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Chrono Ressurrection Forced to Cease & Desist
Kethinov writes "The Chrono Ressurrection Project (previously mentioned on /. here), an attempted 3d remake of the popular 2d game Chrono Trigger, has been shut down by Squenix in the form of a cease and desist letter. Quoth their website, "it is with our deepest regrets in that we have to announce the closure of the Chrono Resurrection project. Square Enix Co., Ltd recently issued a Cease and Desist letter which will mean the project is closed indefinitely." The site retains two trailers and a number of screenshots."
Remove all trademarks, and you are golden. Perhaps do a rockstar, and rename all the car names in a quirky way.
The screenshots look awesome, keep the engine and just remove trademarks.
beautiful screenshot
Good luck to 'em
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I am a bit skeptic about this kind of fan games (although Maniac Mansion Deluxe was really impressive), but when I saw the trailer I was really stunned. Give it a try!
It is a shame Square (and all big corporations really) is so annoying with a non comercial project that would even give a boost to Chrono series popularity and pave the way for a third official game in the series.
I am all for closing people profiting from other's trademarks, but when hardcore fans do a game/hack/mod/expansion just for the pleasure of doing it without gaining a penny... I don't understand why companys force them to cancel these projetcs.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but...
Look, Square is required to defend, vigorously, its trademarks and copyrights. If they don't, they lose them, and that could cut into their profits significantly. Furthermore, this crosses way beyond any legitimate extrapolation of fair use. Just as translating a book into another language or re-scoring a song for another set of instruments requires the permission of the original copyright-holder, re-implementing a game down to the plot, character designs, and underlying system of mechanics is stepping past the boundaries of fair use. There is no way they could legally have distributed or published this project with Squeenix's permission.
It looks like the folks involved have talent and skill, maybe they should be working on making their own game, instead of copying somebody else's? They'd have to start from scratch in many areas, but the screenshots certainly look like they have a suitable graphics engine, and seems like a demonstration of general know-how in the area. Why shouldn't they leverage what they've learned to create a new, different game which isn't someone else's idea warmed over and regurgitated?
Canthros
I don't really get why this is such a big deal. Square have every right to send out a C&D letter in this case; they own the rights to the original game. Whatever you think of the law in this case, there's no denying that Square are perfectly within it. Maybe they're planning to re-release or remake the game themselves (see the previous re-releases of the old Final Fantasy games).
To be honest, the real question here is why anybody would be so dumb as to sink so much time and effort into a project like this without checking from the very start that something like this wasn't going to happen. In terms of sheer lack of common sense, it's kind of like building your house on stilts over the San Andreas fault.
There's a long history of games projects being shut down for reasons like this. For a while, it became common to refer to this as "Foxing", because of the propensity of a certain well-known media establishment for doing just this, but it's hardly limited to them. Anybody remember Nintendo and Great Giana Sisters?
OR: come up with your own story and characters, THEN you are truly golden.
So much effort went into this, but why didn't he just come up with his own ideas instead of ripping off other people's? He would not have problems if he had his own story, characters and world and only used Chrono Trigger as the inspiration for the gameplay mechanic. Then we would have even more respect for what he was trying to achieve.
Yea, I am sure that the developers could easily do their own thing with this now using their own story/characters... but, I think the point of the whole project was that they really loved the Chrono Trigger game/world/characters/story and wanted to work with that material. The video really shows how awesome this project could be if it were to ever be completed. This looks MUCH more appealing to me than anything Square has come up with since FFX and it actually looks better than FFX as well. It seems to do a good job of capturing what made the game magic on the SNES in 3D. Something that hasn't been done yet by Square as much as I like FF 7,9 and X.
~Necromutant
This project is looking way too awesome to let the whole thing just roll over and die. Leak all the source code, let someone set up an anonymous CVS in Russia, and let the development continue as a kind of black market thing. I'd totally contribute code to it. Square trying to prevent us from continuing development in the most legitimate way is absolutely no excuse for not driving the whole project underground.
Stage a hack or something, and get that code out there!
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
People like them respond without any back action to C&D because they respect and admire the company that made the game they are basing their remake of the 10 best scenes off from.
With this and Chrono Trigger being, well as it seems, the best RPG of all time(pun intended) then why would you want to piss off SquareEnix for doing a project devoted to the game you and so many love? You wouldn't. You'd just hope they shut you down because they saw the crowd forming and think they might put their expert hands to work on a full remake.
