You see…
It’s okay when THEY do it.
It’s not okay when YOU do it.
That’s how they function.
Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what’s okay. They’re just following the rules as they’ve been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.
You had me in the first half ngl (more like first sentence but close enough)
But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it’s better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say “They don’t have the right!” before we’ve done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we’ll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.
I completely agree with that take, I was just making a joke about how the first sentence reads like the start of a comment that’s about to defend Nintendo
They aren’t the owners of most of the games though, did they ask, in writing, all of the rightsholders for the games they made?
Did they ask the artists if it was ok to re-use their work in a ‘new title’? (according to Nintendo, emulation is transformative)
Would you want to enter a legal battle with Nintendo? This system is broken in a lot of different ways, one of which is the incredible expense of legal fees even if you’re in such an open-and-shut case as someone clearly using your intellectual property without your consent. The one with deeper pockets wins regardless of what the law says.
Well, you know, the games are theirs to begin with.
I see what you mean, and you are correct, but I think it’s more about the games that are being emulated than emulation in itself right?
It would be, if they didn’t target the emulators and only targeted the roms/game data.
The only time the emulators are targeted is when the creators try to profit off them, or am I mistaken?
That’s definitely not the case for Switch emulators.
Yuzu was charging for early access to their emulator, which is what prompted Nintendo action.
Ryujinx doesn’t seem like any legal action was taken, sounds like the creator was given a chunk of cash by Nintendo to take it down.
I hate Nintendo, but you gotta keep the facts straight
I don’t think they paid him off, I think it was more along the lines of “We won’t do anything to you if you stop now”
They also shut down Yuzu forks using the DMCA. If they paid Ryujinx’s dev it was the equivalent of the Mafia bribing a judge while waving a picture of his family.
Totally the same /s
That, and when Nintendo’s code is used in some way to develop the project. Japan has very strict laws on reverse engineering any software, which Nintendo is always set to capitalize on.
Which is still a legal thing to do.
I don’t disagree they are their games, but is it their emulator, or did they just download one of the many online? Really doesn’t matter, just love to see companies bitch about something, then turn around and do it themselves.
What about the fan games that were made of pure passion for the IP that they’ve taken down?
To name a few:
Pokemon Uranium
Pokemon Prism
Mario Maker 64
Another Metroid 2 Remake
Zelda Maker
Ocarina of Time 2D
Zelda 30There are countless others I’m sure.
FUCK Nintendo.
They have to protect their IPs, it is what they have to do by law if they don’t want to lose then.
https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-intellectual-property-or-risk-losing-it/
So it is not really Nintendo’s fault that the IP laws are the way they are.
I understand needing to protect your IP, in some sense, but what I’m getting at is that when a fan game is made, it is a homage to a beloved franchise that fosters love for the IP. If you were a smart company, you would foster this love for your franchise, to entrench the fans you already have, and to gather more fans because you are seen as the company that “does no wrong”, which in turn also increases your profits. Imagine if instead of taking these love letters to your franchise down (which makes you look like an absolute fucking ass to most), you made a feature of it on an official channel. Look at Scott Cawthon and his Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. He encourages people to make fan games using his original ideas and that encourages people to not only love his own games, but to go out and start developing their own little games that include ideas that Scott may not have even thought about including before. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a good way of protecting your IP by taking down blatant rip offs of your game that want to steal money from your fans, and cause confusion to new fans. Then there is the bad way, which is taking down these passionate love letters to your franchise that encourage others to look at the original source and see why they even decided to take the time to create the fan game in the first place. IF the fan game is trying to monetize, then by all means, send a warning. Tell them to not monetize it, and they are free to continue. If they continue, Cease and Desist. Hopefully that makes sense.
If they would carte blanche allow fan games of their IPs then that would weaken the IPs, which could lead to them loosing the IPs completly. For that it is irrelevant if the games are monetized or not.
