Crypt of the Necrodancer

It's weird how in one breath Nintendo shuts down fan games left and right, and in another they let some tiny developer use one of their flagship franchises in a Switch exclusive(?) expansion.

Edited by Hashil on Mar 20th 2019 at 2:24:29 AM

Makes me wonder if it was the Necrodancer team that reached out to Nintendo, or viceversa.

Either Brace Yourself Games had the cojones to reach out to Nintendo and say "Yo, let us use one of your biggest series for a crossover with our game", or Nintendo proposed that relatively small team to crossover their game with one of Nintendo's main series. It's pretty wild either way.

Also, this ain't an expansion, it's a proper sequel/spin-off. Art and aesthetics have been significantly evolved from the original.

Edited by Elbruno on Mar 20th 2019 at 4:57:47 PM

I'm low key hoping nintendo learned that shutting down fangames is actively shooting them in the foot when it comes to PR and that PR is one of the things they floor bascially the entire AAA indsutry on and realized thatm ight end up counterproductive down the road.

The fact they're lightning up on the youtube policy would abound in that sense, but that's still a reach.

This is looking to be a pretty comprehensive game overall. I thought it might just be a small expansion but with these many enemies and even distinct bosses it's probably going to be a full on title.

And the sprite work's gorgeous. It always was in this game but it's especially great seeing some Zelda enemies that never had particularly detailed sprites in the past reimagined.

it would be a weird expansion when the sprites are a completely different style than the original necrodancer :V

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With regards to the original article, it's kind of funny this is getting made now that Zelda's largely stepped away from the musical gimmicks that used to be common in them.

Nintendo shuts down fangames because protection of copyright is still a thing. Doesn't matter if they're releasing it for free or what, it's still IP theft and if they don't shut that shit down then they lose credibility and the ability to shut down more serious stuff later.

Yeah. It's not that Nintendo wants to do it. They're legally required to do it.

I know that. Doesn't seem to stop many other game devs to let it slide without too many issues so far.

I get there's a size/communication issue (most of the fangames that are left alone are generally from indie games from what I've seen so I can see why that's a bigger issue with a multi-billion dollar company) but not one that seem insurmountable. I also haven't seen other game companies get on a massive crackdown hosting roms of their games for emulation either despite playing by the same rules than nintendo does, so they seem to be more zealous at their job than needed.

Edited by Yumil on Mar 21st 2019 at 6:34:18 PM

Hosting roms is different from creating fangames. Hosting roms can technically be considered piracy, but most rom sites get around this with weasel words saying "this is only for purposes of backing up games you already own" *wink*, whereas creating fangames is making a new thing using an existing IP. If they were to be made as parody or satire or whatever, that can be covered under fair use, but most of them are straight-up games, made using existing characters, which isn't really legally defensible. There's also size and scope. A flash game hosted on some random site where all of 1000 people played it for maybe 10 minutes is different from a comprehensive fangame with an ongoing dev team and large community.

Then there's the fact that the majority of Nintendo's most well-known games are all first party, meaning it comes down to them to defend their copyright. And Nintendo being a large company with more reach and clout, when they issue a cease and desist notice, people are more likely to comply, and also word is more likely to get out.

Back to the topic of this game in particular, I'm down for getting it. I like Zelda, especially the music, and I liked Crypt of the Necrodancer, so a new game combining the two seems right up my alley.

Edited by danime91 on Mar 21st 2019 at 11:22:18 AM

They don't have to do anything. Sega is well within their rights to shut down the thriving Sonic fan game scene. Instead, they pulled some of the people from it and made the best Sonic game in years. A fraction of a fraction of the people who buy a Pokemon or Metroid game would even know about the fan ones, let alone download them.

People will pretend Nintendo's shit smells like roses every single day and it drives me nuts.

Edited by Hashil on Mar 21st 2019 at 3:14:33 AM

Maybe one day some fans will create a good fangame that catches Nintendo's attention and they'll get recruited. Until then, they're getting shut down.

And in Sega's case, they've been churning out flops one after the other and were getting desperate, so decided to reach out and recruit some fresh blood that were already working on something similar that had garnered some fans.

Biggest difference between fangames and Crypt of the Necrodancer? The dev team asked.

Edited by danime91 on Mar 21st 2019 at 2:21:30 AM

"maybe one day someone will make a fangame good enough that nintendo will do them a sega" cough cough AM 2 R cough cough

Although I do get them for that one specifically. They had their own version of that game in the pipeline, it got released at the wrong time, and all in all it only got shut down after it got finished so that one is fine by me. Although that's also a pretty clear example of poor communication to me because samus returns was well in develompent by the time they shut the game down, and they just passed up the opprtunity of showcasing it during the E3 of this year, so they looked pretty bad until they finally turned around next year and said "by the way we're making that game too. Coming out next month !" They could have announced it the year before and look better as a result.

But still, your post comes off as pretty condescending with that in mind.

I'd also cough a bit for pokemon urniaum who was around the same time period but I have no idea how good it was so I won't try it.

Edited by Yumil on Mar 21st 2019 at 10:50:56 AM

Pokemon Prism was another really solid one based on a title so old no one at Nintendo or the Pokemon Company should of cared, but they shut it down anyway.

I suppose they can't resell us their 20+ year old games over and over again if they let titles like it flourish, though, so there's that.

Edited by Hashil on Mar 21st 2019 at 3:50:56 AM

I'm pretty sure people would buy them anyway. I've never been into pokémon, but even with all the fangames of super metroid I'd replay the original if the opportuinity came. maybe not 20 bucks though.

but going back to my overall point, the rest of the industry seems chiller about it in general so I don't really think that "but they are obliged to do so" is that good of an excuse. The way nintendo treats youtube content creators is also "just defending their ips" yet they are easily among the strictest when it comes ot it, and it's been the case for years now. Again, even if the premise is legally sound, that appears to be going overboard.

saying "sonic mania was the best thing to happen to sega so it makes sense they would endorse it" also kind of undermines the argument that nintendo's doing this out of obligation, too. if you can be in a much worse situation than nintendo and let it slide, when nitnendo does it, that's not an obligation, that's being a bit of a dick and getting away with it because you can.

Nitnendo being a first party dev that thrives off of his I Ps also rings a bit hollow to me because so do indie devs, who have quite the number of devs being chill with fangames despite clearly not making the profit nintendo does, while, nintendo also makes a good part of it's money from selling gaming systems, not just first party games.

Whether the whole hosting rom business or the regulation of youtube ocntent falls under the same category in the law as making fangames is irrelevant to the point i'm making, that is that nintendo in a general manner is a bit overptrotective over this matter, and that's it's doing them some bad PR, and the reasoning behind it comes off as a bit unnecessary given how other companies seem to handle the matter. Considering nintendo seem to value PR more than the average game company, it looks counterproductive to me.

Edited by Yumil on Mar 21st 2019 at 11:17:54 AM

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I've been wanting to make a separate TVTropes page for Cadence of Hyrule for a while now, but I want to wait until enough information is out.

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