM allows for a more forgiving saving system than passwords.  The original Metroid, whether played on cartridge or disk, did not save your current health and did not save your location except at an elevator (Famicom Disk System Metroid always restarts you at Brinstar.)  There are save points liberally scattered throughout Metroid II's SR388.

Original Game Boy Palette

Graphically, the smaller screen resolution (160x144 vs. 256x240) and limited number of colors available (4 vs. 52), when compared to the NES, required certain compromises.  The graphics artists could scale down Samus compared to her NES sprites, or keep the NES scale and show a smaller screen area.  Nintendo had scaled down the graphics for Super Mario Land, but the result looked rather simplistic and lacked detail.

Original Game Boy Palette

The designers made the right choice in keeping the scale the same.  With a larger scale, they could show more detailed backgrounds and enemies.  This is important in a large game that is limited to a four color monochrome palette.  As a result, while most parts of SR388 look natural, other parts look like they were designed by intelligent beings.  Samus' armor is much more detailed, especially after she acquires the Varia suit.  Also, her left/right facing sprites are not totally mirror images of each other, now her arm cannon is always on her right arm.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

The enemies too take on a greater variety.  Most look like the planet's indigenous life, but some enemies look and act like constructs or robots gone haywire.  The same enigmatic power statutes appear in both Metroid and Metroid II, but their connection to each other, the Metroids and the Space Pirates is not detailed until later games in the series.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

The sound and music in Metroid II is often underrated.  The music starts out fairly jaunty and adventurous, not unlike the Brinstar music of the original.  When dealing with the Chozo-inspired structures, the music is rather clinical not unlike the music for the Chozo rooms in the original game.  Metroid encounter music sounds appropriately frantic.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

After that, the games sharply diverge.  Metroid has a distinct musical theme for each area.  Metroid II does not.  In many areas, you will only hear something akin to ambient noise.  The noise tends to become more ominous as you descend deeper into the planet.  Finally, toward the end of the game, you get new music, but it evokes an undercurrent of dread and foreboding.  The final areas are almost completely devoid of non-Metroid lifeforms.

Super  Game Boy Default Palette

Gameplay wise, the smaller screen gives a more claustrophobic feel to the game compared to the vast, empty spaces of Metroid.  Control has improved in many ways. Samus can now duck and shoot and shoot downwards from the air.  These additions eliminate much of the frustration of the original Metroid.  There are no longer cheap hits when you pass through doorways.  The new items are the space jump, spider ball and jump ball.  All prove very useful.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

The space jump allows you to keep jumping after you jump in a somersault.  Controlling the space jump is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. If you wait until you start to dip from the maximum height of your somersault, you will nail the next jump every time.  It is much easier to space jump against a straight wall.  You can also do something like a space jump if you touch an enemy in mid air and press jump.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

The spider ball is a bit tricky to maneuver.  If you let go of the directional you are pressing, you may have to press more than one directional to get going in the right direction again.  Although it allows you to climb on any wall, you will get knocked off if you hit an enemy, spikes or are too close to a bomb blast.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

There are two new weapons in addition to the ice and wave beam, the spazer and plasma beams.  Each beam cannot be used with another beam, but the beams are easy to find (the wave beam is not easy to find in Metroid).  Each have their strengths and weaknesses, and when you need the ice beam at the end, you can find another one in the final area without having to backtrack.

Game Boy Color Built-in Custom Palette

Enemies are very similar to Metroid, with the exception of the Metroids themselves.  The Metroids act like a string of mini-bosses.  Six forms of the Metroid are present in the game.  The Alpha Metroids have no attack and are easy to kill.  The Gamma Metroids are annoying, have a lightning bolt barrier and always seem to be found in inconvenient places.  Zeta and Omega Metroids are hard to hit, breathe fireballs and take lots of missiles to kill.  You have to remember how to kill the non-mutated Metroids from the first game.  The Queen Metroid takes up most of the screen, attacks with her jaws and fireballs and has a long neck.  Killing her takes a lot of missiles, but there is another way to do it.  Ironically, non-mutated Metroids are more dangerous than Alpha Metroids.  In a nice touch, the game will often warn you if there is a Metroid nearby with a Metroid shell husk.  You also can see Metroids molt into their final forms.

One criticism that can be leveled at the original Metroid is "where are the Space Pirates?"  The Space Pirates, other than their bosses Kraid and Ridley, are not introduced until Super Metroid.  Many of the enemies in Metroid, although they appear natural, are aggressive toward you.  Most of the enemies in Metroid II seem more indifferent to your presence, especially the robotic enemies.  There is no need to explain away the lack of Space Pirates on SR388.  Between the spartan graphics, minimalist music and naturalistic enemy designs and behavior, this game gives a rare sense, for the era, of being totally alone as you explore the caverns and ruins of SR388.

Metroid II allows you to have 5 energy tanks and 250 missiles (compared to the 5 and 255 of Metroid).  You start with 30 missiles and the ball and the long beam, so you are not totally unpowered when you start the game.  While most enemies give energy balls, some only give missiles.  If you know which enemies give missiles, you can replenish your supply more quickly.  Also, there are rechargeable energy and missile spots throughout the planet.  Missiles dropped from enemies in Metroid II give you 5 missiles instead of 2 as in the original Metroid.  This means you will waste less time replenishing your missile supply.

One criticism of Metroid II is that it sacrifices the non-linear gameplay of the original.  The game is controlled by earthquakes that affect the lava present throughout the planet.  Each time you clear a certain number of Metroids, the lava level will change.  The Metroid counter is useful to tell you how many Metroids you need to kill in each area and how far you have progressed in the game.  There are four main areas where you can acquire items, missile and energy tanks.  When you open a new area, all the previous areas remain open to you.  So you are given as much exploration as the original Metroid, just not all at once.  Moreover, even in the original Metroid many areas are sealed off unless you find the appropriate items or defeat the mini-Bosses first.  Even so, you can do everything you need to do in each area without having to backtrack to an earlier area.

