5 weird uses of public domain on gaming

Well, how am I gonna go ahead if I don't mention Knights of the Round every few posts?

As my Game jam aproaches, I think more on these stories and characters that so influenced the gaming landscape. Sure, some like Castlevania and God of war do the obvious and pull familiar names and concepts for you to murder.

But that's not always the case. That's why I present you the 5 weirdest use of Public Domain material in games.

Sonic and the Black Knight

Pulling it off is easy.

The Blue Blur realized awhile ago that it was wasting it's time. Sonic has at times been a plumber, a doctor and a hotel manager. Sonic, though let himself get typecast as a hedgehog.

And so, he went off in the search of a new, marketable Identity. Which is how he ended in Camelot for Sonic and the Black Knight.

As a fish out of water in the Arthurian myth times, Sonic must Hack and slash in a world he never knew,in which not only did swords get jammed in rocks to decide who is king, but also the usual characters from lore such as Lancelot were now played by his friends/enemies.

Is this the fan fickiest shit you've ever seen or what?

It seems like a strange choice, I admit. The Sonic Fan in me hates it for not being Sonic 2, but the realist in me loves that isn't Sonic 2.

Dr Jeckyl and MR Hyde

NOT THE HEAD-BITE!

The story of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde is one that makes sense for a game if you think about it. Drinking something to become an unstoppable monster? That's already an established formula!

The game, though, is not remembered for making sense. The good Doctor must traverse a world full of minor inconveniences, which trigger his rage and make him turn into his evil alter ego.

You just got hustled for a wad of cash, tell me what you gonna do? Act a Fool!

Sadly, the game is even more remembered for  sucking and giving the AVGN material.

Cthulu saves the world

"PART OF YOUR WOOOOOOORLD!"

The works of HP Lovecraft hold a special place in nerddom, especially Octopus Faced Cosmic Monstrocity Cthulu.

Appearing in games from high profile to obscure, there's certainly an interest in using the Great Old One as an antagonist. But one game asked the right question: what if Cthulu was the hero?

"YES, GODDAMNIT, YOU ALREADY SAW THAT EPISODE OF ANCIENT ALIENS!"

So this indie RPG casts you as the nightmare monster, as he, as expected, has to save the world in order to be able to destroy it. You guys can tell me if it's great or no.

Earth Worm Jim 2

What's the russian word for "Groovy!"?

Oh, you don't remember public domain stuff in EWJ2? Well, maybe your ears weren't paying attention. Earthworm Jim uses several songs from the public domain. Funiculi, Funicula for one, is a famous Italian opera I presume  is not an ode to the art of catching puppies.

But perhaps more pointedly, Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture is used in the stage "Jim is now a blind cave salamander" which the titular hero becomes...err, you know.

Well, it could always be worst. This could be Clayfighter.

Besides the obvious asspull that the hero annelid is now a hero reptilian, and how nard crunchingly hard the level could feel, the most memorable part of it was the calm, soothing music, and how much weirder it made the whole thing.

You see, modernly, a lot of folks would have told Tommy Tallarico to just make his own damn music (or, implicitely, to go licence the Tchaikovsky song to whoever owns it). But that's the thing: the maker FELT like this pd song fit this moment, and was empowered to use it.

Mortal Kombat vs DC universe.

"If you hear a lightening, run and be a frightening, because here's a teenager that can tear you in half!"

Oh, you didn't know? There's a public domain character in a Mortal Kombat game! No it's not Santa.

I'm talking about Captain Marvel. NOT Captain Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeaux, or Carol Danvers, the original Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel.

You see, it's a long story, but before Dc had to rename him Shazam, Cap Marvel was a Fawcett comics character. One day the company went under, not in little part thanks to litigation from DC. Dc swooped in and bought the company...all wrong.

You see, DC bought, or so they say, the physical place Fawcett comics was in, but not the assets. This means that DC had the physical original drawings that made up the first Captain Marvel Comic, but not the rights to the works themselves, which means that Cappy (as well as others that never fought Scorpion, so who cares) and his friends started slowly slipping into the public domain.

They got wise and stopped it just before Black Adam got into the mix, but by then it was too late. That means that Captain Marvel, Billy Batson,  the Shazam family up to and including Freckles Marvel belong to all us.*

YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURS HAVE THE RAGE! WE CAME UP WITH THAT!

Essentially all his traits in MKvsDC come from the PD version, albeit his appearance and moves like holding and Shazaming people come from DC's stories.  Later on Midway died, got revived and bought by WB under a different name, and they made Injustice, Gods Among Us, which included Shazam. He's got a little redesign and they finally gave up on him being Captain Marvel (and I guess Mary Marvel is now Mary Shazam, right?)

This is...actually not your father's Captain Marvel.

Altered Beast

Zack Gilliafanakis Looking fit next to Adrien Brody.

