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Sega's legal team has shut down a fan's massively-ambitious eight-year project to remake the game Streets of Rage.
A Spanish developer, who only goes by the internet handle "Bomber Link", spent the best part of a decade meticulously recreating Sega's Megadrive brawler from scratch. "It does not use reverse engineering nor a single line of code from the original games. It's all based on visual interpretation," Link says on the game's website.
The Streets of Rage Remake project, released for free on PC earlier this month, mashes all three beat 'em ups into one monstrous hybrid fan-game. The final project contains over 100 stages, 19 playable pugilists, 64 enemies and a full 76-song soundtrack remixed by five different musicians.
But just days after the file was released on various download and torrent sites around the web, Sega has stamped down on its release and is trying to get the game pulled. Their first port of call was Link's own downloads on the game's forum.
"Sega have contacted [me] regarding the download hosted on this site," Link writes. "While this issue is being resolved, please do not upload the game for others to download. Any links posted on this site will be removed."
In a statement, emailed to Wired.co.uk, a spokesperson from Sega said, "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."
The game's release wasn't a surprise, of course. Link and more than 20 collaborators have been toiling away at the game since 17 March 2003, and its lengthy, Herculean development has been widely publicised in the eight years since. On the site's FAQ, Link says the crew even notified Sega, long before the game's release.
Sega hasn't released a new Streets of Rage game since the franchise's third installment in 1994. But it continues to re-release the original games, including an iPhone app in 2009. (See update, below, for more).
Spending years on fan-made remakes and tie-ins is always risky business, legally. The developers of online Pokemon battler Pokenet got served with a cease and desist notice from Nintendo in 2010, and the same publisher killed off fan-made Zelda movie The Hero of Time the year before.
Some studios are more lax on the subject than others. No surprises that benevolent PC publisher Valve has turned a blind eye to Black Mesa Source, an eternally-delayed shot-by-shot remake of the original Half Life in the new Source engine.
In a 2007 news post, Valve said, "We're as eager to play it here as everyone else."
Update 12:40 13/04/2011. In rather suspicious timing, Sega will release a port of 1993's
Streets of Rage 2 on iPhone and iPod touch tomorrow, 14 April. It's live now in New Zealand.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
