Help Wanted

Are you personally redrawing all the sprites or using ones ripped from the games? I believe that you can get in trouble for using their sprites so be sure to draw your own.

Do you have permission from the owners of Zelda and such?

I once contacted nintendo regarding there sprites from old games
and some name of places and characters.
I asked this:

".....We redrawed some of the tiles that are in the original game (we didnt ripped them). So that the game has some similarity to the original.
We didnt use any licenced names from Nintendo. But we have also a few names that we are no sure if they are licenced.
I would like that you look at the following names and say me if we........"


I got the following reply:

"Hello and thank you for contacting Nintendo,

We appreciate the interest in Nintendo and in all our video game products. To us, it represents a great sign of success and recognition of the Nintendo brand.

"Nintendo" is a registered trademark of Nintendo of America Inc. Nintendo owns extensive intellectual property rights in all of its products, including video game systems, game titles, characters, game software, graphics, artwork, and screen shots. Nintendo also retains rights in content on Nintendo's websites, including articles, artwork, screen shots and other files. Trademarks and copyrights for third-party games and characters are owned by the companies that market or license those products.

While we are grateful for all the requests for permission to use Nintendo properties, we are not able to grant such requests. We receive thousands of requests and we do not have adequate staffing to review them all. Therefore, our general policy is to decline requests for permission for the use of Nintendo properties.

Although we are not able to grant permission, use of Nintendo's properties without formal permission by Nintendo may still be allowed under the relevant laws of the particular jurisdiction involved. Thus, we encourage you to seek your own legal counsel if you have any questions about whether your particular proposed use is permitted without Nintendo's authorization. Nintendo cannot provide legal advice."


They didnt really answered my question but they are not very "hard lined"
regarding there property rights. Also you should take a look at the Super Maryo
game and look how the did the sprites.Its looks like Super Mario but when you
take a closer look it get clear thats it is not the standard mario :).

It is a freeware game. Does that make a difference?

Beginner FAQ

Quote:

Original post by headfonez It is a freeware game. Does that make a difference?

Not really, no. Whether a work is commercial is one factor taken into account when determining whether the work is fair-use, but yours is so far from being fair-use that the difference is academic.

Yes, what Sneftel is writing is correct.. legally.

But in own experience totally free fangames are not being sued as when there is no money involved in the first place it cost more money to envoke such a trial than to actually let it pass as they are not really "losing money" as long as you do not totally copy a game that still has commercial value.

At least I haven't stumbled on any case so far.

Quote:

Original post by AJirenius Yes, what Sneftel is writing is correct.. legally. But in own experience totally free fangames are not being sued as when there is no money involved in the first place it cost more money to envoke such a trial than to actually let it pass as they are not really "losing money" as long as you do not totally copy a game that still has commercial value. At least I haven't stumbled on any case so far.

Agreed but the Nintendo Revolution will be backwards compatible and I believe Nintendo will allow users to download old NES titles to play on their new mean machine. In that sense, fan games *could* hurt them if they plan on using some of the same game mechanics/graphics since they are re-releasing old titles.

Quote:

Original post by AJirenius Yes, what Sneftel is writing is correct.. legally. But in own experience totally free fangames are not being sued as when there is no money involved in the first place it cost more money to envoke such a trial than to actually let it pass as they are not really "losing money" as long as you do not totally copy a game that still has commercial value. At least I haven't stumbled on any case so far.

There have been many. In particular, Nintendo and Lucasarts are very, VERY protective of their properties. Searching for "Nintendo cease-and-desist" should provide plenty of examples.

Quote:

There have been many. In particular, Nintendo and Lucasarts are very, VERY protective of their properties. Searching for "Nintendo cease-and-desist" should provide plenty of examples.

LucasArts may be, but I remember reading that George Lucas himself encourages people to create fan fiction, games, and films using the Star Wars names and locations. An example is Star Wars Revelations.