Well, technically speaking, the Title of a game may not be copyrighted so much as it is defined as a trademark, such as Doom or Pac-man, and so on. Trademarks are also protected but under a different set of laws, in that they may fall into "common usage" such as Xerox did after several years.
However, copyright protects the images, code, sound and often the type of game itself, though this has been on a case by case decision by the courts. (You may or may not recall Atari attepting to sue others on the Pac-Man issue, effectively giving them the right to claim ownership of any game with dots and a maze. If memory serves, the court declined this claim.)
As for the release by some authors to the reproduction of their game in alternate formats, (for different machines, etc.,) I know of no list that contains this information. Since the original copyright is in effect for several years after an author's death, so chances are that someone owns the rights to these games.
When it comes to the competition however, since you are not translating the code by the original author(s) and it is a known re-creation, I suspect this is a gray area that would require legal counsel in any attempt to distribute your copy. TGC has probably thought of this already in their intended use of the game that results in the compo, so the best choice is step carefully and follow the rules.
Perhaps someone of the TGC folks can help us in this?
S.
Any truly great code should be indisguishable from magic.