Nintendo would need to implement some kind of process for developers of fan games to get them officially licensed. But for that to be effective as a tool to protect the IP they could not just give such a limited fan game license to everyone who request it, so a complex request process with multiple steps would be needed, and they would need to deny lots if not even most of the requests.
And this gets even more complicated when the very complex japan software patent system is added to the mix.
Could Nintendo be less shitty? Oh yes they could, but they decided to go the Cobra Kai way and strike first, strike hard, no merci!
Nintendo has never been against emulation. They’ve only been against people playing without paying.
Yes they have. They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
And you can bet that if they could, Nintendo would go out of their way to sue any other emulator developer that emulates their games. The only things saving some of those emulators is technicalities like open-source.
I’m not going to check the whole archive, but going back to at least 2005, Nintendo was asking users to …
report ROM sites, emulators, Game Copiers, Counterfeit manufacturing, or other illegal activities
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124194318/http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html
Here’s some more quotes from the same page where Nintendo is viciously anti-emulation:
The introduction of video game emulators represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.
Distribution of a Nintendo emulator trades off of Nintendo’s goodwill and the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.
Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Nintendo’s been openly emulating their own games since about that time. IIRC, the SNES Virtual Console on the Wii had code from SNES9X in it.
The distinction (which seems nobody cares about) is that Nintendo’s going after copyright infringers. If your emulator doesn’t use any of Nintendo’s code, they ain’t doing shit about it; they’re just gonna steal it, if anything.
Somebody has fed you or you have invented bad information. Neither Yuzu nor Ryujinx, the two Switch emulators which recently ceased development due to intervention from Nintendo, included Nintendo’s code. The Yuzu settlement required those developers to acknowledge that
because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.
There was never any mention of them stealing Nintendo code.
Ryujinx, we know even less about, because the agreement went down privately, but there’s literally zero indication of any stolen code. We know that Nintendo contacted the developer proposing that they cease offering Ryujinx and they did.
Obviously, Nintendo was bothered in both of these cases because the emulators do facilitate piracy, but that’s not the same as them having infringed on Nintendo’s copyright by using their code which you are claiming. Both of these emulators were developed open-source; if they were built using stolen Nintendo code there would be receipts all over the place. That was never the problem.
Yuzu supported unreleased games. To do that required using Nintendo’s code, and getting that code through unauthorized channels. Nintendo’s code may not have been distributed through Yuzu, but it was used in a way that was not permitted in order to engineer a way to circumvent the copy protection of those games. That was how Nintendo was able to go after them.
Dude why are you digging this hole even deeper. They are going after emulators. That’s a proven fact. You can try to handwave it however you wish, but that won’t change reality. Nintendo goes after emulators, after modders, after content creators playing those mods. An emulator can play games, that’s what it’s there for. I don’t see how an emulator would work otherwise.
They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
Because it was being used for piracy. As in, had support in the emulator’s code for unreleased games. Nintendo rarely goes after emulator devs that don’t use their code.
Supporting unreleased games does not mean they used Nintendo code. The whole point of an emulator is to perfectly reproduce the original system. That means working on any switch game, regardless of whether said game has been released or even thought of. In practice it isn’t that simple because they are attempting to replicate a very complex system, so there will usually be patches whenever giant games come out that use the system in different ways. However, that doesn’t mean Nintendo code is being used at all.
Right, but Yuzu did, tho. That’s how Nintendo shut them down. Yuzu overstepped and handed Nintendo their own noose. They probably would’ve been just fine if they hadn’t given out builds with those tools built-in.
AFAIK the Yuzu accusations of containing code from the Nintendo SDK haven’t been proven and also didn’t come out until well after Yuzu had already shut down (it was drama surrounding the Suyu “devs” that tried to succeed them). The whole case was about them profiting off of their patreon and optimizing their emulator for a game that hadn’t been released yet.