The Metroid series is notable for being more popular in the US than in Japan, even though most games in the series were made by Japanese teams.  Metroid II was released two months earlier in the US than in Japan, which was almost unheard of at the time.  The game contains no substantial English text, making it unnecessary to make any changes to localize it.  The ROM is the same for every region the game was released in.  Future Metroid games would always be released first in the US with the exception of Super Metroid.  Super Metroid was released in Japan only a month earlier than the US, which was practically a simultaneous release in those days.  Both cartridges contain the same ROM, and English speakers have the unusual option of choosing to have Japanese text for the menus and subtitles for the opening.

Although Nintendo may have been working on a colorized version of Metroid II for the Game Boy Color, it was never released.  The Game Boy Color has a custom palette built into the unit for Metroid II, and it looks pretty nice.  The blue backgrounds look distinct against the red and yellow of the sprites.  At times, some sprites use green instead of red.  The Game Boy Color supports up to 10 colors for certain Game Boy games, including Metroid II.  Nintendo's choice of default palette for the Super Game Boy is not bad, but is a bit cartoony and needs a bit of tweaking to look best in my opinion.  Some of the alternate palette options given in the Super Game Boy Player's Guide are decent.  Even turning the green to black makes a big difference.  The Super Game Boy only supports 4 colors for non-Super Game Boy enhanced Game Boy games.

Super Metroid picks up where Metroid II left off, and Metroid Fusion has something of a "virtual" return to SR388.  Metroid games were AWOL after Super Metroid's release in 1994.  Eight years would pass before another Metroid game would grace either a home or portable Nintendo console.  The success of Metroid II meant that future quality games in the series would be made for the portable consoles.

Reasons to Keep a VHS Player - Films Not available on DVD/Blu-ray

Prior to the introduction of affordable home video playback devices, there exactly two ways which an average person could view a film.  He could watch it in a theater or see it on television.  Once it was out of theaters or off the air, all he would likely keep were his memories of the film.  Some people had 8 or even 16mm projectors, but film prints (or highlight reels) were not something you found in an average store.

All this began to change in the mid-to-late 70s with the introduction of Betamax and VHS, the first affordable videotape playback devices released to consumers.  VHS prevailed in the format war and by the mid 1980s they were fast becoming ubiquitous in homes.  For well over a decade, VHS was the only way most people saw films outside of the theater.  TV broadcasts could be recorded onto tape and played back again and again.  The high end Laserdisc format failed to catch on, but eventually DVD would arrive to displace VHS rather quickly as the home video market successor.

When VHS became widespread, there was huge pressure to release films and TV shows onto the new format.  In the early days rights issues were often winked at and public domain companies flew under the radar in the days before the Internet.  However, as more people found ways to make money in the home video market, rights holders became more aware of their rights and less willing to sell them for cheap or let bootleggers run riot.  A more punitive statutory copyright scheme and laws extending copyright automatically and restoring copyright to foreign works have helped in some ways to limit the material that can be released on DVDs officially.

Even though most films on VHS were released in a croppped, pan and scan format (for films intended to be shown in widescreen theatrically), sometimes they remain the only official or quasi-official way to watch a film, barring TV viewings.  Here are categories of some films or versions of films which have never seen a DVD release and give support to keep a VHS player.

Toho Godzilla and Science Fiction Films

In the VHS era, when a Godzilla or Japanese sci-fi film was released, it would always use the English dubbed version which would more or less have been shown in theaters, with Pan and Scan being applied to widescreen films.  Some films were later released on VHS or DVD having been restored to conform more to Toho's International or Preferred Version.  Often this entailed eliminating the U.S. theatrical dubbing, which was done generally by professional actors trying to sound Asian, with dubbing done by English speakers in Tokyo or Hong Kong, who were either not professionals or did not try to affect an Asian accent.

Some of these films, like Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and especially Godzilla vs. Megalon were treated like they were in the public domain, especially the latter.  Now that Toho has restored whatever copyright may have lapsed with these films, you will not see any more releases of these films except through authorized licensees or bootleggers.  Sea Monster has both a US Dub and an International Dub, but Megalon only has an International Dub.  After Godzilla vs. Hedorah, US distributors rarely redubbed Toho films, especially when most post-Return of Godzilla films were only released to the home video market.

Outside a version that preserves original dubbing, there are other little extra bits and pieces that tend to be found on VHS releases, such as company logos, title cards and end credits.  Many US theatrical release versions were edited from the Japanese version, sometimes stock music was substituted for the Japanese soundtrack.

For these films, I will be using the following format.  On line one there is the film's title on the VHS box, followed by the official title in parentheses if different.  The second line will give the distributor and approximate release year.  The third and following lines will identify the unique features of the release.

Godzilla Raids Again
Video Treasures 1989
Uses "Gigantis the Fire Monster" Title Card, matching the dubbing which calls Godzilla "Gigantis" among other things.  DVD releases use a video generated Godzilla Raids Again Title Card, but the original dubbing remains intact.

Half Human
Rhino Home Video 1990
US Version by DCA which added John Carradine and other American actors to the film.  The remaining Japanese footage is narrated over, not dubbed.  The Japanese version is unofficially banned in Japan due to ethnic stereotyping of native characters in the film to which Ainu people took offense.

The Mysterians
Star Classics 1989
RKO Dubbed version.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the Japanese version and uses a 21st century dub.

Varan the Unbelievable (Varan)
VCI Home Video 1990, 1994
US Version by Crown International which added Myron Healey and other American actors to the film and narration over the remaining Japanese footage.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the Japanese version and no English dubbing.

