Nintendo used to have a pretty bad track record when it came to fan projects related to their games, and there have been various incidents where people with good intentions have been prevented from moving forward with their ideas because of the studio’s restrictions. Nowadays though, things seem to be changing, although fans acknowledge that these changes have been coming in slowly. Still, it’s better than nothing. A recently released trailer for a fan remake of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” has been getting a lot of attention on the Internet, and part of that was directed at the fact that Nintendo haven’t made any negative remarks about the trailer yet.
So far, things are looking good for the project, which transforms the original game into a new perspective, bringing it closer to the original entries in the franchise than the more recent ones. The game even shares the same name as the main series, but the fact that it’s called “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2D” doesn’t actually seem to be a problem right now. Of course, if it becomes more popular, that could easily change and Nintendo might send the authors a Cease & Desist, but there is still hope that things won’t reach that state.
Fans have been discussing how the developers of the project could circumvent any possible legal issues. According to some, it wasn’t that smart of a move to put out a public trailer for the game before it’s actually released, as this puts them on Nintendo’s radar and guarantees that the studio will be aware of the project in the future and will be looking at it closely.
The idea of those fans is that the developers should have just released everything at once by surprise once they’re done – the game itself, trailers, screenshots and any other promotional materials related to it. This would have made it harder for Nintendo to track them down and send them a Cease & Desist, especially if the developers put some effort into concealing their identities from the public.
But right now, it doesn’t look like this is actually necessary, given Nintendo’s silent stance on the matter. The studio might not even take any action against the project in the future if they determine it to be a low threat to their own developments, according to some more hopeful fans. And the truth is, Nintendo could actually stand to benefit from such projects, as they can bring extra attention to their future games.
After all, the studio is still actively developing the “Zelda” franchise, and if this game turns out to be successful, it could boost the popularity of any new releases under that brand as well. In the end, this will benefit both Nintendo as well as the developers of “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 2D”. Of course, this will only be valid if the game itself turns out to be good.
We will have to wait and see how that turns out, but there are lots of positive expectations within the community at the moment. People have high hopes for the game, and what we’re seeing in the latest trailer definitely works well to get those hopes up. It’s easy to misrepresent facts in a trailer, that’s true, but on the other hand this tends to happen a bit more rarely with smaller indie projects like this, so we are more inclined to believe that the trailer is a reasonable representation of the game’s current state.