That's what I figured. I figured that even if someone did try to write an FF
or Zelda style game it would quite literally take months if not years to do.
And the copyright thing is all too true as I hinted at. If you were to write
the Castlevania style game you were thinking of you'd also have to change
the name of the main character since SImon Belmont is a trademark of Conami
if I'm not mistaken. But I suppose coming up with some new names is a
comparatively easy task.
You have acquired the skill of Weaponry Theremin.
Your current level of mastery is 10 Apprentice.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] making old video games audio games
Hi Bryan,
Actually, I've been thinking of writing a Castlevania type game myself. I
wouldn't call it Castlevania, for obvious reasons, but it has many of the
same great features of the original side-scroller. The nice thing about
Castlevania 1 was that it used public domain characters and enemies such
as Dracula, mummies, skeletons, Frankenstein's Monster, Medusa, etc. So it
is one of the classics a developer can legally bring back under a new name
and with a few miner changes here and there.
Anyway, as far as creating accessible classics a developer has to tread
carefully. I found that out the very hard way. Montezuma's \Revenge is a
25 year old game, hasn't been sold commercially since the mid 1980's, and
do you think the copyright holders cared?
I was literally a couple of weeks away from final release and got a cease
and desist letter from a lawyer working for the current Montezuma's
Revenge copyright holders. Apparently the fact the game hasn't been
commercially sold for years didn't matter. The fact that my version would
be sold to a very few blind gamers didn't matter too much either. All that
they cared about is that I had illegally written a game with the same name
as their trade mark, that all rights belonged to them, and so on. Rather
than battle it out in court I complied with the request and ditched the
product before it got ugly. I'd hate to see another accessible game
developer face a similar situation.
Anyway, like you said Final Fantacy and legend of Zelda are really out of
the practical range of any accessible game developer. Yes, I and some
others could do it, but it would be hard work for little pay. Plus it
would take ages to write something like that.
Smile.
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