The Human Vapor (The Human Vapour)
Prism Entertainment 1986
US Theatrical Release Version by Brenco Pictures

The Last War
Video Gems 1985
US TV Release Version by Brenco TV

Gorath
Prism Entertainment 1986
US Theatrical Release Version by Brenco Pictures

Attack of the Mushroom People (Matango)
Something Weird Video 1996
US TV Release Version by AIP TV.  The Media Blasters DVD contains the same International Version dubbing as the AIP TV version, AIP did not produce its own dubs for films released directly to TV.

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (Ebirah, Horror of the Deep)
Video Treasures 1989, GoodTimes Home Video 1992, 1997, 1998
US TV Release Version by Walter Reade

Son of Godzilla
Video Treasures 1987, Anchor Bay 1997
US TV Release Version by Walter Reade

Yog Monster from Space (Space Amoeba)
Trans-Atlantis Video 1987
US Theatrical Version by AIP

Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (Godzilla vs. Hedorah)
Orion Pictures 1989, Simitar Entertainment 1990
US Theatrical Version by AIP

Lake of Dracula
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

Godzilla on Monster Island (Godzilla vs. Gigan)
Family Tyme Video 1989
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares

Godzilla vs. Megalon
GoodTimes Home Video 1985, 1986, Video Treasures 1986, Viking Entertainment 1988, United American Video Corp 1991, Burbank Video 1993, Alpha Video 1993, UAV Entertainment 1994 (has Cinema Shares logo, which is often omitted), GoodTimes Home Video 1996, Anchor Bay 1996, 1997, UAV Entertainment 1998 (almost certainly more)
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares.  The Media Blasters DVD and Blu-ray use the original uncensored Japanese version with Japanese title credits, the English title credits can be seen as an extra on those few DVDs which had extras included on them by mistake.

Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster (Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla)
GoodTimes Home Video 1993, UAV Entertainment 1994
US Theatrical Release by Cinema Shares

Last Days of Planet Earth (Prophecies of Nostradamus)
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International.  The Japanese version is unofficially banned in Japan because some of the portrayals of mutants were deemed offensive to Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.

Evil of Dracula
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

EPSY
Paramount/Gateway 1994
International Version by Toho International

Godzilla 1985 ( The Return of Godzilla)
New World Video 1985, StarMaker Entertainment 1992, Anchor Bay 1997
US Theatrical Release by New World Pictures, which added Raymond Burr and other American actors to the film.

Of course, you can probably find everything from these cassettes online, but that would not be legal and the picture and audio quality may be pretty poor.  Of course, depending on how many times a VHS tape was watched and the equipment used, it may be nearly unwatchable as well.  If you want a visual representation of the VHS box art for these cassettes, you can find most of them here : http://www.tohokingdom.com/articles/art_boxart.htm

Sandy Frank Gamera Films non-MST3K :

These films were released under the "Just for Kids" Celebrity's Feature Creatures label.  They are not the same as the US Theatrical or original TV versions.  Sandy Frank took the Japanese versions, removed the opening credits and closing titles and inserted generic new titles over an image of water.  For Gamera, Sandy Frank had the film redubbed.  The US Theatrical version, "Gammera the Invincible" introduced American actors including Brian Donlevy, edits the film and uses different dubbing,  but there were apparently Hong Kong International Version dubs in place for the later films.  Gamera vs. Zigra was never released to theaters or TV by AIP unlike the other Gamera films of the 1966-71 period.  The five films are :

Gamera
Gamera vs. Baragon
Gamera vs. Gaos
Gamera vs. Guiron
Gamera vs. Zigra

Sandy Frank released Gamera and Gamera vs. Guiron as double-bill on Laserdisc.  The same thing occurred with Gamera vs. Gaos and Gamera vs. Zigra.  I doubt the enhanced quality of the Laserdisc makes these films any more watchable.    See the LaserDisc Database for details.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 :

MST3K has had a colorful release history over the years.  In the VHS era, Rhino Home Video would release individual episodes.  This was not unreasonable because each episode was feature length, usually between 95-100 minutes.  One of the earliest episodes released on VHS was The Amazing Colossal Man. This was the only episode that neither Rhino nor Shout Factory has released on disc.  Of course, MST3K used to say at the end of every episode "keep circulating the tapes" during its first few seasons, which encouraged viewers to trade off the air tape recordings with their fellow fans.  It is very easy to find MST3K episodes that have been removed from circulation if you know where to look.

Doctor Who :

Omnibus Format (a.k.a. the Movie Versions)

In the 1980s, BBC Video began releasing Doctor Who stories on VHS (and to a much lesser extent on Beta and Laserdisc).  In the United States, these stories were released through CBS/Fox Home Video (earlier known as Playtime).  Most of these stories saw later episodic releases on VHS in the UK but only a few in the US or Australia received unedited re-releases.

The Seeds of Death (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Spearhead from Space

Day of the Daleks

The Time Warrior (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Death to the Daleks

The Ark in Space

Revenge of the Cybermen

Terror of the Zygons (later released in episodic format on VHS as a special edition)

The Brain of Morbius (severely edited, later released in episodic format on VHS as a special edition)

The Deadly Assassin (not released in the U.S. unedited)

The Robots of Death

The Talons of Weng-Chiang (never released unedited on tape in the U.K.)

Many First Doctor VHS releases had the next episode title or the cliffhanger ending removed from the last episode.  In The Daleks, Episode 7 ends just before the explosion that knocks the ship's crew to the floor.  In The Web Planet, the edit required computer generated titles to be used instead of the scrolling titles of the original even though that episode did not have a cliffhanger ending.

While all the Third Doctor episodes were broadcast with the usual Derbyshire-theme in the U.K., some had the theme replaced by a version composed on a Delaware synthesizer.  Some of these episodes were broadcast in Australia with this arrangement.  This theme can be heard on certain VHS releases like Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space.  On the DVDs you may be able to find it as an extra, but it will not be attached to the credits.

Also, some of the Third Doctor stories were presented in B&W on VHS because colorization techniques had not sufficiently advanced to allow for color.  Color fades in and out for Episodes 2-7 of The Ambassadors of Death and there is only a five minute segment of color in The Mind of Evil presented as an extra on the tape.

