The unofficial Pokémon Prism ROM hack has just been canceled after the hack’s creator received a rather nasty letter from Nintendo. The creator announced the cancellation on Twitter. Apparently, Nintendo’s lawyers aren’t cool with other people using their intellectual properties. A partnership with the Twitch Plays Pokémon community helped elevate the fan game’s pre-release profile, and Pokémon Prism blew up after a preview trailer got millions of views and the developer was planning on releasing the game on Christmas after eight years of work. The game was going to include a new region, an original storyline and 20 badges to collect based on the Game Boy Color games.
“Pokémon Prism has been cancelled,” announced Adam, the one-man developer behind the much anticipated fan project in Facebook post:
Thank you all for your support throughout the years. I’m sorry it ended like this. I will make a longer statement regarding this soon, but expect this page to be shutdown in a few days.
Nintendo’s lawyers were quick to shut Pokémon Prism down once word of the hack spread. Now the creator’s website just has a quick thank you note to fans and a link to the legal notice, provided by Nintendo’s Australian-based legal team.
The game now joins the ranks of Pokémon Uranium and Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R), both fan games and projects that were struck down before their prime by Nintendo’s copyright lawyers. Uranium was hit by a takedown notice just a week after its very successful launch, due to similar copyright issues. Let this be a lesson to any would-be fan game developers: if you’re going to make a Nintendo ROM hack, do it anonymously and release it out of left field.