Sad news for fans of The Legend of Zelda that were anticipating the homebrew love letter in anticipation of the franchise’s 30th anniversary from the folks over at Zelda30Tribute, which would have allowed people to play the original game in voxelated majesty via web browser. Nintendo decided that it wasn’t something that aligned with their plans for the franchise so they asked the creators, Scott Lininger and Mike Magee, to shut the project down. It doesn’t look like it was an acrimonious decision and the two completely understand why Nintendo might consider it an infringement of their copyright. At their website, any and all content regarding the 3D remake has been removed and instead, the following message has replaced it:
SORRY, FOLKS.
Nintendo asked us to remove this site for copyright infringement. I guess Zelda30Tribute was a little too pixel perfect 🙂 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.
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. We plan to post the project to Github soon, once we’ve had a chance to remove Nintendo-owned assets. 🙂
We both have future software projects in the works. If you would like to keep in touch, please follow us on social media or join our mailing list. We’ll let you know!
This was not the greatest game in the world, no. This was just a tribute. Thank you Nintendo for the inspiration!
– Scott and Mike
While Nintendo’s actions are well within their rights and aren’t really deserving of any negative sentiment, it’s such a shame to see the 3D tribute get closed down. Three dungeons had already been completed and it was looking to be a lot of fun. Best of luck to Scott Lininger and Mike Magee in their future endeavors!
How do you feel about Nintendo shutting down the 3D fan tribute for The Legend of Zelda? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