Oh , you remember this one, don't you? Two burly bros from the ancient times have to rise from their graves, to knock the snot out of assorted undeads and monsters, eventually ditching their homoerotic human forms to become homoerotic  anthros.

What's from the public domain? The setup. Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom, can't stay out of trouble, and gets captured by a Wizard. Naturally Zeus, Almighty God of Olympus, sends two guys to rescue her. You still get some Goddess on Furry action at the end, though.

"I'd rather give my daughter away to this buff werewolf than get off my lazy ass"-Zeus

Sure, you don't need Zeus and Athena into a story like this to get it going. It's basic rescue the princess shit. But it's still somewhat interesting and weird how they got that going on, and made your characters have no emotional attachment to the lady in question.

King of Fighters/Athena

I hope I'm this modest in EVERY future representation of me.

Similarly, you don't need  Greek Myths to explain why a schoolgirl can shoot fire from her mittens in a fighting game. But in this case it's special.

Athena, wearing a red bikini and purple hair. Are YOU gonna tell a chick gave birth to herself what she can and can't wear?

 Athena once again shows up, in a little known SNK game of her namesake, where she falls down a hole in Heaven and has to fight badguys.

But as things tend to happen in SNK land, it all came to end in SNK's endless crossover series The King of Fighters. There her descendant, Athena Asimiya(first name/last name?), became a mainstay in it. However, Real Athena did show up a few times.

"You see? There, clothes, boom, sexism is over."

Good or bad, weird or serious, the Public Domain has enrichened videogames since the beggining. Perhaps, soon, we can help videogames return the favor in kind?

*But first someone would have to challenge DC's unfounded claim that it still has ownership of the character. Could it be YOU? Also, Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, and Shazam are trademarked, so avoid using those names in promotion or as the title of your work, if yeh know what's good for y'all.

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Wednesday Adams vs NOTHING.

 The Addams Family are 76 years old. From the day the first comic strip by Charles Addams was inked, it was fated to be a big hit.  While my first instinct is to say that the concept of a lurid undead family has proven malleable, the truth in this case is that it's just funny, in the right hands.

But that's not to say it's not malleable. It has to be, it's had several TV shows, Movies, and cartoons, all somewhat adapting the original idea to suit the medium. It's even got an upcoming movie. Right now they've got nothing, but that movie's sure to set the box office on fire.
While that's (not yet) happening, a fan decided to make her own take on the idea, taking the daughter of the family, Wednesday Addams(Christina Ricci in the last movie), and giving her  a modern set story.  I haven't seen it, but I've heard good things.

But alas, live and let die is not a reasonable  idea in Big Media World. The owners of the franchise(not Charles Addams, he's friggin dead) have beheld from their palaces, all the works  available that somehow co-opt Addams Family, and have decided that THIS one is the one that must go away.

I could discuss that within reason, the Addams would already be Public Domain, according to the law of it's day. But I'm gonna do something different.

The Addams Estate, or whatever, is probably within safe legal ground to prohibit this show from existing. But ask yourself: Does the Addams Estate NEED to take down this show?


Now answer: Does the existence of  Wednesday Addams discourage the  Addams Estate from making more ANYTHING Addams Family? What is their loss? Is Wednesday Addams a reasonable alternative to official Addams Family products?  Do they have a Youtube comedy series?
Step back and reflect. Yugi-Oh Abridged and Epic Rap Battles of History might be next on the chopping block.

The very idea of copyright is to protect the creator from overpowering competition against their own creation. Any sane person could tell you that no, Wednesday Addams does not compete with any Addams products of today, because there are none like it. If you told me they had a direct-to-Youtube series, then obviously, this could be argued as competition. Even then, the only thing they would really be competing about would be time, as nothing impedes a watcher of one from simply seeing the other at a later time, and the product is probably distinct enough that both could have it's audience.



What's your favorite series on Youtube? Does it involve copyrighted characters?

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Play me a song, you're the chiptune man...

 

In a few years, it'll be 28 years since 1995. According to copyright laws long since bulldozed, at this time we'd be having videogames for the Nes, Snes, and Sega Genesis enter the public domain.

It's funny to imagine what a world would be like if 99% of all videogames would become public domain. Can you imagine being able to play those games of old...is what I would ask if it wasn´t already possible. Thanks to emulator technology, the games of old, from those who are still bankable to those that licensing and technology would leave behind remain accessible to those unafraid of an FBI raid on their house destroying their lives.

This resurging interest in old style games, in itself, has enabled a growing interest in old style game music. Scour the internet, and you´ll see the trend of chiptune music, music made from  primitive low quality music samples played in sequences similar to what was done in  old games, when games did it because of limitation in memory and storage, but which gave this "game music" a style of it's own. From original compositions, to remakes of more modern songs, to websites dedicated to sharing the samples that can be used for such a thing, the interest in these old bleeps and bloops is stronger than it was before the interet.