It’s not that Yuzu used stolen code, it’s that they released updates that optimized for the leaked copies of Tears of the Kingdom, and charged money for it. If they waited to release builds until after the release, or if they had been doing it for free, they probably wouldn’t have been shut down. You might think this is a small difference, but it really isn’t because having the binary file of a game is not the same as having the code that made the binary. Realistically, if you are good enough at reverse engineering binaries that you can figure out the code well enough to make optimizations for it in the 2 weeks that the game was leaked for before it came out, you are probably getting paid enough that steaking your income on a community-driven emulator would be unthinkable.
Either way, Ryujinx, which didn’t profit like Yuzu did (and is written in a completely different programming language from Yuzu, with a completely different set of developers) still got shut down. Nintendo isn’t doing it because of stolen code, they’re doing it because it’s an emulator that exists.
Please stop slobbering over Nintendick.
I’m not defending Nintendo, dude. I’m explaining how they’re able to shut down emulators. It’s possible to make legal emulators, and Nintendo won’t touch them.
They didn’t use any code. Any keys were dumped from an existing Switch. Yuzu got taken down not as a result of a lawsuit, but because of the threat of one. Famously Bleem won their emulator lawsuit from PlayStation, but still went bankrupt anyway, so most emulator projects don’t even try to fight any legal battles.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling and available on the shelves though. Not that there aren’t legitimate cases for it (homebrew software and games), but that’s not what Nintendo is concerned about.
But screw that for legacy consoles, game preservation is important too.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling
If I hadn’t downloaded Yuzu and BOTW, Nintendo would’ve probably missed out on several hundreds euros my brother spent on buying a Switch, several games, controllers and supplies, albeit some of the supplies are 3rd party so Nintendo probably didn’t make profit off them.
Piracy definitely increases sales. I would have never bought a Switch in the situation I was in some years back, but having downloaded it and gotten very into it, my brother wanted to as well and he didn’t care to pirate, and had actual uses for Switch’s properties that you don’t get on emulators, like online play and the portability of the console itself.
It’s just that it’s hard to actually quantify, so the shareholders will prefer to go with enforcement that forces people to buy the games and console than taking a risk on hypotheticals.
Personally, I never bought a Wii U/Switch and played my fair share of games through emulation only.
Just curious - what size rock do you live under? Is it room sized or as large as a house? How do you decorate? Is it climate controlled?
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who stole it?
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who bought it?
FTFY. The problem is not with Nintendo being against emulators because of piracy, they’re against emulators even if you own the game and the hardware but want to preserve the hardware (just like they do in the museum).
And if the counter-argument is that you don’t own the game when you buy it, then by that same logic you don’t steal it when you pirate it.
A) Yes, if you buy a game you don’t own the game. Only a license to use the software (in this case the game) was bought. This was, in general, even the case back then when games were sold on cartridges or discs. And it is for sure the case now with digital distribution.
B) Also yes, pirating a game is most of the time not theft but it is still against the law to use a unlicensed copy of any software.
If Nintendo were only showcasing games developed AND published by Nintendo, that might be the argument.
They’re not though, some of the games they’re showing they didn’t develop or publish.
Nintendo says emulation is transformative, that due to the recompiler, it’s a new work. Do they have permission from all the rightsholders for third party games to make a transformative work?
Do they even have the permissions from artists who might have licensed their work to Nintendo for X game, but not for the newly emulated ‘Y’
Eww extremely embarrassing that they used Windows.
please get a personality
Getting a personality by dressing their PC exactly the same as anyone else? Sounds right!
i never disputed that??
not alot of people know linux come on
Edit: I forgot linux is commonly used in servers 🤦♂️ but not rlly much in the home side
everyone I know has heard of it, I’ve told em’ about it.
I only know alot of people who use linux here in lemmy and people who like privacy
Edit: excluding server side
The Switch runs a custom version of Android, so they technically know at least one form of Linux
Doesn’t switch use freebsd
Oops you’re right my bad
It doesn’t? The Switch uses an OS based on the OS of the 3DS which is based on FreeBSD and uses a microkernel.
