Copyright Policies From Old Arcade Games

[KanaX]

The protagonist, in my current project, has a cellphone, which I plan to fill with some of the old classics, as a fun easter egg. Does anybody know if I am allowed to make recognizable rip-offs of many of the well known arcade games? Like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, etc.

I was thinking of using my own different graphics and titles to giving an ironic dissimilarity from the original games, but maybe that's not enough?

Thank you for your time.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

There shouldn't be a problem with having knock-off versions of the games. Especially if they are just going to appear on the phone's menu or whatnot. Just think of how many actual playable knock offs of games exist!

You can't use the game's likeness exactly (since all those listed games are still owned by a company) and make sure not to use any element of the game directly. (No liscensed art of the characters, sprite rips, logos, don't use the exact same character designs, names, terms etc etc) Other than that, it's fine. (i love seeing creative knock-off refeerences xD )

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

You could use Pong as it's used almost everywhere (I have a mini kit to build a mini game console with pong in it).

You could also use public domain games. Some maybe bad but they have their own unique spin (at least some of them).

 

[Ramiro]

Pong is in the public domain,

You can use things like eat-man with a triangle eating squares, really and copy the mechanics of pacman, this is legal because you are doing a parody, and parodies are a legal thing.

Same with space invaders, you can do something like "martian attack" and put red ships, really, on that level.

That is why you see things like "Cole-cola" or "Noogle"