This tactic saves them money AND assures sales. Plus with better graphics, although CT:R's graphics where great for independants, and development they can make a better remake and hopefully fulfill the wet dreams of some of us CT fans.
But i can only hope for that and such. And if it is a possibility maybe a full remake of FF6, or even all the Final Fantasys until 7
~--~
Do not mind the one with the crazy, for he is sane
Not trying to be an asshole here or anything, but I really have to wonder why anyone associated with this project ever thought it would end in any way other than this.
Chrono Cross, while not a direct sequal to Trigger, is still based on the same game universe (sort of, lots of time travel and dimensional weirdness going on in both games stories), and is just now coming up on it's 5th anniversary. This isn't like someone trying revive dead franchises like Star Control or whatever. Square still owns the rights to the "Chrono Universe", and it would not be suprising in the least to see another Chrono-based game from them in the very near future.
Added into this is that Square already has a history themselves of reviving their older Final Fantasy games with updated graphics, new CGI movies, and other stuff. In fact Chrono Trigger itself was part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles package along with Final Fantasy IV.
In other words, there's just no way Square could allow this project to continue, seeing as how the Chrono Universe is still an active viable property. I'm sure people associated with Chrono Ressurrection were only motivated by their love for the original Chrono Trigger game, but come on: what did you expect would happen?
You've got to wonder what these people were thinking from the get-go. Square (even pre-acquisition) has a history of, errrm, aggressive litigation. I remember that Final Fantasy Online had some fun exchanges with their lawyers a few years back.
Not to mention the fact that they're Japanese. In addition to the Japanese corporate culture, where non-traditional ways of doing business don't make it very far, it would also be very difficult to buy up infringing assets (that are probably completely incompatible with whatever development tools they use in-house) from a few foreigners who literally don't even speak the same language as the rest of their development staff.
The real surprise to me in all of this is that there are people talented enough to produce work of this quality (it looks excellent), and yet stupid or naive enough to think that they'd be able to distribute it legally or sell it to a major multinational corporation headquartered on the other side of the world.
I mean, I like seeing projects like this, but it seems like a little bit of forethought would have prevented thousands of hours of wasted effort. It truly is a shame.
There's a critical difference; it's perfectly legal for Nintendo or a third-party who has obtained permission from Nintendo to make a sequel or other game using the Mario Bros. and the attendant characters and other properties associated with it. And, even then, it would, unless they'd been specifically remaking one of the earlier games, be a new game.
Speaking for myself, while I'm impressed with the technical work done, and with their dedication to the massive job involved, their choice to work over a pre-existing game for release rather than attempt to create a new one is a mark against them on their conceptual strengths, and, I think, somewhat against their character. I'd be less bothered with them using this project as a learning framework, which would remain unreleased, as a prelude to a real project.
Perhaps they'll go that direction now.
Canthros
Did you just send email, or did you write an actual letter?
I'd get a lawyer to write an actual letter (on paper!) to their legal department about it and see what kind of results that gets you. Email is disposable; assuming your message wasn't blacklisted as spam, it's really really easy to hit "delete" and get rid of it for good. To get results, you need paper.
Comment of the year
There is absolutely no way that Square-Enix would let a couple of no-name dudes re-make one of their games for the hell of it. Square-Enix is a multi-million dollar entertainment corporation, not some cool guy who makes cool games. These guys knew this and did it anyway hoping to either fly under the radar or get some attention before being shut down (which they have.)
Or, possibly, they though they'd knock Square-Enix's socks off with their amazing rendition and either get bought out or hired. Lots of people try this kind of thing-- sending unsolicited Simpsons scripts to Fox, etc. Unfortunately it never works-- legal dept.'s never even let decision makers see home-brewed efforts for fear of a later lawsuit if they have a similar idea. If Square didn't squash this and decided to make a 3-D version of Chrono Trigger in the future (which is a possibility, didn't they update early Final Fantasies?) these guys could potentially sue if it seems that Square-Enix appropriated any of their ideas and designs. In any event if they let this get distributed it could conceivably harm potential sales of a 3-D Chrono Trigger.
Whatever the motivation, this thing didn't have a shot and it's all their fault. It was a foolish endeavor to waste their time on. They seem talented, though, so I hope this effort at least works as a portfolio piece to get them jobs... And I'm betting it will, if they choose to follow up on it.