Yep certainly many hours of reading ahead!
The preservation into PDF I could gradually get done over time.
There is an interesting recurring story that goes across the Aussie mag for a couple of years between 95'-97'. It involves the declining state of operations for operators. They talk about 'survival' games, must have games of which are three or four; Daytona, Sega Rally and Time Crises. Lesuire and Allied was one of the main distributors at the time and also one of the main operators, Intencity being one of their main forts. This is where it gets interesting. L&A made a deal with Sega to have sole distributorship of importation of their product, excluding any other operator in Aus. Nobody else could bring in a new must have Sega machine. This is fine if they were just distributors selling on, but they were also one of the biggest operators, thus creating a monopoly.
A couple of other big operators/distributors started a fundraising campaign and many people stumped up the money to take Sega and L&A to court. This dragged on for many months and eventually L&A won on the controversial judgement that the product was a 'cinematographic production' (a movie) and thus copywrite laws came into effect on basis of this. L&A was declared sole distributor and could sell the product at 'any price' they liked! Doom and gloom for everybody else in Aus and many got out of the game after the writing was clearly on the wall. Those Sega games were vital for their survival.
