First of all, a little bit about the project, I have always loved the lolo/eggerland series on the NES and its unique style of puzzles. I haven't played any puzzle game quite like it ever. About 2 years ago, I met another person that liked it as well, and we started working on a PC clone of it. This really should have been a 3-5 month project but since I've been doing it as a hobby, and only working when away from school, and because of a few bad design decisions in coding it, I've only got about 50% of the coding work done after 1.5 years. I have the next couple of months free so I expect to get some major work done, I hope for it to be finished soon. The project has been worked on by me and 1 other guy (sivak). I pretty much did all of the programming while he did the graphics and music. Basically, I want this to be a completely freeware game, I do not plan on making any money off of it. I am working on this purely because I absolutely love the lolo series and I realize that it would look good on my resume. Here are a couple of youtube videos showing what we have.

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"> Here's a quick page a threw together with screenshots http://bbitmaster.com/loloscreens.html Now, my main concern is the legal issue of ripping off the lolo series. Basically here is what is copied: * Many of the graphics (mostly sprite work) are taken from a Japanese only PC eggerland game that was released in 1994 by HAL. This particular game was never released outside of Japan, however. I am unsure if there are international copyright laws protecting them. * I have personally tried to duplicate the lolo game behavior as closely as possible, and it hasn't been easy. Some of the enemies have very specific behavior in the NES game, and I ended up disassembling the ROM image and obtaining their movement logic directly from the 6502 ASM code. (I am a rom hacker from way back, and happen to have the skill to do this). To make things clear, I did not directly copy any code. I only copied the logic that the code produced. * The lolo series itself is copied in name. The project will be called "The New Adventures of Lolo" Now, this all sounds pretty bad, right? Well, let's look at the good side of all of this. * All of the music is completely original. Sivak is a skilled musician, and I personally love his work. There is one tune he made that is a remix of an eggerland tune. As far as I know, it is the only tune that has any resemblance to anything in eggerland/lolo, and he did it by ear, so I think it could be considered his original work. * The few (non-legal) friends I have talked to have assured me that since HAL of America (the company that released lolo here) is now dead, nobody will likely care to come after us. I realize that somebody owns the rights to lolo, but I am not sure who, nor am I sure how to find out. I would *guess* it would be Nintendo. But, that may not be the case since lolo was released on a few non-nintendo computer systems. (If anyone knows how to find out, please let me know). I was buying this argument for a while, because I look at other projects like zelda classic that went completely under the radar. I am posting here looking for the opinions of other game development professionals on what I should do now. If I think I can finish and release this as-is, under the radar, with little risk of getting a cease and desist letter, then I want to do so. But I have no money or time to get into any legal battle, and it would kill me to see all the work we've put into this stopped with a letter. I am just a programmer doing this as a hobby. One idea I had, and this is what I am leaning towards, is to rename the game and all of the enemies and try to find an artist to redraw all of the graphics to something original. There are two other projects that seem to have done this, both with the same name: "The Adventures of Bobo" http://www.gamedev.net/community/gds/viewentry.asp?projectid=368134 http://www.nebslilypad.com/bobo.htm I really absolutely love the current graphics though, so maybe later I could release an *unofficial* separate stand-alone mod to convert the game graphics back to what they are now, as I really love the current graphics and I am quite certain there are other lolo fans out there who want it as is. The game is designed to be easily modable so anyone can create their own levels and graphics if they wish, this mod would be nothing more than that. I am really unsure what to do from where I currently am with the project. Please help me out and give me some advice on what I should do. -bbitmaster

Thanks for the replies; I really don't have the funds to hire a lawyer for something like this. As it is just a freeware fan made game, the money would come out of my pocket. I don't think a lawyer is going to tell me anything new either.

Anyway, I spent the better part of last night doing research on this subject, trying to find out, what exactly the risk is of nintendo sending a cease and desist letter. What I found suprised me. I found dozens of freeware fan made games, all of which are direct copyright infringing of other nintendo releases. What I could not find was even one confirmed instance of Nintendo shutting down even one of them.

While there are dozens of others, one project that interested me in particular was Zelda Classic. I found this interesting quote in their forum faq: (taken from http://zeldaclassic.armageddongames.net/forums.php)

Q: Does nintendo know you guys made this project?
A: Nintendo officially does not care about fan projects, as long as they are not for profit. ZC has been around for years and there are probably plenty of people telling them about it all the time, especially after being recognized on TechTV's The ScreenSavers and EGM magazine.

Other projects I found include Shadows of Lylat, Metroid Prime 2D, Ultimate Flash Sonic, Super Metroid Classic and many many more.

The only confirmed instance I could find of a freeware project that cloned a game that was released on a Nintendo system getting sent a cease and desist letter, was this Chrono Trigger 3d Remake Project. Even then, it was sent by Square-Enix and not by Nintendo.

This has actually relieved a lot of my fears. If I could find even one confirmed instance of Nintendo sending a fan made freeware project a cease and desist, then I would really be very concerned, but as it is, I cannot. From what I can tell most other game companies follow this trend as well. They don't seem to care about fan made games.

Anyway, I suppose I have 2 options

1. Make my game completely legit by renaming it and finding an artist (hopefully I'll be able to find one, I don't know anyone who is currently willing to help).

2. Finish it up and release it as a Fan Made Lolo game with little to no risk of anyone ever shutting it down.

I would still feel more comfortable if my game was 100% legitimate, so I really haven't made up my mind yet. I don't think it'll be easy to find an artist willing to put work into it for free. It is a tough decision. I'll have to give it some more thought.

bbitmaster