I realized after the fact; at least it has a posix shell though
Nope
I mean…
All of those mini consoles (NES mini, SNES mini) are already SOCs with an emulator.
Corps are shameless. No amount of hypocrisy is enough to make them reconsider their evil.
Yeah, that shallow appreciation is why you can’t truly understand them, it’s like calling a shark evil when it eats a baby seal.
They are, but you need to understand the system so you can know how they get where they get, and how to counter them.
Don’t just be an angry mother seal.
Why are you here? You’re more cringe than Nintendo right now. There’s absolutely no reason to insult that guy.
Because I’ve worked with the marketing assholes who lead to these decisions, and if you don’t get why they make them and how to get them fired for those decisions, you’ll never change anything.
That’s the difference between being a child, and being effective.
Ooohhh, you’re trauma dumping. Well carry on then. Tell us about the good corps who are just getting ruined by evil marketing assholes.
They’re not, Jesus, what is wrong with you?
They’re greedy and ambitious, but also cowardly.
Saying ‘Nintendo’ doesn’t hurt much, the corporation is almost numb to criticism, it knows it will sell games.
Find the marketing moron responsible and destroy his career, that’s the only way you make a difference.
Do this enough times, and eventually they become more afraid of the community’s wrath than their ambition to get a promotion by kissing ass.
Take down a few VPS of marketing, you’re can start influencing them, because they’ll start community outreach before doing shit.
Corporations are a hard outer shell to protect the sensitive inner meat, don’t attack the shell, take down the inner bits.
The people change, but the streets are always the same.
The Switch has a SNES emulator as well
The 3ds was a full on emulation machine. Heck it started with the Wii!
I’d say it started on at least Nintendo 64. The original Japan-only Animal Crossing game for N64 had playable, emulated Famicom (NES) games. Nintendo even ran a special offer to get an N64 Controller Pak with Ice Climber pre-loaded which you could plug into your controller like a game cartridge and play inside Animal Crossing.
Nintendo had uses emulators for a long time. This really isn’t anything news worthy.
Just for the record, this is exactly what any museum would do, because they’re not going to actually run anything on the original hardware. Those systems are part of the collection, and it behooves a museum to not put any wear on them.
Also because emulators can be managed remotely.
Any other museum wouldn’t be a hypocrite for doing so.
In other words, emulators are crucial for game preservation? This shows that Nintendo knows that, and when they say it’s not the case, they’re not simply wrong, they’re lying.
Have they said that’s not the case?
Not in so many words, but this is from their official website:
“While we recognize the passion that players have for classic games, supporting emulation also supports the illegal piracy of our products.”
This is a “Museum” run by Nintendo in Japan. Meaning they could have used or even created more original hardware to run the titles, but instead cut costs by using the same Emulators that they’re hoping to take down.
Them being the original creator of the products doesn’t necessarily imply that they still have running production processes for every product that they ever made.
If I obtain all the original schematics and software and make 1 Nintendo internals for commercial purposes wothout their permission it would be illegal.
If they do it, it costs them the price of a couple of family dinners at most.
This museum IS NINTENDO. They are the only people allowed to do this job correctly.
This is all just speculation. I have no idea how much it would cost for them to build new systems for every playable game in the museum.
Entirely aside from the could argument, I don’t really understand why they would do it.
Its probably against the Emulator’s License unless they built their own from scratch, and a Windows PC is actually pretty overkill.
I suspect they have their own emulators.
I mean they have old games available for new platforms and have had that for multiple generations. One of the things you get with a Nintendo online subscription is a switch catalog full of a bunch of SNES and NES games for play on the switch.
That is highly depending on the type of Museum. Many Videogame and Computer Museums (at least in Germany) are showing the real Hardware running, some are even allowing the visitors to use and play at the old machines. And yes, they are often very used to repairing the hardware too.
