Yeah, it really sucks when a publisher squats on an IP they own and refuse to do anything new with it. Why can't they buy those fan projects and let them finish? I think they would make some decent money that way. I was kinda upset that Crimson Echoes got a C&D. The beta was pretty awesome.
My Abusive Relationship With Sega: Streets of Rage Remake
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 On 03/14/2013 at 01:03 PM by Ryan Bunting See More From This User » |
It's not a secret that I'm none too thrilled with the way big name companies handle their business and deal with their fans. My love/hate relationship with SquareEnix has been on a downward spiral like a piece of soiled bathroom tissue in a toilet. I don't understand why companies that have blockbuster intellectual properties do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH THEM. And if they do end up doing something with them, they fuck it up horribly. Now don't get me wrong, I understand that the games industry is an ever changing, living monster, that demands change and innovation, but for fucks sake, who said that a little throwback to the golden days is a bad thing?
Today I'm not going to be talking about Squeenix - I'm going to be talking about SEGA, who used to be one of the top game companies around the time of the Sega Genesis, then fucked themselves with the SegaCD and Sega Saturn, then finally bought the farm after the Dreamcast. Now SEGA focuses purely on game development for other consoles, and continued arcade game development, a transition that happened from 2001 to 2005, and as of lately has been branching off into other realms and partnering with various studios to create new IPs, as well as a possible foray into the online gambling world (Yay SEGA! Take all of my money in one hand of online blackjack!)
The reason I'm talking about SEGA, is because if SEGA was a person, I'd kick it square in whichever genitalia it would bear, for being a complete dick. Why you ask? Because of the cease and desist issued to Bomber Link for Streets of Rage Remake.
If you haven't heard of Streets of Rage Remake (perhaps you've been unconscious since 2003?), then let me fill you in - Streets of Rage Remake is a fan project that spanned EIGHT YEARS that merges all 3 Streets of Rage games into one monstrous game. Oh, and did I mention it's entirely from scratch? No reverse engineering - it's an engine built from the ground up to emulate the SoR games based purely on experience and observation.
We're talking 103 levels, 19 playable characters, including the originals AND brand spankin' new characters, 64 different enemies (holy shit), including enemies based off of the Game Gear SoR, 76 remixed tracks from the original games, arranged by 5 separate composers, individual profiles, custom palette editor to make your own custom enemies, SoRMaker, a level editor/mod creator, an image gallery, 16 cheats, a Battle Mode that acts as a versus mode, Survival Mode, Boss Rush Mode, Event Mode with 16 events, Volleyball Mode (extremely fun!), a shit ton of customizable options to alter the playing style, and last but not least, if you don't have anyone to play with, or literally have no friends, you can have a CPU player as an ally! Seriously, SoR Remake is single handedly the most impressive fan project I have ever had the joy of playing.
That's right. I have it.
SoRR was released, the last Metroid was in captivity, and the galaxy was at peace. Then a few days later, SEGA got a cease and desist boner and shot it over to Bombergames, making them take down the download links. This was a huge shock, as Bomber Link had notified SEGA throughout various stages of development, what was going on with his fan game, and they seemed okay with it, but apparently not so much. This here is a statement from some stuffy jerkoff from SEGA about why they did it.
"SEGA is committed to supporting any fans that take an interest in our games, and where possible we do so by involving them in Beta tests and other development, marketing or research opportunities. However we need to protect our intellectual property rights and this may result in us requesting that our fans remove online imagery, videos or games in some instances."
So what he's pretty much saying in real-life terms is "This fan project is really great, and even though we're not going to do anything with the Streets of Rage franchise except for release it on mobile phones so you can clunkily play on-the-go, and continue to hurl it onto compilations and collections, we need you to take this down, because we can't let a small team of people and their love of one of our games outshine our complete ignorance and negligence of the aforementioned IP. I like dicks."
The message that SEGA would like to convey is: "We hope this isn't Sonic's blood."
So as you can see, the project was sadly taken down, though the website is still up and the forum is still available, but it's just a shell of its former self. That's not to say that you can't find a download somewhere, because as we all know, when any parent company tells the internet to stop downloading something, it gets downloaded 15 trillion more times, so be sure to check the backs of trucks for torre- er... boxes carrying compact discs of Streets of Rage Remake. I even have it ported to my modded Xbox, and it's gorgeous, responsive, and more fun than you can even imagine.
Hey Donovan, I killed 60 of your clones in the first stage, you think a barrel is going to stop me?
This same situation happened to the Chrono: Resurrection project, but I can't talk about that now. I'll cry.
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