In terms of extras found on VHS which were not ported over to DVD, the only one of any prominence is the "Making of Doctor Who" documentary attached to the release of Silver Nemesis.  In the U.K., the release of Shada was originally accompanied by a fascimile of its script, but this was not ported over to the U.S.  Similarly, the VHS release of The Crusade/The Space Museum came with postcards and a TARDIS keychain in the U.K. (the U.S. did not get the keychain).  The Space Museum was released separately, but The Crusade was not.

The final category are the tapes in the Doctor Who VHS range which were never released on DVD.  "Years" tapes, which for Hartnell, Troughton, Daleks and Cybermen, were not released on DVD.  The episodes contained on them were released on DVD, but not the linking material from the actors.  Nor were either Baker Years tapes released.  The Curse of the Fatal Death was not released on DVD, but it is available online officially.

The NES Garage Cart - The Father of NES Homebrew Cartridges

In June of 2005, Memblers (Joey Parsell), the webmaster of NesDev.com, offered for sale a cartridge he called the NES Garage Cart.  The NES Garage Cart is significant because it is the first known homebrew NES cartridge ever published.  Approximately 24 were hand-made and individually numbered.  The last Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge that had been officially released was the unlicensed game Sunday Funday in 1995.  In 1998 there was a cache of 1,500 Cheetamen II cartridges found and sold, but no new cartridges thereafter was made available for sale in any kind of quantity, however modest, until Memblers came along.

The NES Garage Cart is a multi-cart containing three games.  The first two, Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry, are games from Memblers himself.  The third game is Solar Wars from Chris Covell.  Solar Wars probably has the distinction of being the first homebrew game ever released for the NES.  None of these games were officially released in standalone cartridge form.  The games individually are free to distribute and can be found here : http://www.nesworld.com/index.php in the "Homebrew" section.  They all play well in a NES PowerPak or EverDrive N8.

There are NTSC and PAL versions of the Garage Cart, more of the former exist.  He printed up some rough labels and hand numbered the carts and sold them to NesDev forum members like me who were willing to pay.  No box and no manual were included, it would be years before you could expect such amenities with homebrew cartridges.

Hot Seat Harry is a simple button mashing game that only takes up 1KB of ROM space.  You have to get the dot in the center to touch the CPU player before he gets the got to your player.

Munchie Attack is a simple eat food, avoid non-food game that only uses the D-Pad and takes up 4KB of ROM space.

Both games were made for mini-game competitions held in 2002 and 2003, respectively.  They would easily fit inside the smallest 16KB/8KB NES NROM board, but will require replacing CHR-ROM with CHR-RAM.  Munchie Attack uses horizontal mirroring, Hot Seat Harry uses vertical mirroring.

Solar Wars is a tank aiming game in the vein of Scorched Earth where you set the velocity and angle of your tank's shots.  You have to deal with terrain, gravity (each planet has different gravity) and the position of the other tank, which can be moved on a player's turn.  Solar Wars was originally developed in 1999, but was burnt to EPROMs and tested with a real NES.  Many NES  projects in the early days used inaccurate emulators like Nesticle and would fail on real hardware and later emulators which were more accurate.  Solar Wars is much larger than Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry combined.  It uses a 32KB PRG-ROM and a 32KB CHR-ROM and requires a CNROM bankswitching board set to vertical mirroring.

All these games were made long before custom development boards were available.  Homebrew games were tested and made in the early days by cannibalizing cheaper NES boards and cartridge shells.  While they still are to some extent, there are now development boards available in sufficient quantities and from a few vendors (Memblers being one of them).  While they may not rival Nintendo's MMC5 or Konami's VRC VII, they can do a lot more than just simple PRG/CHR bankswitching these days.  They even use replacement CIC lockout chips.

NES Garage Cart Rear - Look Familiar?

While Chris Covell put up instructions on his site for Solar Wars to make your own cartridge copy, he never sold it in cartridge format himself.  Memblers decided to release a series of homebrew cartridges with the label of "Garage Cart".  He has not yet released a successor to the original Garage Cart, but he is still working on it.  For the Garage Cart, he used the most common NES game in existence for his board, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt.  This game often comes with the Mask ROMs contained within bonded epoxy blobs, but some cartridges use a board with DIP-style packaged Mask ROMs.  The board with real chips is the NES-MHROM board, which supports PRG and CHR bankswitching.  Mirroring is hardwired to vertical mirroring on this PCB, which was only used for SMB/DH.

Garage Cart PCB Front

SMB/DK uses 64KB of PRG-ROM and 16KB of CHR-ROM.  The board itself can accept up to a 32KB CHR-ROM without modification.  The Garage Cart uses a 64KB One Time Programmable EPROM (no quartz UV erasure window) for the PRG-ROM.  However, what makes the cartridge unique, functionally, is that it does not use CHR-ROM, in its place it has 32KB of CHR-RAM (a.k.a. V-RAM).  Only a few cartridges use bankswitched CHR-RAM, such as Videomation.

In order to implement the RAM, a wire has to connect the RAM chip's write enable pin to the CHR-RAM enable pin on the cartridge connector.  It is a very simple modification and no other rewiring is required because the pinouts for the ROM chips Nintendo used and the S-RAM and EPROM chips Memblers used are identical save for the one exception noted above  The game could be dumped with a CopyNES using Mapper 66 parameters and does run in an emulator properly supporting the iNES 2.0 standard.  The ROM is not publicly available but it can be emulated if your emulator or your flash cart supports the proper iNES 2.0 parameters.

