Unless the owner has explicitly put the software into the public domain, it is still illegal to download and use.

There seems to be an opinion around, that if you own the original games, it is ok to back up the game as an image on your computer, and use that to play it, but it needs to be exactly the same version that you own, and the only way you can be really sure about that is to back-up the rom yourself.

The other opinion is that if you cant buy the original game anymore, then it should be legal to download, but with the Wii, where you can pay to play old emulated games, it means that you can buy the games again, so peoples rom collections are now illegal.

-Tim

Timorg seems unaware of the fact that "Super Metroid Classic" is a fan-remake of "Super Metroid", not a ROM.

Fan-made games are just that, fan-made games. The legality of the game is no different than fan-art or fan-fiction.

Most game companies don't have problems with people making fan games, so long as they don't try to sell them, steal detailed content from the real games such as level layouts, or claim the work as their own. (IE: Using artwork but failing to mention the owner of the artwork copyright.) Fan games generally don't hit a large enough base of people for the game companies to pour money into stopping them, especially since it would be very hard to claim damages, and such fan games help to promote the nature of the real games in the first place. Fan games turn out to be free advertising in a way, so why bother stopping them?

ROMs are illegal, no question, but Super Metroid Classic is not a ROM, it's this Allegro-driven game: http://www.allegro.cc/depot/SuperMetroidClassic

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- http://www.pixelships.com

Obviously, I'm just saying it's one reason you don't see game companies suing the thousands of producers of fan games out there. There's no real reason to.

Technically, ALL fan-work is illegal without express permission; You're doing something based on someone else's copyright. The question ultimately becomes, "Does the owner of the copyright have a problem with it?"

If a game company is going to take someone to court for doing a fan work, they generally won't bother unless the game company will see a net-gain in profits versus the cost to sue the person, or to protect their trademarks from abuse they don't want to see.

Two examples:

1. Person B is making a free fan game using artwork based on Company A's commercial game. Company A analyzes the situation. It will cost Company A $10,000 to sue Person B, but Person B's fan game only prevents 2 sales a month due to its obscurity, and thus Company A would only redeem $80 monthly in lost profits by filing the lawsuit. Company A decides not to pursue the action.

2. Person B has released a high-quality, popular fan game using secondary, unimportant characters from Company A's 10-year-old commercial game. Company A analyzes the situation. It will cost Company A $25,000 to sue Person B and Person B's fan game stands to impede on 10% of the sales of a forthcoming game, impacting overall sales predictions by $100,000. Company A stands to see a net profit of $75,000 by suing Person B.

Just to give everyone an idea of the loaded question Fira777 asked and how hard it is to give a proper response. When it comes to fan work, it's more along the lines of what the company thinks, not what the law states, or what people on Allegro.CC will give as an opinion.

Fira777, if you truly want an answer to your question, you'll need to ask Nintendo.

And from personal experience, I have made two projects related to other company's copyrights. A Pokémon battle game and a Megazeux remake of the bundled ZZT game "Town of ZZT". The Pokémon battle game I couldn't get permission to release when I realized I needed to ask, so it stayed on my website for all of two weeks before it had to come down. The "Town of ZZT" remake I was able to get permission for so that's still very much available in the Megazeux community.

--- Kris Asick (Gemini)
--- http://www.pixelships.com

Parodies are safe, though. So, instead of a fan tribute, you can create a fan parody.

...plus the other rather common case of "abandonware": software that is legally still under copyright, but that isn't officially distributed any more. While downloading and re-making these games is still technically illegal, companies seldom insist on their copyright - they have made their profit years ago, and don't really care what's happening to the game, or the original company doesn't exist anymore, and the current copyright holder has no interest in it.

Thank you all for your help! - Fira777 (Jason).

This is Crimson Justice, I worked on SMTC alongside M U(aka Salty Justice). We have put the project on hold because there are too many other things we have to do in our lives and no longer have the free time to work on it.

Generally we used the project for personal study in game design, and felt that it was a fun goal to try and achieve. Never did we claim that the art, levels, sounds, etc were ever are own, an we give full credit to Nintendo for that. Moreover, we expected no profit or anything else to come of the recreation and fully acknowledged Nintendo's claim to the trademarks.

The project was more of a fan game that was intended to be able to reproduce the settings and gameplay that is seen in Nintendo's Super Metroid, but it was not specifically a Super Metroid copy. It was to allow users to design their own worlds, levels, enemies, character, etc to play in to take it above and beyond Super metroid, of which we used as a base for our specifications. A customized editor and scripting language were introduced by Salty and I and much was done to make it so users could implement their own features.

Like I said, the project has not been finished, but rather put on hold. Visit our project page/foums for more information if you wish.