I would expect from Nintendo that they would show and use real hardware in their museum, and not some emulators. Because I can see the games on an emulator at home (for example using my Switch Online or my SNES Classic), I don’t need a museum for that experience.
I know to be a certified museum in the US, you must work to preserve your articles in perpetuity, meaning anything that could be detrimental to the article is discouraged if not totally disallowed.
They’re fucking Nintendo. They made the consoles they’re showing off in their museum. They absolutely have the ability to supply that museum with equipment and maintain it in perpetuity, because they fucking invented it
That’s not the point of it though. Not about whether you could fix or maintain it when operating it, it’s about not operating it if presents a notable risk of failure. The Smithsonian doesn’t start grinding cornmeal in a bowl from the Mississippians. The Connecticut Museum doesn’t take it’s colt rifles out the range for target practice. These organizations would use a replica to demonstrate what it was like, as opposed to risking damaging an original article.
Thats also not even necessary true either. While they may have invented there various consoles, at some point it will be nearly impossible to acquire replacement parts. They don’t manufacture the ICs or mainboards or the various discreet components. So if there’s no old stock, how would they “fix” a broken N64 (or later) console? It might be theoretically possible to fab a NEC VR4300 to replace a dead one, but probably cost hundreds of thousands, and it wouldn’t be broken anyway if you hadn’t left if running 16 hours a day so some sweaty tourists could play on real hardware.
And why would they? It would cost more, be more work, and have less reliable results than using a completely replacable computer running an emulator. The entire consumer facing side of the equation is worse if they run the games on the actual hardware, as long as the consumer doesn’t see it, which is really down to how they design the exhibit.
Do you think the public is understanding enough to accept that “The NES is really old and it broke so you can’t play super mario bros today”, when it’s the only day you are gonna be there? Temper tantrum, bad reviews, loss of face. From what I understand, Japan actually cares about all that, so Nintendo probably does as well.
They could replace all the parts in a SNES or NES with components indefinitely, because inside are either off the shelf components or specifically made components made after schematics from Nintendo. So even if nobody makes such parts anymore at the moment there is nothing (but time and money) that would stop Nintendo to order new parts based on their schematics.
Most issues with old consoles can even be fixed by hobbyists and if they can’t that’s because they don’t have access to the needed information to create new versions of the tailor made components.
So there should be no issue for Nintendo to supply their museum with replicas forever. Yes it would cost way more money then using Emulators, but it would be way more appropriate for their own museum. But no they have chosen the lazy route.
Offering visitors a nes or SNES classic - which are recent, official, Nintendo products would be less embarrassing than using a windows PC.
Oh no, poor Nintendo, how could they possibly afford a custom IC fab? They only have more money than God.
The way I see it, they have two choices. Make the investment to supply their museum with original hardware, or be ok with emulation. They’re trying to have their cake and eat it too, and that’s shitty.
That would just be wasteful, and wouldn’t really be the same thing? Analogue already makes N64 FPGAs make things that are almost N64s, and Nintendo doesn’t seem to care.
Your forgetting that Nintendo emulates there own games all the time, literally since the GameCube.
There argument has never been about what they can do, it’s about what you can do. Now they are wrong under US law, but it’s not like it’s hard to go find ROMs of these games, they aren’t even on torrents or shady websites, you can download them directly.
That would just be wasteful
I disagree. If they actually care about the preservation of their history (which is the whole point of museums), they should be willing to invest a tiny fraction of their incredible wealth to do that, if they want to run it themselves.
Your forgetting that Nintendo emulates there own games all the time, literally since the GameCube.
I’m not forgetting anything. That’s my whole point. Nintendo has their own emulators, in both software and hardware. Why are they running some Windows emulator on a Windows PC in their own museum? It makes me think that they just took one of the myriad open source emulators (that they’re probably trying diligently to get shut down) and installed that, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re playing ripped ROMs on it, given that they include ripped ROMs on their own emulation libraries (that they charge people to access, btw). Because they’ve proven that they’re hypocrites when it comes to emulation.