Garage Cart PCB Back

When I received my cart, I only had my Famicom A/V and a 72-to-60 pin converter.  It worked just fine except that the title screen in Solar Wars would show some jumpiness.  I sent it back to Memblers who opined that it could have been due to Solar Wars using color palette entry $0D, the "blacker than black" entry.  $0D is so close to a TV's blanking signal that some TVs may show visual anomalies or glitches if it is used.  I have a CRT that will show anomalies when that color finds its way into games.  Memblers patched my copy to use the regular $0F instead of $0D for black, but the problem still persisted when I received the cartridge back.  I solved the problem by using a Game Genie and then later a front-loading NES (it does occur seldomly on the latter).  According to Memblers, no one else complained of the issue, so I would have been the only person to receive a hardware revision of the NTSC version.

When you turn the power on your NES with the cartridge inserted, you are treated to a menu selection screen and given a choice for each game.  Specially-composed music plays in the background and there is animation and a pattern being drawn on the screen until you select the game.  The menu has three pieces of music, the game starts with the piece that will play if you reset the console after selecting Solar Wars.  The other two games will allow you to hear another piece of music if you reset after playing each one.

I bought Garage Cart #5 for approximately $42.00 plus shipping in 2004.  However, other than the menu, there was nothing unique about the software.  The games were all freely available and playable.  I noticed that the Garage Cart had steadily climbed in value over the years.  When the value had increased from $100-200 to $700-800, I knew the day would come when I would have to part with mine.

I decided on using NintendoAge instead of eBay to auction off my cartridge.  I did not want to pay eBay's final value fee on top of the PayPal transaction fee.  Moreover, I believed that any collector who would be interested in the Garage Cart would be on the NintendoAge forum.   I let the auction go for seven days.  I would not use any of that cheap nonsense about extending the auction by 2 minutes past the end time each time another bid came in.  QuiBids this is not!  The final bid came in at $1,870.00 on at 9:22PM on January 29, 2016, eight minutes before the auction end.  The winner paid the next day and made no complaint about the shipping or insurance cost.  I made sure to offer the buyer the opportunity to purchase insurance, the risk of loss would squarely be on the buyer if he did not.  I even offered to deliver the cartridge to the buyer personally, since we both lived in the same state, but he demurred.

As part of my auction I made high resolution, 600dpi scans of the cartridge label, as shown above.  I also made a video showing the cartridge's condition and it working in my front loader NES.  When you have to point a camera at a CRT TV screen, I suggest decreasing the brightness and contrast quite a bit.  I also found that I obtained a better picture by eliminating all ambient light sources in the room, hence I shot it at night.  I shot it using the camera's "60fps" capabilities, but the resulting frame rate of the video is 59.49227fps while the NES's frame rate is 60.098815fps.  So there will be some retrace bar shown as a black line going up the screen, which can be seen when I am playing Solar Wars.  However, it won't be nearly as bad as those thick, slow moving bars you get at the standard "30fps".  Here is a video showing the Garage Cart's menu :



Having parted with this unique piece of history, I am glad that a collector will be able to enjoy it.  Even though the game would be easy enough to recreate, there will never be a replacement for those 24 cartridges sold during the summer of 2005.  Today NES Homebrew is quite the business with many new cartridge games being released each year, but here is where it started and I had the privilege of being there for its birth.

Copyright Conumdrums - How Long will the original Godzilla be Protected by Copyright?

The film Godzilla (Gojira) was first released to theaters in Japan on November 3, 1954.  An authorized Americanized version with dubbed dialogue, reediting and the addition of Western actors, entitled Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, premiered in United States theaters on April 26, 1956.  In this article, I will illustrate how to determine the copyright protection term for a foreign film and some of the difficulties that can arise with determining the length of the copyright term.

Copyright Protection for Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

You may recall from my Manos article that works published or registered after 1964 have an effective copyright date of 95 years from the date of publication or registration.  This is primarily due to the automatic renewal provision of the copyright law. Works published from 1923-1963 require manual renewal registration to enjoy the same period of protection.  In other words, the author or copyright holder must renew the copyright with the Copyright Office within 28 years of their first registration in order to receive the benefit of the renewal term of 67 years.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters registered its copyright protection on April 27, 1956 according to the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Volume 10, 1956 at page 13.  It was copyrighted by Jewell Enterprises, Inc. and is given the number LP6465 (LP = Published motion picture photoplays). The current Public Catalog from the Copyright Office gives a renewal notice for Godzilla, King of the Monsters, RE0000254883, dated December 31, 1984. While this is not within 28 calendar years of the original registration,  the original protection term extends to the end of the 28th year from the initial year in which the protection first accrued.  The renewal for Godzilla, King of the Monsters had to have occurred some time in 1984, which it did.  Therefore, the copyright in Godzilla, King of the Monsters will expire in 2051 absent any further change to the copyright term by Congress. 

When you search for copyright registrations, post 1978 works are freely searchable through the Copyright Office's online search function.  However, for works before 1978, you will have to search through the volumes of the Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Each year usually has 12-14 volumes covering all kinds of works.  Each volume can be accessed through the Internet Archive or downloaded as a PDF.  The listings for motion picture works may be split into two volumes, one covering the first half of the year and the second covering the second half of the year. 

Copyright Protection for Godzilla in the United States

The copyright status of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is the easy part.  The protection afforded to the original Godzilla is not so easy to trace.  First, Godzilla cannot owe its protection to Godzilla, King of the Monsters because the Japanese film is not a derivative work of the American film.  The reverse is true.  Second, the subtitled versions of Godzilla released in 2004 (Rialto) and 2012 (Criterion) are derivative works of the Japanese-language original film and have their own lengthy terms (95 years) of copyright protection attached to them (for the translations only). 

Interestingly, Godzilla is described as renewed in Registration Number RE0000145774 as of December 14, 1982.  The original registration number given is PA0000157725 with a date of November 3, 1954, which is the film's original release date in Japan.  However, if you look at PA0000157725, it also has a date of December 14, 1982 and notes that an English subtitled version was deposited in lieu of the original by special permission.  As I mentioned above, a subtitled version of Godzilla was hitting the art house circuit during this time.  You will see a similar entry for Seven Samurai, originally released in 1954 and renewed in 1982. Godzilla Raids Again has a similar history, with renewal in 1983 (RE0000179539, RE0000188890) relating back to an original publication date of 1955 (PA0000172648).  The Gigantis the Fire Monster version also has a true 1960 registration, LP16500, and a 1987 renewal, RE0000350420.

