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For 30k$ you could make a good "spiritual" sequel/remake and that would be much better present.

I don't really like "spiritual sequels". To me, it's either the thing you loved, or it isn't. Also, there is the fact that not having the rights always leaves open the possibility for the rights owners to eventually weasel their way into your business if your "inspired" project ever ends up getting a lot of attention and/or success.
And there's the original game staying in limbo; it would be so nice if it could be officially made available again. 

Irem said "do whatever you want but change the game name and graphics".

Has anybody by chance ever asked Irem for an estimate of what they'd probably want in order to sell those old rights to the game?
Some years back, I had heard stories about some fans of old obscure games buying the rights from no-longer-gaming-companies for as little as a few grand; that got me to thinking I could probably even buy guardian legend's rights for less than car seeing how it seemed to have very little awareness about it. Then suddenly the value of the game went up out of nowhere (used copies suddenly went as high as forty bucks when it was around ten or so before); this was apparently due to Cinemassacre rating it the number one obscure nes game. At that point I was afraid getting the rights may be notably higher, possibly tens of thousands of dollars. These days, the price and awareness seems down again (though still not as low as originally). Every company wants money, and thus has a "breaking point" on any potential deal where if you throw enough money at them they they'll go "It's yours!" The questions is, where would Irem's breaking point be? If it happened to be under 40k, I could buy it myself as a big Christmas present to everybody. If it were one or two hundred grand, then it would be possible, but take quite a group effort. They'd have to be completely utterly insane to ask for more than a quarter million.
It just feels like such a big waste to have the rights to such an amazing game with such amazing potential to this day just floating in limbo forever...