Eight years of work may have been wasted on what could have been the grandest Streets of Rage game ever.
Fan projects are like the mayflies of the videogame world, in that they seem cursed with a very short lifespans. The most recent causality is Streets of Rage Remake, a fan game inspired by Sega’s classic Streets of Rage titles for the Genesis, which was available for just a few days until Sega pulled the plug.
Street of Rage Remake was the result of eight years of work, although the word “remake” was something of a misnomer. SORR wasn’t based on any individual Streets of Rage game, but was rather a new game that incorporated elements of them all. According to the project’s official blog, all the information about the original Streets of Rage games was gathered by visual comparisons, and all the code in the game is original.
Bomber Games – the site behind the game – said that it had previously contacted Sega about using its copyrighted material, via email at first and then later by way of a formal letter. This doesn’t seem to have protected it however. Sega contacted Bomber Games’ owners and asked it to remove the download links. One of the site’s forum moderators relayed the news, and asked anyone who had downloaded the game, not to make it available anywhere else.
It seems unlikely that Bomber Games will be able to work anything out with Sega. It’s not as if Sega really has anything to gain from SORR’s availability; quite the opposite in fact, as it is still selling the Streets of Rage games, both via downloads and as part of compilations. It doesn’t bode well for projects like the Sonic Fan Remix either, which is a remake of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a game that Sega also still sells.
Source: Kotaku
