Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 Fan Port Hit with DMCA

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341284/Super_Mario_Bros_Commodore_64_fan_port_hit_with_DMCA_takedowns.php

by Impossible • 7 years ago

126 88 7 years ago

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wolco• 7 years ago

What is another strategy around this aside from release quickly and hopefully gains enough following.

We see this with Disney, Star Trek but not to this extent.

orionblastar2• 7 years ago

Make Super Tux Brothers or something that does not look like SMB.

test1235• 7 years ago

Great Giana Sisters

beatgammit• 7 years ago

You could just play Super Tux, which is essentially that. But that's not quite as cool as being the same thing, but for an unsupported platform.

yellowapple2• 7 years ago

Release it as a program that patches a Super Mario Bros ROM until it functions as a C64 ROM?

orionblastar2• 7 years ago

It shows the C64 could run NES type games.

Gaina Sisters did SMB first but also got sued by Nintendo.

tapland• 7 years ago

Nintendo are the Disney of the gaming industry in regards to protecting their IPs.

Any in-game footage of a Nintendo game on youtube can be flagged by Nintendo (of Japan usually) at any time. They don't really check for fair use beforehand.

lancefisher• 7 years ago

Apparently, they’ve lightened up a bit on this. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/28/18117172/nintendo-youtub...

blackbeard334• 7 years ago

Reminds me of this for some reason.

https://www.polygon.com/2015/12/14/10123754/john-romero-supe...

farmerbb• 7 years ago

This is true. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E

nanoscopic• 7 years ago

While this is crappy, it is the default behavior of most large companies when it comes to copyright. As people have described I mistakenly said that copyright must be enforced or it is lost. Agreed I was confusing it with trademark. Despite that, I see many companies treating copyright the same and harassing all copyright infringers with abandon even if it is harmless.

I will also share another story. Some years ago I owned n64.org. I ran a fan website of Nintendo 64 games there. It was quite popular. I was underage ( < 18 ) at the time I bought the domain, and I bought the domain before NOA registered "n64" as a trademark.

NOA threatened to sue me for the domain. I refused as their claim that people would think my fan site was the official Nintendo site was entirely nonsense. In the end they wrote a check to me for like $50 or something equally ridiculous.

Nintendo is not your friend. They don't do a good job taking care of their fans. They will happily sue or threaten you for doing anything they don't happen to like.

ninjin• 7 years ago

I am not a lawyer, but I am nearly 100% sure that what you are talking about is trademark protection [1] rather than copyright, people get these wrong frequently. As far as I know, you can enforce your copyright completely arbitrarily.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights

tty2300• 7 years ago

I have heard they have been super aggressive about takedowns on YouTube videos showing switch modding even though there are no copyright violations

erfgh• 7 years ago

I don't know why anyone would want Nintendo to be their friend.

onion2k• 7 years ago

You don't lose copyright if you don't defend against infringements. You're thinking of a trademark. You do lose a trademark if you abandon it. Nintendo could ignore this copyright infringement and still sue everyone else if they wanted to.

Regardless of that though, a rights holder can defend their right by issuing a takedown (like this DMCA notice) or by stating the infringement is officially acceptable (and pretty cool.) It doesn't always have to be negative.

daveidol• 7 years ago

Yeah, Nintendo seems to be pretty intense with this stuff (sometimes very unfairly, like in this instance with Modern Vintage Gamer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E)

Causality1• 7 years ago

Nobody hates their most hardcore fans more than Nintendo.

bartread2• 7 years ago

I'm not so sure why this is getting downvoted as Nintendo's approach to this kind of thing does seem unnecessarily hostile, and it's certainly a pattern of behaviour, not a one-off instance.

It doesn't make any sense to me either: I mean, do they really think that because I've bought a copy of SMB 64, that I'm not going to buy any more SMB games? I've kind of lost track but, just with the 3DS I carry around fairly regularly, I have at least 3 SMB games (one or two for DS OG), plus a bunch of other games around the Mario IP.

wolfgke3• 7 years ago

Nobody hates their most hardcore fans more than Nintendo.

Perhaps you should not become a fan of a company with such a bullying behaviour.

lostmyoldone• 7 years ago

One can certainly stop being a fan, but a Nintendo fan was probably one before they knew anything about how they treat their fans. Blaming the victim for not knowing enough about ostensibly bad company practices when they became fans seems more than a little unfair, especially as many became fans when they were quite young.

throwayEngineer• 7 years ago

I find Nintendo to be the gaming equivalent of Apple.

