Seems like the sort of thing that Nintendo will want to shut down. There are legal loopholes that can be taken to avoid copyright infringement in such cases (such as releasing a game engine without any reasources/assets a la the Super Mario 64 decompilation project), but it doesn’t look like this SM64-on-GBA project is doing anything like that. (Which is unfortunate. Other projects like the Link’s Awakening PC port that got shut down not too terribly long ago also didn’t take precautions.
Don’t get me wrong. I hope this project sees the light of day. I just don’t think Nintendo will let it. And I wish the creators of these sorts of projects would take the necessary precautions to avoid being shut down on copyright grounds.
At this point no one can act surprised when they receive a cease and desist. I wish creators like this would spend their time making their own games instead of piggybacking on established IP, but they continue to do it because it garners headlines like this. In other words, they’re trading on Nintendo IP for promotional reasons. If they swapped the player character and the level design, far fewer people would hear about it.
I don’t think it’s trying to cash in on sm64’s popularity, it seems more like it’s their favourite game and they want to do something cool with it. It’s a port/demake, it’s not like they’re trying to make a new game.
Seems like the sort of thing that Nintendo will want to shut down. There are legal loopholes that can be taken to avoid copyright infringement in such cases (such as releasing a game engine without any reasources/assets a la the Super Mario 64 decompilation project), but it doesn’t look like this SM64-on-GBA project is doing anything like that. (Which is unfortunate. Other projects like the Link’s Awakening PC port that got shut down not too terribly long ago also didn’t take precautions.
Don’t get me wrong. I hope this project sees the light of day. I just don’t think Nintendo will let it. And I wish the creators of these sorts of projects would take the necessary precautions to avoid being shut down on copyright grounds.
At this point no one can act surprised when they receive a cease and desist. I wish creators like this would spend their time making their own games instead of piggybacking on established IP, but they continue to do it because it garners headlines like this. In other words, they’re trading on Nintendo IP for promotional reasons. If they swapped the player character and the level design, far fewer people would hear about it.
I don’t think it’s trying to cash in on sm64’s popularity, it seems more like it’s their favourite game and they want to do something cool with it. It’s a port/demake, it’s not like they’re trying to make a new game.