Nintendo Takes Down Pokemon Essentials Game Maker Kit

Nintendo of America has recently issued a takedown toward the popular Pokemon fan game creation toolkit, Pokemon Essentials.

Nintendo has a history of being firm regarding copyright protection. Not long ago, their efforts led to the complete removal and shutdown of popular ROM and emulation site EmuParadise. Now they've turned their attention to a community-made program that lets users design and build their own Pokemon games.

Pokemon Essentials provides users with tilesets, sprites, sounds, and other assets from the Pokemon game series. The user can use these assets, combines with some technical savvy of their own, to develop their own fan games. The most popular example was Pokemon Uranium, which was also shut down by Nintendo approximately two years ago.

PokéCommunity forum member Marin recently announced that the forum would no longer host the software, clarifying the community rules thereafter:

"Today, the Pokémon Essentials wikia and all downloads for it have been taken down due to a copyright claim by Nintendo of America. We'd like to share a few important notes on this:

- Please don't freak out about the claim, and there's no reason to get angry with Nintendo or anyone else involved. It doesn't need to be a bigger deal than it should be.
- We will not allow Pokémon Essentials or any of its assets to be hosted or distributed on PokéCommunity. This includes derivatives such as Essentials GS or Essentials DS. We sincerely apologise that we have to do this, but there is no going around it. Mods such as the BW2 Mod which dont feature itself Essentials, are still fine, though.

All other scripts, tutorials, resources and games will still be allowed on PokéCommunity."

Despite Marin's request to leave this be, many internet-goers are up in arms over the takedown. Many believe that this was an unnecessary attack on a project "that isn't hurting anyone." Though this is nothing new to the ongoing debate over the protection of intellectual property.

Others have suggested investing in the popular game engine, RPG Maker. While not explicitly Pokemon related, it offers all of the same potential as Pokemon Essentials, without any copyright issues.