Using other game's sprites

Hi!

I'd like to know if it is legal to use let's say, sprites from some SNES games inside our games if we distribute them totally for FREE?

I mean if I use some characters and objects from a game that I don't get a penny from it, how could it be wrong to do so?

If anyone could inform me about that I'd be grateful.

And if not, do you know any place I could get those for free-of-charge without any usage restrictions? I'm more than a techie than a drawing artist unfortunately... hehe!

Thanks a lot!

• Tom

You may find THIS THREAD covers your question in detail.

After a quick search, these sprite packs may have something useful for you, although I haven't checked them personally.

Thank you for your response, I'll check that out!

Using SNES or any 'ripped' spritesheet always leaves you open to copyright infringement - it's generally not worth it.

I am writing a set of tutorials for the more tech minded / artistically challenged. Check it out:

2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.com

You might also want to check out OpenGameArt:

opengameart.org

Hey,

Thanks for this! I've been looking at your website and I can say you got some very nice skills! And those tutorials looks awesome as well!

I have good photoshop skills in photo manipulation, etc but not in creating original content. You made me download Inkscape!

I'll try out some of your tutorials for sure, if I can make all my own sprites I would be SO proud! I'm very creative and I've been composing music for years, but never had the chance to learn to draw well hehe.

edit: Some of your character models are VERY nice!!! I don't know if you ever made one but I'd like to request a "how to draw streets and building" tutorial. Using this kind of view : That would be a very nice help for me hehe :P

Thanks again!

I can give it a try... It shouldn't be too hard ;)

I think it is tough for us to deal with sprites and general art stuffs. Every time I got lost when I give a try to create some character to be embedded in some game.

I?ve never ever study design concepts before, so I don?t know how to begin. The alternative for this issue is generally seek out for some sprites and relative stuff.

The question remaining:

How to get start for game design? What is the best tools to approach it?

No one can harm you by using grafics from a comercial game into your free game. The only thing they can do is send a e-mail asking you to stop the distribution, and this will only happen if your game makes more sucess than Minecraft...

So, don't waste your time and be happy: http://spriters-resource.com/

If you want to be sure about that, just search for Mario and Zelda fan games and you will find tons of it that use their grafics.

Huge companies like Nintendo doesn't waste their time running against fan games, i think they even like it because fan games only make fans more fans XD

I have a RPG Maker game that use "Tales of" series grafics, and nothing happened.

If you want to see it:

Ah, and remember to say that you does not own the grafics and give credit.