Can i put gaming chars in my game

[sandy234]

Will sponsors buy game if i have mario or sonic as playable chars in game. I have seen lots of flash game getting sponsored but is this ok  for  HTML5 games??

[Daikrys]

dunno about the sponsors but this an really big copyright issue and if a copyrightholder notice that you make money with their trademark without having a license for them youre in big trouble, so my advice is: stay away from such ideas

[Lowren]

Indeed, it's not a good idea to use assets from other games, especially if it's a very popular game. You can get into trouble, or publishers simply don't want it and can consider you as someone to avoid.

[@99golems]

This is ethically not OK.

 

I think a good step for anyone who wants to make games is to research the term Intellectual Property. Here's the wiki page, which is a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

[Evan Burchard]

I like to use classic sprites for inspiration, even plot them out manually.  For pixel work, you can learn a lot by tracing.

 

If you search "hama beads [character name]" or "perler beads [character name]" (eg. hama beads mario), you can get a ton of results with keychains magnets and other crafts that people have put together with those iron melting beads.

 

Searching this rather than something like "mario sprite" is good because it isolates earlier, low-fi sprites that are easier to replicate.  Although a search for "NES sprite mario" might give you similar low-fi results, another advantage to seeing the sprites reproduced with beads is that each pixel tends to be delineated very clearly so that it is easy to reproduce.

 

After doing that a few times, the discoveries build up, and you notice patterns that are reproducible like "this characters eyes are like megaman's" or "this character needs an outline so that she stands out in the water and the forest levels."  Also, you might notice the range of quality.  Mario didn't have an outline in the first NES game (so now he and luigi would wash out against backgrounds of red, fleshtone, green, brown, and white(fireflower), so the backgrounds are exclusively if I'm not mistaken, black and blue).  Contrast that with the detailed work (especially the hair) in the FF I characters and the care taken with the outline.

 

tl;dr: I wouldn't recommend lifting outright, but there is a lot to learn from old commercial sprites.