Great article—I love that the author tried to reach out to the original creator of the game "Below the Root," even though they ultimately failed to secure the rights.<p>I'd encourage anyone with a desire to create an homage to a game they have nostalgia for to just reach out to the original authors. You'd be surprised at how often a simple request like this can lead to you being able to breathe new life into an old game.<p>Story time. A favorite game of mine as a young child was an old DOS game called Redhooks' Revenge. It was essentially a graphical naval adventure where each player would take turns rolling dice and moving their ship. Landing on ports would allow you to conquer them Risk-style, and at various times you would be asked a maritime-themed trivia question depending on the square you landed on. Answering correctly would give you bonuses like rum, water, extra cannons, etc.<p>My sister and I used to play it for hours on end to the point where we'd basically both memorized all the quiz questions. Decades later, I was messing around with the files, attempting to figure out a way to add additional trivia questions. I ended up reverse-engineering the weird binary format of the asset file to randomly inject customized trivia into the game every time it was started. You had to be really careful when injecting the questions not to accidentally alter any additional addresses in the file; otherwise, the game would just crash.<p>Out of random curiosity, I looked up the original company, ImagiSOFT, and got in touch with the author, who happily gave me permission to develop an official sequel, Redhook's Revenge II: Call of Booty.<p><a href="https://specularrealms.com/redhook" rel="nofollow">https://specularrealms.com/redhook</a>