Legal question: using an old game's assets design

[ManuelFLara]

I'm planning to do a shooting game with a retro sci-fi theme and I think it'd be cool if I could use the alien design from Space Invaders as the enemies. The graphics themselves would be remade, of course, but they would be easily recognizable by anyone who has seen them before.

I know there are people (http://www.space-invaders.com/shop/) who use them commercially but it's not inside a game, so I don't know if it'd be legal to use them, as the original game is very old.

Any thoughts?

[shoecake]

perhaps that example website you used wasn't the best example but all the space invader sprites on the site are similar but nowhere near 'pixel perfect' copies of the original sprites which to most geeks (and maybe Taito lawyers) means a lot :p They kind of remind me of the cheap bootleg copies I used to play on consoles in the early 80's :)

[ManuelFLara]

Well that could be an idea. I just want that Space Invaders comes to mind when they see the sprites, but I guess they don't *have to* be pixel-perfect copies. Actually I didn't know those weren't exact copies.

[GBGames]

Well, keep in mind that your goal is to make a person think about Space Invaders, which is something made by another company. If the creatures are trademarked, you will have a problem since trademark protects against people making use of another company's brand or identity.

Otherwise, it may be not be legally clear if you can make your own characters look like them, so may the most expensive lawyer win. B-\