Horrible to customers and developers while taking nice profits.

I don't buy from either, but I know these are popular gifts from uninformed parents to kids who watch lots of commercials.

ddingus2• 7 years ago

Dissappointing, but entirely expected.

That's OK. The DMCA action will have little impact on the community of people who enjoy this kind of thing.

(people who have been around long enough to know better is possible here)

Ace17• 7 years ago

I fail to see how this takedown benefits Nintendo.

How could a C64 port of a NES game released more than 30 years ago could threaten any sale of anything ?

stingraycharles• 7 years ago

It's probably related to trademarks: you lose a trademark if you don't enforce it. If they let this go, chances are they would lose the Super Mario trademark, which would hurt them.

qaucnnnsicuwbr2• 7 years ago

I'm no copyright lawyer but couldn't they have issued a licence to use the trademark to the author if this was the case?

They could have supported this as a homage to the franchise, supported their fans creativity, and gotten lots of free publicity to boot.

estomagordo• 7 years ago

That does not explain why less draconic companies still get to keep their trademarks.

glenndebacker• 7 years ago

I hear that a lot but it's certainly not that black and white.

* Capcom for example allows fan games as long as you don't profit off them. There are a couple of Megaman games for example.

* Konami allowed the fan game "Castlevania: The Lecarde Chronicles 2" as long as they did not profit from the game.

* Valve allowed the HL fan game Prospect - https://store.steampowered.com/app/399120/Prospekt/

And there are other examples out there. Nintendo could perfectly allow it under certain conditions. Did Sega not work for Sonic Mania with somebody who made sonic fan games for example?

jMyles7• 7 years ago

If they let this go, chances are they would lose the Super Mario trademark

You can't be serious. Are you saying that, sitting on a civil jury hearing a lawsuit at some future date, you'd conclude that Mario - one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world - is no longer a trademark of Nintendo because a third party made a C64 clone of the game?

I don't understand how you view this as the likely outcome. Nothing even close to this has ever happened ever.

Quite simply, the view that a trademark holder must trawl the internet and respond to every unauthorized use (or even every infringing use) is a myth. It’s great for lawyers, but irritating and expensive for everyone else. And when done clumsily or maliciously, it chills free expression.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...

pbhjpbhj3• 7 years ago

It's not true. If it were then any company could easily give a no-cost license, take-down is in no way a requirement.

babuskov• 7 years ago

As far as I know, the current Nintendo Switch Online subscription that is bringing Nintendo money right now has a port of that old NES game as one of the games you get to play for free as long as you keep paying the subscription. Nintendo can easily argue that having a freely available port you can play lowers the value of their Online subscription service.

qaucnnnsicuwbr2• 7 years ago

But is a port running on the Commodore _really_ competing? It's only playable by a small slice of players.

If anything, it shows fans are pasionate about the franchise and it's generated a lot of buzz around it in the last few days.

darklajid• 7 years ago

How many (working!) C64 are in circulation though?

A random lawyer might not consider that, but if anyone thought this through? I don't think there's any measurable impact on any Nintendo business, at all. Maybe, _maybe_ the inverse: Support a fan project like this and the middle-aged C64 fan base - even those not owning one anymore - might be even more inclined to buy Nintendo products?

wodenokoto3• 7 years ago

They are selling their old NES games still, both through Nintendo Switch Online subscriptions and what ever is left in stock of the NES Classic.

This is not some sort of abondonware.

jMyles7• 7 years ago

So, just to complete your thought here: the way that you are answering the question "How could a C64 port of a NES game released more than 30 years ago could threaten any sale of anything?" is to suggest that people are going to buy a C64 to play Super Mario Bros instead of a Switch?

That's what you're saying?

hobbe80• 7 years ago

It won’t, of course. But Nintendo has chosen to defend their trademarks always - which is a simple solution, doesn’t require anyone to make a decision “should we allow this or not”. This case might’ve been an easy call to allow, but by always doing this, for all cases, they don’t need internal discussions on more grey area instances.

slowhadoken3• 7 years ago

I grabbed a copy of it if anyone’s interested.

andai2• 7 years ago

Where do I sign up?

slowhadoken3• 7 years ago

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-fDPJ2Z2pMmrqW6FTxv-Osi92z...