The PA prefix stands for performing arts and is a collection of many different types of works which previously had their own prefix like LP and DU.  The PA prefix did not exist in 1954 or any year near it. Godzilla was not registered in the Copyright office, nor were other Japanese films from Toho studios during this time.  Typically Japanese films were registered when they were in the hands of a U.S. distributor and were either dubbed or subtitled.

So, how did Toho and other foreign film companies protect its films from being pirated abroad from the 1950s onward?  They relied upon international treaties similar to the Berne Convention.  The U.S. did not become a signatory to Berne until 1988, prior to that other treaties encompassed copyright protection between the two companies.  The US and Japan have had copyright relations since 1909 and there is an unbroken copyright protection continuity (with exceptions not material here) between the two countries despite World War II.  Essentially, a work that followed certain basic copyright formalities in its own country received reciprocal protection from the United States.  The most important requirement was a copyright notice on the work when it was first published.  Registration could occur during any time during the initial period of protection.  The film was renewed in 1982 and that seems to have secured its long-term protection in the U.S.  As a work for hire, it will enter the public domain in 2049.

Copyright Protection for Godzilla in Japan

How long is the copyright term for Godzilla in Japan?  The answer is not quite as simple as you might expect.  Japan currently has three periods of protection.  First is life of the author(s) plus 70 years, second is 70 years of publication of works from a corporation or legal person and third is 70 years from date of publication of cinematographic works created or published on or after 1970.  

You may say that Godzilla was published by Toho Co. Ltd., a corporation, so Godzilla will be in the public domain in its native Japan as of 2025.  But not so fast there, thanks to the Kurosawa Rule the term is 38 years from the "author's" death.  The Kurosawa Rule comes from a 2007 Tokyo District Court case, upheld by the Intellectual Property High Court.  The lawsuit was initiated by Toho and Kadokawa Pictures Inc. (successor to Daiei Film Co. Ltd.) against a public-domain DVD seller who was selling the films of Akira Kurosawa released between 1943-1951.  The case is described here and here.

The court declined to apply the current copyright scheme retroactively, which would have put the Kurosawa films at issue (and a few more by the time the case was decided) in the public domain.  Instead, it held that, as to movies published before 1971 when the current copyright scheme was more-or-less put into place, the copyright term which applied was the law at that time, life of the author plus 38 years.  In this case, the Court determined that Akira Kurosawa was the primary creator of these films and therefore the author of these films for purposes of the copyright law.  That he made these films as work for hire, passing his copyright to the film companies who engaged him, was not relevant. Akira Kurosawa died in 1998, so his pre-1971 films would not enter the public domain in Japan until 2036.  Fortunately the Court did not hold that the author was Toho or Daiei, otherwise the works may never enter the public domain because a corporate author can live a very long time.  I would note that an earlier Tokyo District Court ruling held that Paramount's pre 1953-films to be in the public domain in Japan, but the authorship issue did not appear to be raised in that case.

So, for Godzilla and every other Godzilla film until Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), who is the author? Godzilla films were usually more collaborative works than Kurosawa's films.  The collaborative team for the Godzilla series included several people, principally Director and Ishiro Honda, Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka (who came up with the original idea for Godzilla), Special Effects Director Eiji Tsuburaya and Music Composer Akira Ifukube. Most of these men would comprise the team for the later entries in the Godzilla franchise until 1975.  If the Kurosawa Rule is strictly confined to the director, then it would be Honda's death in 1993 that would start the clock on the 38 years for Godzilla and five of its first eight sequels.  If on the other hand, Japanese law on co-authorship is more like that of the United Kingdom's when it comes to film (last to die of Principal Director, Screenwriter, Dialogue Writer or Film Composer), then it would be measured from Ifukube's death in 2006.  Assuming that the statement “the copyright over films is protected for 38 years from the year after the death of the director” as translated on the akirakurosawa.info site applies to all pre-1970 films, then 2031 will see a lot of Godzilla enter the public domain in its native country.  

If we assume that the "Kurosawa Rule" is limited to the director, then this can lead to some very staggered public domain release dates.  By that rule, Godzilla Raids Again would have entered Japanese public domain in 2011, 38 years after its Director, Motoyoshi Oda's, death.  Moreover, the films Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and Son of Godzilla would enter the public domain in 2038 because Director Jun Fukuda died in 2000.  By the operation of this rule, those two films will enter into the public domain after the next two films in the series, Destroy All Monsters and All Monsters Attack, due to their direction by Ishiro Honda.

No More Public Domain Copies of Godzilla Films

In the U.S., there used to be many, many copies of films believed to be in the public domain released by bargain basement companies on VHS and, to a lesser extent, on DVD.  Godzilla vs. Megalon is one of those films, four US VHS covers from four different companies of the film can be found here.  The public domain outfits would find films without a copyright notice on them and run with them to the end of a tape spool.  When Cinema Shares released Godzilla vs. Megalon to theaters back in 1976, they apparently omitted this requirement.  This meant that the English Dubbed version is in the Public Domain in the United States.

However, the situation does not end there because the English Dubbed version is a derivative work of the Japanese language original.  The Japanese language original from 1973 had a copyright notice on its film prints, so it is protected by both the US and Japanese law.  Copyright protection in a protected original work extends to a derivative work.  The "translation" of Godzilla vs. Megalon from Japanese to English is certainly a derivative work.  Moreover, even if a derivative work falls into the public domain, it does not affect the validity of the copyright of the original work. Batjac Prods. v. Goodtimes Home Video Corp., 160 F.3d 1223 (9th Cir. 1998) held that the portions of an unpublished and uncopyrighted work prior to 1978 fell into the public domain if incorporated into an authorized derivative work if that derivative work fell into the public domain, but that case does not apply when the original Japanese release was protected by a valid copyright.  By contrast, parodies and other fair uses are not subject to the original copyright holder's control.  Toho did not really attempt to enforce its rights until the DVD era for reasons unknown but likely because it would have simply have been too expensive to sue for too little gain. 

