Death of the Author: Fans “Fixing” Games

[conchobhar]

I mean, the photographer explicitly sells these images for this purpose (as in, her photos aren't just a nice coffee table book) with a ready-made license agreement. Someone along the chain definitely knew the deal.

A nice coffee table book is actually exactly where the photos came from:

Designer Judy A. Juracek filed her initial complaint in a Connecticut court on Friday. In the lawsuit, she alleged that Capcom used photos from her copyrighted book, Surfaces, in multiple games, including Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry, and other Capcom games. Surfaces is a collection of 1,200 photographs of textures that Juracek photographed herself; the book is intended to be used for “visual research” for artists, architects, and designers, according to the book’s description. It was originally published in 1996. The collection comes with a CD-ROM of the images — but Juracek said she requires people to license images from her for commercial use by contacting her directly. Juracek said in the lawsuit that Capcom never contacted her for a license.

I agree with Regulus that an accident or oversight is the more plausible explanation here.

 

[Kirin]

So I looked at the actual lawsuit document out of curiosity, and the case that Capcom used scores of photos without a proper license is open and shut, but I'm hella amused by the fact that the supporting photo evidence Exhibit in the document repeatedly refers to DMC as "Devil May Care".

 

[ShakeWell]

A nice coffee table book is actually exactly where the photos came from:

No, they didn't. They came from the CD-ROM, which is why I said it's not just a nice coffee table book.

 

[Becksworth]

Okay, so curiosity got the best of me, and I tried that Other M fan mod, and finished it over the weekend. Random thoughts:

• Many of the flashback sequences have been replaced with just Samus’s giving Adam a thumbs down, which I don’t think is really any better. This just makes her come off as bratty, not independent.
• It’s nice that they added the proper purple Gravity Suit back, but the fact they couldn’t edit the cutscenes accordingly was jarring.
• In sector 2 when you go through the tube on the outside of the ship there is a graphical glitch where the snowflake texture is forming a kaleidoscope pattern out in space. At least I assume it is a glitch and not the mod dev poking fun at the players being in “the snowflake dimension”, in which case I’m not the one trying to fix Other M, now am I, mod dev?
• Adam doesn’t shoot Samus’s in the back in this version. Instead the Metroid Samus encounters just gets the jump on her. This change works perfectly fine, and I’m not sure why the original version didn’t just do this in the first place.
• The traitor is never once referred to as “The Deleter”. I had forgotten about that part until I noticed its absence. That was a stupid name….
• The way concentration works to heal, enemies respawning when you save, the confusing narrative… My god, Other M is the Dark Souls of Metroid.

 

[Droewyn]

I agree with Regulus that an accident or oversight is the more plausible explanation here.

Not super sure about that. Remember the Wii cover art for Okami?

 

[Regulus]

If anything, that strengthens the case for incompetence rather than malice.

 

[Kirin]

I mean sure, but it also points to a company culture where just grabbing whatever off the internet and slapping it into official products was thought of as "eh, sure, it's fine probably".

 

[RT-55J]

Adam doesn’t shoot Samus’s in the back in this version. Instead the Metroid Samus encounters just gets the jump on her. This change works perfectly fine, and I’m not sure why the original version didn’t just do this in the first place.

I've thought about this scene way too much and the best explanation I can think of is that they wanted you to think that Samus was being attacked by the unknown saboteur in that moment (nevermind how it just craters Adam's already absymal charaterization).

A better version of the scene would have had the ice beam shot miss Samus and the metroid at first, have Samus turn around in suspicion, and then have the metroid lunge at her. As is, the scene reads like a very, very bad first draft.

 

[Vaeran]

Characterization, schmaracterization! I'm still mad that Samus never gets to go to Sector Zero, which is described as a rebuilt Tourian complete with Mother Brain. You never even get a peek!

SAMUS: A full 3D replica of Tourian? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of space, localized entirely on this bottle ship?
ADAM: Yes.
SAMUS: ...May I see it?
ADAM: No.
SAMUS: >:|
(Steamed Sams, 2010)

 

[ArugulaZ]

How about "death of the author to avenge the author they themselves killed?" Because there were some pretty lousy home ports of arcade games that are only now getting fixed with hacks.

You remember the crappy Genesis port of the first Mortal Kombat? You know, the one that everyone loved became of the blood, while ignoring that its presentation felt rather second rate next to the Super NES game? It's getting rebuilt courtesy of a guy who calls himself Linkuei, and it's already a lot more satisfying than the original.

It's not JUST because Probe did a crap job with the original port. I'm sure it helps that ROM space is no longer a concern, and Linkuei can pile on the voice samples and digitized graphics without running out of room on the cartridge. It's become apparent in recent years that 16-bit systems were more capable than we realized in the early 1990s... take all those Super NES RPGs with 60-80 megabit file sizes, or the port of Darius on the Genesis Mini that was four times larger than Sagaia on the same system, and proportionately more complete.

Anyway. I don't mind hackers going back to improve past arcade ports, because we have the technology. These games couldn't be done back in 1993 when solid state storage was so expensive, but now that ROMs can be of nearly unlimited size, why not use what's available?

 

[Phantoon]

Yeah, it's fascinating to see what's possible on that generation when storage is no object (or load times, because I guess the Mega CD had pretty much unlimited storage by the standards of that time).