Retro gaming is a great sub-genre of gaming. For those of us that are old enough to remember the joy of opening a Nintendo Entertainment System game (NES, or even unboxing a Pong unit at Christmas, retro gaming can be great for memories. As these older platforms are opened up by independent developers, or in the case of the Atari Jaguar, the owners open source it, we see other independent developers creating new games for old platforms. That is the case with Fina Fight MD, a fan port of the Capcom arcade brawler for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. There are concerns though, which the developer has addressed in their latest update.
Final Fight MD is no different than most fan ports of popular games. At the lowest understanding of the law, there are stolen assets in use here. There are the rare occasions where a fan has acquired permission from the property owners to create such fan ports, often the caveat being no financial gain can be collected from the work. This would include “donations” to support the developer, or likely for access to a private platform (Discord, Facebook Group, etc) based on that game as well (though this is a murky gray area).
Final Fight MD creator, Mauro Xavier, makes use of itch.io for some of their distribution needs. Itch.io is full of retro gaming goodness and independent developers enjoying game creation.
According to the itch.io page, there are two people involved in obtaining graphics for use in Final Fight MD. One, Master Linkuei, is noted for “ripping” – this is taking the sprites from one platform, presumably the arcade version of Final Fight. Xavier is noted for “graphics enhancements” which I assume is making those graphics work on the limited 16-Bit hardware of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.
I do not see any original artwork mentions on their itch.io page so it is safe to assume everything we see is technically owned by Capcom and used without permission.
For those that do not know, itch.io has a donation option. Publishers can, and often do, mark their releases as free but I do not believe there is a way to remove that donation button. This could be a problem depending on the company fans are taking content from.
Time Extension quoted Xavier when he mentioned his Patreon and it not being “…specifically for Final Fight MD.”
Unfortunately, the concerns raised by fans are viable and could be a legal nightmare for developers simply wanting to port an old game to an old platform. Discussing properties, you are working on, but do not own, in relation to any method of receiving money can be argued as they are indeed connected and related.
Especially when that discussion is locked behind a paywall to participate in, as is the case with Patreon.
Time Extension mentions that Xavier has high hopes someone uses their code for the basis of future home ports.
Further in the Time Extension article there is a quick mention of two other, original, projects from Xavier. Honestly, I had never heard of these and do not remember mention of them in previous coverage of Xavier’s work.
I am not reporting this to “attack” anyone. I love retro gaming and believe people should be able to receive compensation for their work, including property owners.
