The right to port the game?

Question

Software porting

There is a certain game for PC, which was released 10 years ago. A few years later, the company (foreign) that released this game went bankrupt and was bought out by some incomprehensible holding company, about which nothing is seen or heard.
A few years ago, a new version of this game was released from a completely different company (domestic). As I understand it, they bought the rights (otherwise, how did they do it?).
I now want to port the game to smartphones. I understand that I cannot distribute the resources of this old version of the game along with the game itself (I can’t?). And I see 2 solutions:
- Contact the owners of the rights and negotiate with them. But how can I find them?
- Deliver the game without resources and tell users to buy the game and put the resources in the right folder on the smart. As far as I know, I shouldn't have any problems in this case.
You can clarify the situation on my questions + maybe someone will have other options to make life easier for the players and me.

Answer 1

If you plan to make money on this game, then why do you need to bother with other people's content? Team up with an indie artist and release an indie game. You can even completely lick the mechanics, but if you have a different name and your own graphics, then experience shows that no one will sue you.
If you are making a port purely for the love of old games and do not plan to make money, then release it anonymously.
And by the way, nothing prevents you from combining both options.

Answer 2

Users do not need trouble with resources. Immediately reduce the number of users by this action by tens/hundreds of times.
Other resources cannot be used.
Another name cannot be used.
That is exactly what cannot be done.
Hire freelancers and make a similar game with similar graphics and similar title. This is what they did in Palm Heroes (a clone of Heroes of M&M II).