The tilting bridge of the legal system

Man, Super Mario 64 HD was looking sweet. A totally free fan-made project built in Unity, its aim was to give Nintendo fans an updated version of the N64 classic. Sadly, Nintendo wasn't too pleased and issued a take-down notice earlier this week.

Shocked by the level of fame his game has received and perhaps a little spooked by Nintendo's legal team, creator Erik Ross has bowed to pressure and removed the game from the web, posting the following message on his site:

The project is no longer playable, or downloadable in any form. I received a copyright infringement notice on both the webplayer as well as the standalone builds. Which is fair enough, really. In light of Nintendo recently making a deal to release some of their IPs on mobile platforms, it's probably not in their best interests to have a mobile-portable version of Mario 64 sitting around. In any case, I didn't really expect for this project to get so popular, and was hoping it would function primarily as a educational tool and a novelty. For those who find it interesting and have never played the original Mario 64, it is available on Nintendo's Virtual Console service.

That Nintendo has moved to protect its IP isn't entirely surprising, but we're still a little sad at the fact that this promising venture won't be hopping, skipping and jumping any further. The only way to turn our frowns upside down is for Nintendo to announce that an official HD remake of the game is coming.

We can wish, right?

[source roystanross.wordpress.com]