Ros22• 7 years ago

They seem to really hate direct ports of their work.

Curiously, there is a thriving Super Mario 64 rom hacking community that is rarely hit with notices. Afaik, no one really knows why. There are 100+ games and even a nearly complete level editor. Even when Nintendo were demonetizing videos of their games, these were spared.

AstralStorm• 7 years ago

Mostly because they're more akin to a remix. These also do not infringe trademarks.

floatingatoll• 7 years ago

No bigcorp wants to be the first to lose an infringement case to "fair use", because that would be a beachhead from which much less palatable uses could be launched. While it's impossible to derive corporate motives from corporate (in)actions, their inaction certainly does suggest that they think they'd lose to "fair use" if they tried to shut them down.

molticrystal• 7 years ago

thriving Super Mario 64 rom hacking community that is rarely hit with notice

Probably limited resources. The ones that do get hit are the big ones like Super Mario 64 Online [1] . Instead of the hacks themselves they seem focus on youtube quite a bit. I know a lot of Super Mario 64 emulation and emulation of other Nintendo properties is often DMCAed on that platform. [2] discussion [3]

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43axqp/nintendo-s...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtaFU2ky9E&t=192s

[3] https://www.ign.com/boards/threads/nintendo-is-abusing-youtu...

Ros22• 7 years ago

The article is confusing about the details.

"Last Impact" never got a takedown notice and PC Gamer even wrote an article about it (as well as Nintendo clearly being aware of Kaze).

As I said, there is a lack of aggression against SM64 hacks and it has never really been explained--but yes, they do hate copies or extensions to their engines that are essentially their own game, but better. SM64 online definitely qualifies. But again, this isn't correlated to how popular or how much of an online footprint the games have.

(Article here https://www.pcgamer.com/super-mario-64-rom-hack-last-impact-... )

grawprog• 7 years ago

Hacks are distributed as .ips patches or deltas. No original code is distributed. Most romhacking sites are fairly careful about not allowing ROMs or links to ROMs being distributed. The difference with the commodore port was it was a direct port of a full game with a cartidge ROM being distributed. At least I think that's why this got taken down while hacks stay up usually.

alexozer• 7 years ago

Mario 64 romhacks are sometimes distributed as patches to the original game instead of the complete modified game as well, and since it's just a diff it's not subject to copyright.

warent• 7 years ago

This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19730987

wodenokoto3• 7 years ago

A lot of people here a like "Nintendo hates their fans", but seriously, this is a product that Nintendo is currently selling (Well, technically renting to subscribers) why should they stand idle as people pirate it?

rizzin• 7 years ago

They did the same with a fan-made remake of Metroid 2, though that was Nintendo USA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM2R

http://metroid2remake.blogspot.com/

fit2rule• 7 years ago

Bummer. I was fully prepared to exhibit this amazing bit of work at my new retro-computing exhibit [1], and I expect it would have been inspiring for a lot of local indie game developers to have had the chance to see it in person ..

Well, instead, I'll just focus on some of the other gem releases of the retro-dev scene, and fortunately there are a LOT of other great works being produced for these old machines - of limited commercial value - but massive cultural worth. Still, seeing a near-perfect port of Super Mario Bros. on the old C64 is an amazing thing, and fills me full of inspiring thoughts. Bummer, Nintendo.

[1] https://subotron.com/7635-timetron-2019/

Endy• 7 years ago

Don't worry, it's still out there, just like AM2R. Give it a few weeks so Ninty can parade around like they won something, and if you're in the right places, you'll hear about the continued development.

bmn__• 7 years ago

Where should I look? Have AM2R_131, will travel.

slfnflctd• 7 years ago

Wow, the Slashdot thread on this was actually more informative. I think that's a first for me.

The issue is trademark: if they don't defend it, they could lose it. It's really that simple.

mysterydip• 7 years ago

I know people are arguing about how much a port to a 30 year old system could really harm them, but I think it's a twofold issue of precedent leading to dilution: If they allow this, what about a port of (same or other mario game) to (same or other platform)?

snarfy• 7 years ago

How does DMCA apply to trademark? I thought the DMCA was only about copyright.

DanBC2• 7 years ago

Please read the thread, where your "defend it or lose it" point has been rebutted several times.

Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 Fan Port Hit with DMCA

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