Sometime in the DVD era, Toho decided to drop the hammer on the public domain companies.  In one famous instance,  Rhino Entertainment originally released the MST3K Godzilla vs. Megalon episode in the Volume 10 boxset, but quickly recalled it and replaced the film with The Giant Gila Monster.  You will not likely be seeing MST3K versions of Godzilla vs. Megalon or Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster released in the future by Shout Factory (which has rights to MST3K).  Of course video recordings of these episodes are not hard to find.  Interestingly, the Showa Gamera films (1966-1971) are still being hawked by Alpha Video, a public domain company, but it no longer advertises Godzilla vs. Megalon for sale.

Other Godzilla films also saw some dubious VHS tapes but nowhere near to the extent of Godzilla vs. Megalon. It seems like "public domain" VHS publishing companies like GoodTimes and Video Treasures licensed Godzilla films when they thought it was necessary. GoodTimes appeared to have licensed Godzilla, King of the Monsters! and King Kong vs. Godzilla and Video Treasures did the same for Godzilla Raids Again. Films like Godzilla vs. The Thing, Monster Zero, Destroy All Monsters, Godzilla's Revenge and Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster had their copyright notices on their title cards, so their copyright claim was hard to miss. I am only aware of one attempt to bootleg some of these films and those bootlegs (from Simitar, which later licensed them properly) did not last long on the market.

Other films like Godzilla vs. The Cosmic Monster and probably Godzilla on Monster Island (both released by Cinema Shares) only had their copyright notices at the end of the film, so a shady distributor could cut those frames out of their transfer or film print and claim plausible deniability of the copyright notice. The films released by Continental/Walter-Reade, Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla may not originally have had copyright notices on their first releases (and if they did they were easy to ignore) but they were added when Alan Enterprises took over distribution of these films in the 1970s. Those notices deterred some, but not all bootleggers. 

The Copyright Notice on Japanese Films

In the United States, a copyright notice had to be applied to a work when first published, otherwise it forever lost copyright protection.  Forgetfulness often lead to the defeat of the important proprietary rights secured by Copyright.  However, not all countries required a copyright notice or other formal requirements like registration or deposit of the work.  These countries followed the Berne Convention, which essentially allowed copyright to attach to a work automatically when it was published.  In order to establish some universally applicable scheme of copyright reciprocity between countries, the United States and other nations entered into the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, the UCC Geneva.  

The UCC Geneva allows a work published in a country who is a party to the Convention the copyright protection afforded to domestic works in other countries.  All that is required to meet the formalities requirement of the Convention is to affix a copyright notice to the work when first published.  There is no need to deposit the work in a central depository or engage in other formalities.  The Convention was in force in the United States as of September 16, 1955 and in Japan as of April 28, 1956. 

In the U.S., on releases of the Japanese-language versions of films Seven Samurai (Criterion Blu-ray), Godzilla (Classic Media DVD) and Godzilla Raids Again (Classic Media DVD), there is no contemporary copyright notice on them.  However, the Japanese-language versions of films like Rodan, The Mysterians, King Kong vs. Godzilla and later films all have a copyright notice and © at the end of the film.  The notice gives the title of the film, identifies Toho Co. Ltd. as the copyright holder and gives the year in which the movie was published.  The first set of films were first published in 1954 and 1955 while the films from Rodan forward were published in 1956 and later.  Even though Japanese domestic law did not require a copyright notice, by placing the notice on their films Toho assured that they would be protected in other companies.  Given the increasing market for Japanese fantasy and prestige films, this was a no-brainer and cost-free decision to protect the value of these films.  

Prior to UCC Geneva, copyright respect between the U.S. and Japan was established by the Convention of 1905, followed by the Treaty of Peace of 1951 and the Exchange of Notes of 1953.  A reading of the respective clauses relating to U.S. protection for Japanese works requires that a copyright notice and deposit would be required : 

1905, Article I - "The subjects or citizens of each of the two High Contracting Parties shall enjoy in the dominions of the other, the protection of copyright for their works of literature and art as well as photographs, against illegal reproduction, on the same basis on which protection is granted to the subject or citizens of the other..."  34 Stat. 2890

1951, Article 14(2)(V) - "The Allied Powers agree to deal with Japanese trademarks and literary and artistic property rights on a basis as favorable to Japan as circumstances ruling in each country will permit."  3 UST 3169

1953, - "That since April 28, 1952, the conditions specified in sections 9 (b) and 1 (e) of title 17 of the United States Code have existed and have been fulfilled with respect to the nationals of Japan,  and that nationals of Japan have since that date been entitled and will continue to be entitled for a period of 4 years from the first coming into force of the Treaty of Peace [April 28, 1952], to all the benefits of the said title 17 except those conferred by the provisions embodied in the second paragraph of section 9 (b) thereof regarding the extension of time for fulfilling copyright conditions and formalities.

Provided, that the enjoyment by any work of the rights and benefits conferred by the said title 17 shall be conditioned upon compliance with the requirements and formalities prescribed with respect to such works by the copyright laws of the United States;"  5 UST 118, TIAS 2906.

