"Street Fighter II" for the NES theoretically possible?

[Dwedit]

So what exactly is Street Fighter 2? A bunch of sprites, some music and sound effects, and specific animations, hitboxes, and behaviors. The gameplay comes entirely from the animations, timing, and hitboxes, and priority of moves. So in order to make any clone of Street Fighter 2, you need to figure out all the animations, hitboxes, and state transitions. That defines the game mechanics of Street Fighter II.

[strat]

It's very surreal that Capcom officially released a fan game. Maybe when my weapon-select HUD for Zombies Ate My Neighbors is finished, I can get LucasArts to rerelease the game as ZAMN - Now With a Feature It Bloody Well Should've Had.

[mikejmoffitt]

That would require plugging original characters into an approximation of the SF2 fighting system in order not to draw a swift cease and desist like Capcom did to Rockmen R.

I do not understand this fixation with keeping things so IP-safe. The (100% non-commercial) projects that get their plugs pulled are the stupid ones that decide that they should send their unfinished progress to gaming blogs and other similar sites and have the name plastered everywhere. The solution isn't to make the NES equivelent of "GNU/gOpenFight" but just to not blatantly scream to everyone that you're cloning Street Fighter II.

SFxMM wasn't developed with permission, it was developed quietly as a Mega Man fan game and then capcom was approached. Do you think it was developed as "GNU/kFreeShootJumpGameWithFighers" and then Mega Man was put in later? Absolutely not!

[MottZilla]

I agree. There is no worry about a C&D if you just do it and release it freely. So you can scratch that off the list of reasons why it won't happen. it probably still won't happen though. But it would be cool if it did.

[tepples]

How can the developers be sure that a tester won't leak unfinished progress to the gaming press?

And no, distributing the final product without charge isn't foolproof. I can think of several video game publishers known for cease-and-desisting freeware projects.

[Shiru]

That has been done couldn't be undone. There was SoRR, it got C&D from Sega, but you still can easily get a copy.

[mikejmoffitt]

How can the developers be sure that a tester won't leak unfinished progress to the gaming press?

And no, distributing the final product without charge isn't foolproof. I can think of several video game publishers known for cease-and-desisting freeware projects.

If you've finished the project, and released it for free, who gives a damn if it gets a C&D? People will still copy it and distribute it - like SoRR. Again, the projects that *have* been C&D'd very frequently were stupidly loudly announced.

I want to again bring a reminder that SFxMM was a fangame made with Capcom's IP the whole time.

[Sik]

How can the developers be sure that a tester won't leak unfinished progress to the gaming press?

Or just that it becomes so well known that it reaches the press anyway? That's what happened with SoRR (which was mentioned later in the thread). Then again, the issue with SoRR is that it was better than the other three entries put together, and Sega was trying to rerelease SoR2 on iOS at the same time the final version of SoRR would have been out (if I recall correctly). Cue how well that went.