Why the talk about copyright and litigation? This is a fandom community, making tribute games for pleasure alone. Leave the legal world out of it.
Name stealing is frowned upon in any community, of course, but to steal something you must know that the thing you are stealing from exists in the first place. Happening to give your game the same name as someone else's unwittingly is not a crime in any sense of the word; it is a coincidence.
I don't know much about the two games whose shared name sparked this (ridiculous) argument, but I can safely assume the two games are quite different to each other in many respects. In this case, there would be no confusion as to which game one is referring to, as the communities, time frames, plots, game engines, etc. all differ so radically. In this case, the two games having the same name is not a problem at all, in my view.
Note that "community" has a lot to do with it. How many people here are also part of the ROM hacking section on this very forum? How many games in here share their name with a hack, and vice versa? I haven't heard any complaints so far about it. It's because the communities are (mostly) separate from each other, and the game engine is so different. People will have no trouble differentiating between the two, so them having the same name is of little consequence.
I didn't want to participate in this thread, because it was created as a stupid overreaction to a perceived problem by the resident "know-it-all". But there you are...