Before you come to the obvious conclusion, namely that Seven Samurai and the first two Godzilla films never enjoyed copyright protection because they did not comply with U.S. formalities, one must deal with the issue of publication.  Section 9 of the 1909 Copyright Act indicates :

"That any person entitled thereto by this Act may secure copyright for his work by publication thereof with the notice of copyright required by this Act; and such notice shall be affixed to each copy thereof published or offered for sale in the United States by authority of the copyright proprietor, except in the case of books seeking ad interim protection under section twenty-one of this Act. "

Judicial decisions construing the statutory text of Section 9 indicated that this language was ambiguous as to whether publication in a foreign country without a notice placed a work in the public domain in the United States.  For an excellent discussion of the authorities on this subject, see Chapter 9, "Copyright Protection for Works of Foreign Origin" in "The Internationalization of Law and Legal Education" (2008).  The decision in Heim v. Universal Pictures Co., 154 F. 2d 480 (2nd Cir. 1946) held that notice was not required when the publication first occurred in a foreign country, and after that decision, the Copyright Office began accepting submissions where that was the case.  But Heim was only binding on the cases arising out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York, Connecticut and Vermont).  Nonetheless its persuasive authority seems to have permitted protection for films without a copyright notice when published in their country of origin. Heim did not protect the U.S. distributor if it screwed up and did not put a copyright notice on its version of the film. In addition, until the authorized publication of the work in the United States, these films may have enjoyed the common law protection afforded to unpublished works. 

After UCC Geneva, copyright notice on first publication anywhere in the world was effectively required until the U.S. adopted Berne.  Therefore, while Toho may have been safe in relying on the ambiguities of the pre-UCC Geneva law for its earlier titles, in 1956 it adopted to the new requirement by placing a Copyright Notice on all its films.  

The Restored Copyright

The third film in the Godzilla series, King Kong vs. Godzilla, was released on August 11, 1962 in Japan and in a re-edited form, with Western actors and Western music, on June 26, 1963 in the United States.  This film is unique in the Godzilla series because the U.S. rights to the film never reverted back to Toho.  RKO held the rights to the King Kong character at the time and Universal released the film to theaters and later to DVD and Blu-ray.  Toho continued to release the Japanese language film in Japan and other Asian markets in theatrical re-releases and on home video.

Universal registered its copyright in King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1963 and renewed it in 1991, so its version is fully protected. Unlike Godzilla and its sequel and other films like Seven Samurai, Toho was not able to distribute its original Japanese-language version in the U.S.  Although the Japanese version did have a proper copyright notice, Toho let 1990 go by without renewing the copyright to its King Kong vs. Godzilla.  Technically, its version entered the public domain in the U.S. in 1991. (It may have had state common-law protection as an unpublished work as it was made prior to 1978 when the 1976 Copyright Act eliminated common-law protection for unpublished works.)

It would not stay in the public domain, however.  In 1994, the United States enacted the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which came into force in 1996.  One of the provisions of this act allowed films which had fallen into the public domain because the formalities had not been followed (like copyright notice or renewal) if the film was not in the public domain in the country of origin.  This automatically restored Toho's copyright in King Kong vs. Godzilla, in addition to hundreds of other foreign films, as of January 1, 1996.  Toho registered the restored the copyright in its version of King Kong vs. Godzilla in 2002, PA0001151212.  This would protect its version of the film from bootleggers and pirates for the next 55 years. The URAA also made the discussion regarding Seven Samurai and the first two Godzilla films in the previous section academic except as to enforcement.

The URAA, including its arguably retroactive application in restoring works of foreign authors previously deemed to be within the U.S. public domain, was upheld in the Supreme Court's decision in Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. __ (2012).  The court noted important restrictions on the URAA's restoration powers.  First, any work whose U.S. copyright term, as renewed, which had fully expired would not be restored. Works from 1922 and earlier that would still have some copyright protection in their country of origin were still in the U.S. public domain.  Second, no recovery for infringement could be had for conduct occurring before the effective date of the URAA or for the first year following its enactment.  Third, the copyright holder had to file a notice of intent to enforce with the Copyright Office before they could bring enforcement lawsuits against parties who had previously relied upon the public domain status of the work.  However, the Court recognized that it was within Congress' authority to define the scope of the public domain and that there was precedent dating back to the first Copyright Act of 1790 that established protection for works previously freely usable by the public.  It noted that Congress' efforts in the URAA were to bring the United States; copyright requirements into line with the international community, which generally eschewed formalities when establishing copyright protection as outlined in the Berne Convention.

The concept of the restored copyright seems to be one that has escaped even some lawsuits to which it may apply.  A case in point was the recent October 2015 lawsuit against Netflix for streaming a subtitled version of Vittorio De Sica's 1948 classic film Bicycle Thieves (a.k.a. The Bicycle Thief).  The copyright holder for the film, Corinth Films, acknowledged that the original Italian version of the film was in the public domain in its complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York 

Corinth had previously been involved in litigation on the issue of the copyright status of Bicycle Thieves and in that 1985 case, Int’l Film Exch., Ltd. v. Corinth Films, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 631 (S.D.N.Y. 1985) also out of the same court, the Court held that the film was in the public domain because the owners had failed to renew the copyright to the film.  It also recognized that renewal certificates from the Copyright Office, one of which existed from 1976, were not the end of the issue.  The renewal certificate for The Bicycle Thief was invalid because it was not issued on behalf of the author or an assignee but a licensee.  Thus there was no valid copyright renewal.  The Court did note, however, that dubbed or subtitled versions of the film may still be able to claim copyright protection as derivative works.

As Corinth was involved in the earlier case, Netflix could argue that collateral estoppel prohibited Corinth from re-litigating the film's public domain status in a later case.  But this is 2015, not 1985, so Corinth should have argued (based on the facts known to me) that the original Italian language version is no longer within the public domain thanks to URAA.  Italy, the film's country of origin, gives a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years and De Sica died in 1974.  His film is protected by Italian copyright law until 2044, making it eligible for URAA restoration.  Control over the original work would give it total control over the film even if Netflix or its licensor decided to pay someone a few thousand to translate the film and provide new subtitles.  However Corinth did not and the parties settled the case this month.  Corinth a missed an opportunity to assert its restored rights under URAA.