This year seems to be a pretty bad year for fan-made tribute remakes of classic games. A few months ago, the fan-made tribute game of the first "Metal Gear Solid" game was cancelled. This time, the flames were put off on a browser-based tribute remake of the original "Legend of Zelda" game, dubbed "Zelda30Tribute," courtesy of Nintendo.
The browser-based remake was designed by a couple of hardcore fans of the series who wanted to commemorate the franchise's 30th anniversary. Unfortunately, the use of the characters, as well as the design of the levels in the game, were enough for Nintendo to pull the plug on the project, citing copyright infringement.
The creators of the tribute game announced the shutdown of the project on the game's official page, lightheartedly commenting that the tribute turned out to be too pixel-perfect for Nintendo's liking.
"We're sad about that, but we get it. We started this project because we love Nintendo and the joy they have given us throughout the years. From the start of development, we knew this result could potentially happen. Nintendo has every right to protect their IP. No complaints from us, we had a blast working on this tribute and made some friends along the way," the creators of the game wrote.
The tribute game was not a full remake of the original "Legend of Zelda" title. Rather, it was the beginning of an ongoing project. During the height of its popularity, the browser-based remake only featured three dungeons.
Despite the rather Spartan contents of the tribute game, it was nonetheless quite successful. In the small period of time when it was available, the game was played by about 500,000 users.
The creators of the game have expressed their thanks to those who supported their little labor of love for one of Nintendo's most iconic characters, further stating that the development of the tribute game served as a great learning experience for them.
"Big thanks to the half million folks who played our game! We learned a bunch and wrote some code that others might learn from, too," the creators wrote.
The game would not be wasted, however, as the creators also announced that they would be posting the title to Github soon, as soon as they remove all Nintendo-related assets, of course.
Overall, the short run of the tribute game served as a pretty notable symbol of the character's extreme popularity. If any, the sheer presence of the tribute title was mostly enough to kindle interest in the original game once more.