The entangled relationship between Nintendo and fan games.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “love child norm” (ID: ifanr) , Author: Musi.
Nintendo is a world-renowned game company, but in addition to this identity, it also has a famous name that has long been circulating in the player base:
“The Strongest Legal Department in the Eastern Hemisphere.”
There will be such a title, which can be traced all the way to a lawsuit between Nintendo and Universal Pictures more than thirty years ago. In 1981, Nintendo released the arcade game Mori Mori in North America, and it became popular. However, there are many people who are popular, and after the big sale, the American film giant Universal Pictures also noticed this game.
The arcade game of the movie “Dragon King” and Nintendo’s “Samaki”. Picture from: The Gamer
At that time, Universal Pictures happened to own the copyright of the movie work “King Kong”, and often used this as a reason to send letters to other works that used gorillas as the theme. The momentum is due to the popularity of the game “Samaki”, as well as gorillas and beautiful women, and Universal Pictures will naturally not miss this opportunity for claims.
However, at that time, Nintendo was still a pure game company, and even the red and white machines had not yet been launched. This made the film and television industry giant Universal Pictures more confident, thinking that it is easy to continue. city.
Dragon King on Tiger ’s handheld has been authorized by the world, but it borrows Nintendo ’s Mori Gang from the game. Picture from: Vice
But what I did n’t expect was that Nintendo ’s legal team was exhausted and not only found that Universal Pictures did not own the originalHe said that the entire copyright of “King Kong” even countered, saying that the “King Kong” game authorized by Universal Pictures plagiarized Nintendo.
In the end, Nintendo did indeed win the lawsuit and received a huge amount of compensation from Universal, which can be said to be famous in one battle.
In addition to the Mori Mori incident, Nintendo has also litigated with Sega and COLOPL. These cases have been repeated many times in the industry and will not be discussed here.
In short, it was because of this success in the lawsuit that the Nintendo Legal Department gradually became famous. Although the expression “the strongest in the Eastern Hemisphere” is somewhat exaggerated, Nintendo’s decisiveness and swiftness in safeguarding copyright interests have also gradually established it as a “court overlord.”
However, after all, there are only a handful of exciting contests with large companies that can be recorded in history. More often, players who are not officially authorized will receive warnings from Nintendo.
At this time, the tough stance of the Legal Department was met with a lot of controversy.
picture from: Nintendo Life
For example, “Mario Battle Royale”, a homemade game that combines “eat chicken” and Mario 2D levels, was renamed “DMCA Royale” due to a warning from Nintendo lawyers, and moved In addition to all elements related to Mario.
Similarly, there are also players who have created a 2D pixel style “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”: “Breath of the NES”, even though the original author WinterDrake claims that this is just a fan-like work. And there will be no charges, but he still received a letter from Nintendo’s lawyers and was asked to be taken down.
Nintendo does not completely prohibit the appearance of fanworks. As long as it does not involve commercial sales, it will not interfere excessively. Works such as paintings, live video, and mixed music should be seen on major social platforms.
Most game manufacturers will also give players the opportunity to create fan works. To a certain extent, this is not only a manifestation of the game’s recognition by core players, but also can bring more heat to the original work.
Only one area that Nintendo sees as a “minefield” is home-made games.
Sony PS4 recently launched a game called Dreams similar to Minecraft, allowing players to freely create and create content. Many people have also published their classic characters and levels on social media, and naturally included Mario that has been processed in high definition.
Obviously, since Nintendo does not allow players to modify their own games, it is even less likely to allow them to appear on competing platforms. In the end, the player who created the Mario character received a letter from Sony, saying that Nintendo asked to remove all Mario IP-based content, and this matter came to an end.
Another incident recently caught Nintendo ’s attention. A player named “Unreal” successfully moved Nintendo’s N64 platform masterpiece “Super Mario 64” to the PC platform, and supported 4K ultra high definition resolution, widescreen display and Xbox controller control. Up to 12 minutes of demo video.
The thing itself is actually nothing special. After all, this kind of work from other host platforms can also be played on the PC through the emulator, but this time it is more special.In particular, “Unreal” directly reverse-engineered the source code of the game and replaced it with a program that can be run natively under the Wimdows system, which is equivalent to directly porting the entire game to the PC.
This “unauthorized porting” behavior also touched the bottom line of Nintendo, even if it is an old game like Super Mario 64 that was 24 years ago, it is also not allowed.
Soon, Nintendo asked YouTube to remove all videos of infringing content, and also hired a third-party law firm to check all posts and network disks containing program download links on the network to ensure that the game installation package does not Will spread among players.
Generally, these fan games developers will receive DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Law) warnings
After many similar incidents, most people are pessimistic about the prospects of Nintendo ’s homemade games. Once developers use Nintendo’s characters in the game, or involve elements related to Nintendo games, players will always leave a message to remind them to be careful about Nintendo’s legal affairs.
