Topic: Something that grinds my gears
You know what really grinds my gears? Ofer Alon. Now hold on, I'm not here to trash talk him, but I wanted to bring this topic to discussion. Recently I was reading about how there is a video game archive somewhere in California, and how they're trying to get copyright laws changed for MOBA games so they can archive these games with their own servers, since the original servers have been shut down.
This has got me thinking. Ofer Alon has refused to release the PC Demo (or anything in his possession, for that matter) to ANYONE. It seriously pisses me off he won't even give it to these people trying to archive video games. Sega sure as hell will never give it up, assuming they still have it, which I doubt. Ofer Alon is the only person that we can reasonably assume still has it, why would he not at least give it to these guys archiving games? Im sure they're reasonable and wouldn't release it, but the fact is, if he is that last person to have the PC Demo or any builds we may not even know about, that will all be lost if he never releases it.
Now you could say it's legal reasons, but literally every person that the community has gotten assets from, including Chris Senn and Ross Harris, haven't been contacted by Sega. To my knowledge at least. It seems in my time following Sonic X-treme, every few years a big piece of info gets dropped, but the more time that passes, the more likely we won't be seeing the PC demo or any thing Ofer is keeping tucked away.
What makes me honestly curious is whether or not Ofer keeps up to date with any of this. AXSX, what Ross Harris released, or even what Chris Senn has shown. Is Ofer lurking in the shadows watching? Is he waiting for something? I have a glimmer of hope in the idea that when AXSX is released, it will spark enough interest to get Ofers attention. The way I see it, I don't think he has forgotten about X-treme, it was a huge part of his life and I doubt he never looks around the internet about it. I just hope for the sake of the game not being lost to time, that when AXSX releases he will contact Andy, or at least come out of the shadows and give us insight onto what the deal is.