Mario Brothers VGA

strtj · Post by **strtj** » November 12th, 2007, 1:05 am

Any plans to add this one to the archive? I remember spending hours and hours playing it, back before I discovered Apogee games.

I found it at http://www.abandonia.com/games/880/MarioBrothersVGA
Its legal status seems somewhat questionable at best. It's totally just a straight copy of the NES game.

DOSGuy · Post by **DOSGuy** » November 12th, 2007, 1:10 am

Which is why I haven't given it much consideration.

There were literally hundreds of DOS clones of famous games, and there are exactly 0 of them on Classic DOS Games. (Well, maybe Brix.) There are lots of clones, don't get me wrong, but all of them add something new. There are games that are like Galaga, but no Galaga clones. There's always something original about them.

As for Mario Brothers VGA specifically, I haven't even played it to know if it's original or just a clone, because I see the words "Mario Brothers", and then I see the words "lawsuit from Nintendo". I doubt that Nintendo would care, but I'm still not fond of clones, and I'm definitely not interested in distributing anything that might not be legal.

Frenkel · Post by **Frenkel** » November 12th, 2007, 5:34 pm

I asked you about Mario Brothers VGA 8 months ago

.

leilei · Post by **leilei** » November 12th, 2007, 6:11 pm

Dave Sharpless also did Jumpman Lives! which attracted lawyers from Epyx towards Apogee as they thought it was his 100% creation. weird.

Shareware made from others trademarks like Mario is an overall edgy operation anyway, and putting this on the DVD would push it into a legal grey area

so no

DOSGuy · Post by **DOSGuy** » November 13th, 2007, 12:36 am

Yeah, Apogee had to abandon Jumpman Lives! and both of their Trek trivia games because of legal concerns. Epyx/Paramount didn't want Apogee making money off of their trademarks/intellectual property. Apogee was never sued, and there was no legal action taken against them. I added those games to the site because I figured that they were abandoned to the public domain, and I didn't think that either Epyx or Paramount would care. Let me explain that a little better.

I know that a lot of websites operate with the philosophy, "if the copyright holder tells me to stop, I'll stop". That is to say, they know that they're doing something illegal, and they're going to do it until they're told to stop. Illegally distributing commercial or full version software is one thing, but distributing software that has never been banned or ordered off the market is another. To this day, I am aware of no court order or legal restriction on distributing those games. If Epyx or Paramount ever tells me to take them down, I'll do it. Until then, I believe that what I'm doing is legal. If no one has made it illegal, then it's legal. End of story.

As far as ownership of levels and content, Jumpman Lives! contains original levels. Moraff's Escapade is a Jumpman clone which, again, features original levels. Moraff sells a Win32 version of Escapade to this day! Those games are "inspired by" or an "homage" to Jumpman. TerraFire is Thrust with new levels. The list of legal clones goes on and on. If you really think about it, every game rips off some other game. You don't get in trouble as long as you take some existing idea in a new direction, or add something that's yours.

The story is similar for DND. TSR told Bill Knight that the name "DND" was too close to "D&D", and they wanted him to stop using the name. He did, and Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain was born. I am not aware of any court order that made it illegal to continue to distribute DND. It never went to court. TSR's lawyers told him to pick a new name, so he did. If TSR wants to make it illegal to distribute DND, they're welcome to petition the courts to ban any further distribution of the game, which would probably only have power within that court's jurisdiction (i.e. U.S. courts could ban U.S. citizens and U.S. companies, and TSR would have to get similar orders in every other country). No court ever ruled against Bill Knight because he chose to change the name to avoid a fight. As far as I know, it's not illegal to distribute the game. TSR hasn't even legally demonstrated that they have rights to the acronym "DND". Since there was no trial, no precedent was set.

Basically, I'm dedicated to preserving and distributing classic DOS games, even if there are companies that don't like it, as long as it's not illegal. I don't believe that TSR has ever proved any legal claim to the acronym "DND", and I don't believe that Epyx and Paramount have ever expressly forbidden the distribution of Jumpman Lives! and Trek Trivia, and I believe that their intent, in both cases, was merely to prevent others from making money off of their work. Trivia is just information. If Paramount has a problem with people disseminating information about Star Trek, they can try suing Wikipedia. If you want to talk about it for free, go ahead, but don't profit from other people's property.

Nintendo would have no trouble demonstrating that they own the rights to the character and likeness of Mario and Luigi, and the levels, enemies, and graphics from Mario Bros. Again, (Frenkel especially), pardon my ignorance for having not played the game to see for myself what copyright infringement it might contain. I'm going to play it right now, but it doesn't sound like I'm going to be able to add it.

EDIT: Okay, I just played Mario Brothers VGA. The control is even worse than the original! I just got owned by a bunch of turtles!

However faithful the gameplay may be, there's no question that Mario Brothers VGA is a direct clone of Mario Bros. Again, I'm sure that Dave Sharpless was never sued by Nintendo. It's probably not officially illegal to distribute the game, but Nintendo would have no trouble suing if they wanted to. I choose to respect Nintendo's trademarks in this instance.