Why does Nintendo care so much about their IP?
This “Super Mario Bros.” live-action movie is quite heavy
Some people blamed the 1993 movie “Super Mario Brothers” of the same name. At that time, Nintendo had hoped to rely on Hollywood’s reputation to further open the door to the European and American markets.
However, because the plot of the adaptation of this work is too ridiculous, the character setting is also very different from the image in the game. Eventually, the box office was tragically suffered by Waterloo. Even the actors who played the Mario Brothers also admitted in the interview many years later. “This is the worst film I have ever made.”
With this “black history”, Nintendo has not given any authorization to third parties to create content based on its own IP for a long time.
However, some players said that the problem is not whether these fan games and works have “profitability”, but Nintendo wants to ensure that the external image and reputation of their IP are not damaged.
After all, if you also have a big star IP that is as well-known as Mario or Pikachu, and you can still have a huge appeal in the ten or even two decades after birth, you certainly do n’t want others to abuse it. image of.
picture from: AsiaOne
The Japanese street kart incident is the best example. If you have visited places such as Akihabara or Odaiba in Tokyo two years ago, it is not difficult to just hit a group of people wearing Mario and Luigi clothes and drive around on the big road in a kart. This makes it difficult to disassociate with Nintendo’s classic game Mario Kart.
In fact, when I first saw these cars in Akihabara, I did think they were the real version of Mario Kart authorized by Nintendo. There are definitely a few foreign tourists with similar ideas.
But is it really? No.
Because of frequent traffic incidents, these karts were once boarded on the Japanese TV station. The picture comes from: テ レ NEWS24
Compared to the infringement of the character image, Nintendo actually cared about the traffic accidents caused by these karts. When similar incidents occurred frequently, it also attracted the attention of local Japanese TV stations.
Imagine a group of people wearing your company ’s mascot driving a go-kart on the street, having an accident, and also boarding a TV station. What would the onlookers think?
For this reason, Nintendo formally sued the kart rental company named Maricar in 2017, asking him to stop providing clothes related to Mario elements to customers.
After three years of tug-of-war, the latter eventually lost the lawsuit and paid Nintendo about 50 million yen in compensation. It was also necessary to specially affix a “not related to Nintendo” logo to the body.
Pokémon series also gave birth to many fan games
However, even if there is a possibility of being brought to court by Nintendo, some players still plan to make the home-made game, and some even choose to publish screenshots or demo demo before the game content is completed.
A lot of times, fans will devote themselves to creating fan games, all to pay tribute to the classics, express their heartfelt love, not to sell money or compete for the popularity of the original.
Creating and sharing these fanfiction works is itself an important part of the video game culture.
WinterDrake, a Nintendo fan mentioned in the previous article, also said that the feedback and support of players is actually one of the motivations to support himself in making a fan game. If he has not disclosed it in order to avoid risks, then the game is likely not to continue. Motivation.
“The Breath of the Wild” development team has releasedA 2D version of the prototype concept, many players leave a message saying that they want to experience the 2D version of the gameplay, and I happen to have some development capabilities, so I chose to make it. If Nintendo finds it, I will continue the project with original characters.
Not to mention, some excellent fan games will also be officially recognized. For example, like Sega ’s “Sonic Fanatic” game, its producer Christian Whitehead is an avid Sonic fan, and has also independently developed a fan game called “Retro Sonic”. It was discovered by the official of Sega and summoned to his command.
Nintendo fans hope that the official can provide a more relaxed environment than allowing for bans and issuing lawyers ’warnings, etc., allowing players to develop freely while complying with relevant rules, just like the original game based on the original The same as MOD, instead of having to use a bucket of cold water to wipe out the enthusiasm of the player.
However, compared with the previous conservative, Nintendo has become more and more open to its own IP in recent years, and will also actively cooperate with other companies.
In the game, in addition to the first-party works, Nintendo tried to cooperate with Ubisoft to launch a linked game such as “Mario + Mad Rabbit”, which is still one of the most successful third-party works on the Switch platform.
More cooperation was born outside the game. Last year, Universal Studios Osaka, Japan announced that it would build a Mario-themed “Nintendo Super Paradise”; Lego also joined hands with Nintendo to launch Mario series of building block toys.
In March this year, Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview with Famitong that Nintendo will not only develop in the game industry in the future, but also expand to theme parks, movies, or peripheral products.Products and other businesses, let more people contact Nintendo’s characters.
“It’s like a brokerage company with many signed artists. Nintendo hopes to make these characters more active in reality.”
Taking this as an opportunity, we also hope that at some point in the future, Nintendo can improve the relationship with fan game developers, so that when people talk about such works, they can focus on the quality of the game. Or in terms of gameplay, instead of always worrying about receiving a lawyer ’s letter.
Source of the title map: Metro