I believe that would qualify as making derived work.
You’re looking for legal advice, so the best idea would be to consult lawyer.
http://adlervermillion.com/copyright-illustrated-video-game-clones/
In the past when I was discussing copyright issues (and LGPL/GPL licenses), someone mentioned that some things cannot be copyrighted. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, only their expression. Also, for example, IIRC “int i = 0;” is not copyrightable because there’s pretty much the only one way to do it, and the same principle applies to lots of programming-related code. If programmer is good and writes efficient/elegant code, then portions of it will be hard to copyright, because someone else who’s implementing the same algorithm will probably end with identical code.
I my opinion, you’ll be able to get away with that if you make a game that highly resemble SNK game. A parody, or bunch of highly similar characters. For example, those two chracters are nearly identical:
However, if you start making HD version of original game without permission, you’re in dangerous territory and they may hit you with cease and desist.
Also see Capcom USA vs Data East entry here: