Surprise! Nintendo apparently isn’t a fan of Roystan Ross’ excellent recreation of the first level in Super Mario 64, and they have issued a take down notice on the site where anyone could play it right in their browser. The notice comes just days after news of the project exploded across the Internet, often times leaving the site under too much stress to even load.
The site that once hosted the graphically-updated version of Super Mario 64‘s Bomb-Omb Field is now a paste dump of the email correspondence between the person hosting the site and Cloudflare.
In a statement sent by an attorney for Miller, Nash, Graham & Dunn LLP on behalf of Nintendo, the company asserts that Ross’ recreation infringes on several NIntendo-held patents.
The copyrighted work at issue is Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 video game (U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000788138), including but not limited to the audiovisual work, computer program, music, and fictional character depictions. The web site at http://mario64-erik.u85.net/Web.html displays, and allows users to play, an electronic game that makes unauthorized use of copyright-protected features of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 video game. Nintendo requests that CloudFlare, Inc. immediately disable public access to http://mario64-erik.u85.net/Web.html
In response to the take down notice, the person hosting the site – whose name we never see – claims he was hosting the site for a “good friend who is an avid fan, and built the project from scratch as a tech demo,” but also complied fully with the request.
Immediately upon receiving your request, we have taken down the web player, and replaced it with the original takedown notice verbatim as provided. You can verify this via the original link: http://mario64-erik.u85.net/Web.html
All back-end properties hosting the original files have been updated and files removed. I trust that the issue is fully rectified. If you may be so kind, please follow up your previous contacts with my hosting providers, so they are aware that actions have been taken on the same thread. If you do require any further next step actions pertaining to the take down request, please feel free to reach out at any time, and I will be more than happy to provide assistance in any mean possible.”
As we initially reported when the Super Mario 64 remake came to light, Ross did the majority of the work on the project’s art himself, but he did also rip textures for Mario, Goombas, and the Power Star straight from Super Mario Galaxy. A “large portion” of the sounds and music are also directly taken from past Mario games.
Ross was sure to make a point in his original blog post that the game is free and he makes no money off of it, but as with most of these take down cases, that didn’t make a difference.
So the ability to waste countless hours at work playing the first level of Super Mario 64 at your desk are gone but, as of this writing, the download links on Ross’ own WordPress blog are still functional so it might be worth grabbing it before those go down as well if you’re curious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8-2TF3Okyw
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
