Legality of nostalgia remakes?

Generally no, those assets are copyrighted. Making your own likeness of those environments from scratch is more of a grey area, with precedents going in both directions, but you are never totally in the clear if you are trying to reproduce someone else's intellectual property without permission.

Probably the worst you would get is a cease and desist, but it is always a possibility that someone might claim damages and seek compensation, and that a judge might agree.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. So I can't just use the dumped textures, music, or sound effects. I suppose if I swapped all those out for CC assets or something, then the map layout would be fine?

I know you're not a lawyer, but I still appreciate the input. Thanks.

Pretty sure if you use anything from the original game you are sticking your hand in a hornet's nest if you dont get permission first.

Don't let that discourage you, just find out 'who' to ask, then ask 'em. Worst they can say is no, which is the answer I got for YEARS from MGM about Stargate, now I don't get a 'no', but more of a "we'll see", sort of thing. Meaning if you come up with something they might be able to make money on, they just might let you have a piece :O) Good Luck:O)

Yeah, make sure you ask first. A lot of work went into making a 3D port of Chrono Trigger, and they got threatened by Square's legal team and had to scrap it.

This is an interesting topic for me.

10 years ago I made a 1:1 recreation of a Quake 3 Arena map for Unreal Tournament 2003. I ripped every texture and even the sound and music from the game, packaged it up into a downloadable zip and uploaded it to Fileplanet and Planet Unreal. Both sites still have my original upload going strong and I never incurred the wrath of id's legal team.

The reason? Publicity. It never got more than 1000 downloads total even after all these years. If it became a viral sensation with views numbering in the millions, you'd bet I would have gotten a take down notice at best and a lawsuit at worst.

So what should you take from this? If you plan on providing a completely free experience and in no way profiteering from it, I say go for it. Just do not advertise it at all until it's done and ready to distribute on the internet. This way you avoid cease and desist (can't tell someone to stop doing something if you only found out about it after it was finished) and worst case scenario you get a takedown notice. You'd have to be profiting or making the original IP obsolete for the company to come after you for money.

Sound legal advice? Nah. But what you and I do is innocent enough that we should be fine to fly under the radar and have a fun and enjoyable experience after everything's all finished. I say do it up.

I think I've found a good workaround. My project is GoldenOculus, a Goldeneye multiplayer port for the Oculus. I've contacted the team responsible for the amazing Goldeneye: Source mod (presumably which has already received the greenlight), and they will allow me to use their higher-quality textures and maybe some other stuff for my project! Not only do I sidestep the thorny legal issues of using dumped assets, I also don't have to put up with N64-era 64x64 textures. Win-win!

(presumably which has already received the greenlight)

I would not assume that, they probably just took on the risks and haven't gotten a C&D yet. Although I don't think they are using any of the original assets, so they are probably more in a legal gray area than you could be if you just ripped the original game assets.

Instead of making a completely separate game, you might look into adding Oculus support to the Goldeneye: Source project. I don't know how open it is or if they'd allow someone to come and do that though.