 

This might give you a clearer idea

When we discuss the idea of videogames becoming public domain, often people feel that, at our heart, our protest is about not being able to have "free shit that doesn't belong to us, which cost somebody blood sweat and tears to make." But I want you to make an exercise with me:

The premise is this: Let's say every Nes, Snes, and Sega Genesis game had five songs. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that, because the amount of games we're talking about is enormous, but let's say five as a conservative figure.

There are 713 amount of official games for the Nes, 721 ammount for the Snes, and 915 ammount for the Sega Genesis. Put together all those games make 2349 ammount of games.

Now, before I tell you the amount YOU ALREADY LOOKED IT UP IN THE CALCULATOR? LET ME MAKE MY POINT! 99 percent of all works used to lapse  when  re-registry was required, so by that logic most of these games and their 11745 songs would have been public domain, but there's a bit of a catch: Many of these where based on preexisting properties, so songs based on that would obviously not become public domain if the property itself remains copyrighted. So it wouldn't be this amount exactly. The other caveat is that I didn't count all the games for the Gameboy, Virtual Boy, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Arcade, PCEngine, Game Gear, Sega Master System and more that existed back then, so the real amount of songs we'd be able to use should actually be much, much, muuuch higher even when taking into account preexisting copyright, multiple versions/ports, and he odd game that had less than 1 song.

And sure, maybe you want to be original and not set your love scene to "Lesbian Match" from '89 Dennou Kyuusei Uranai because you want to be original. That's fine. But is it so wrong to have a CHOICE between using in a new work music that, let's be frank here, nobody is making any money out of anyway or just making something new?

This is the real tragedy of our current copyright system. Not that I can't play the latest Halo for free 95 minutes after it's come out without facing legal action: but rather that I can't play Halo's Theme in my own game I made until 95 years after it's invented, or even a song from Konami's Raging Fighter for the Gameboy. And no, Martin O'Donnel isn't losing money every time you make a cover of the Halo theme, because Martin O'Donnel makes money COMPOSING, and that theme is ALREADY COMPOSED. He can't compose it anymore, and he certainly can't use the same song on other games, since Micros owns it.



I believe it was Jesus that said that The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The laws do not exist in thin air, they are meant to bring a benefit to the people. Is there a benefit to locking 11745 songs behind a wall of legal uncertainty?  What are YOUR favorite songs in the bleep and bloop genre?

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Walt Disney vs The Public Domain

Now, Uncle Walt! Close the gate! Don't let them get to me!

Walt Disney. Once a man. Long since dead.

Walt Disney certainly understood the power of the public domain. While he certainly invented some great characters, he didn't  burn the midnight oil trying to figure out what his next movie he was going to be about.

Even after his death, his company continued to, unashamedly(because indeed, some today consider it a shame to work on public domain characters, perhaps more as a result of public domain becoming synonimous with "stuff from over 70 years ago.") plunder the public domain. I'll try to get them all, here.

Snow White

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty 2

Maleficent

The Jungle Book

Robin Hood

The Sword and the Stone.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

The Sorcerer's Apprentice(live action)

Cinderella

Ahem-hem!

Cinderella 2


Mulan

Mulan 2

Beauty and The Beast

Beauty and the Beast Enchanted Christmas

Aladdin

Aladdin, the Animated Series

Aladdin The Return of Jafar

Aladdin and the 40 Thieves

A Christmas Carol

And they made a whole series about how Scrooge's greed was actually A GOOD THING!

The Little Mermaid

THe LIttle Mermaid 2

The LIttle Mermaid the TV series

Hercules

Hercules The Animated Series

Peter Pan

Peter Pan Return to Neverland

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

You know...this one?

Tarzan

Tarzan The Series

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book

You know...This one?

Tale Spin

John Carter(but stupidly, they paid to use it)

The Hunchback of Notre Dam

The Hunchback of Notre Dam 2

Treasure Planet

The Princess and the Frog

Frozen

So Disney loves the public domain...as a source for stories. Because when the time comes for Disney to GIVE to the Public Domain, funny things start to happen to copyright law. Disney Lobbies for it's durations to get stretched.

But it's weird, because THEY are in the best of positions to benefit from a growing public domain. Disney's hoarding Mickey Mouse because it gives them bajillions of dollars in merchandising. But they're denying themselves working on Lord of the Rings, Superman, I Robot, and King Kong. They are already in possession of dominant forces in every brand of entertainment, from comics to movies to tv show to books. It's stupid that they, having all these advantages, don't see now that they are keeping themselves from more than they are maintaining.

Sure, they can throw money around to BUY what they don't own. That's their advantage over everyone in pretty much every respect. Perhaps they'd eventually enjoy owning every  popular copyrighted work of the 20th century, and have everyone have to license the rights from THEM. I wouldn't put it past the people who tried to trademark "Dia De los Muertos", "Snow White" and "Seal Team 6". Do you have the money to license the rights to Star Wars from  them? Let me know, by commenting below, or maybe sending me 30 million dollars to my paypal  ...I gots kids to feed, man!) .

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