There argument has never been about what they can do, it’s about what you can do.
Right, again, that’s my point. Emulation is fine and dandy when Nintendo does it, but not when anyone else does it, yet they still benefit from those other emulators. That’s shitty.
Ok that is not the case in Germany, here you can have items multiple times, to have some to archive and some to use.
I can see that the preservation aspect is very valid for highly rare or one of a kind items, but that is generally not the case with retro hardware. Yes there are examples for that too (like C65 or other prototype stuff) but nobody would expect a museum to put that to use.
That’s the case… For now.
No one would have cared to preserve a Mosin Nagant from 1892 when they were making 500,000 of them, why would they? You can just go and buy more, the factory is right over there. Fast forward 132 years later, they are scarce antiques. And in another 100 years, there may only be a dozen left.
The entire field of computers as we know it, integrated circuits, is about half as old as that particular rifle, and the technology has changed so fast, it’s really crazy.
So while it might seem like that’s reasonable now, I mean the people who designed those systems are often still alive, even still working. Of course we can still fix and use them.
Now give it 60 or so years, your sitting around in you retirement community, sad you lost the auction for a 2003 eMachines tower PC with all the stickers still attached, kicking yourself about how you tossed one out back in the day.
At least you kept your Atari Jaguar, kept in a hermetically sealed container, that managed to save when you had to evacuate from the 2nd Finnish-Korean Hyperwar.
Edit: Abominable spelling
Unless they store everything in high vacuum and near absolute zero, it’s going to get oxidized and fail eventually. There is no such thing as perpetuity. Might as well give them some use.
You really think an old parchment document would survive being in a high vacuum and near absolute zero?
Yeah sure, nothing lasts forever, but the really not the point. Your goal is to attempt to preserve your articles forever.
Are you going to fall short? Absolutely, but your still required to attempt to do so. So you avoid doing anything directly harmful, such as operating an old computer, firing an old cannon, or diving an old car.
Parchment would survive the vacuum and near zero most likely quite good, parchment is a type of leather after all and way more sturdy then paper, the process of thawing would be a way bigger issue. And should it ever thaw fast and uncontrolled that would for sure ruin it completely
Your body is going to fail eventually, so you might as well stop brushing your teeth and start drinking scotch at breakfast. /s
More like I rather enjoy it while it lasts instead of going into a fridge to preserve it ;P
Even if they don’t use the real old hardware then at least they could have created something that is closer to the original hardware, for example a SNES/NES/N64 console based on FPGA in a recreated original shell. Anything but a stupid emulator running on a Windows PC.
An FPGA seems like a lot of effort, but an SNES emulator running on a Raspberry Pi seems like it may have been a better option IMO.
I am sure that Nintendo is using FPGA for internal R&D, so they have people capable of writing cores for FPGA. Add to that the fact that Nintendo has all the schematics and detailed information about the original hardware and designs.
Yes, a FPGA would have been work, but not lots of work for them. And we are speaking of 8 and 16 bit hardware, that is very small and limited hardware.
Besides that: Windows can run on a Raspberry PI, so maybe the emulator on Windows used by Nintendo is already using that. Who knows?
Making an FPGA for all of this is far more work than pulling an open source emulator and sticking it on a machine…
Yes, but Nintendo did neither the one nor the other.
This looks a whole lot like it’s probably some random emulator they grabbed and full screened?
Why should they do that? They already have their own SNES emulator with Canoe (used for example on the SNES Classic Mini). It is much more logical to assume that they compiled Canoe to run on Windows for this exhibition.
Plus you can do stuff like reset the emulator to a certain state pretty easily. Without having to reboot the hardware or anything. So you could do an exhibit on level 7 and have the game queued up to the level the exhibit is about.
I would not be at all surprised if the Switch NES and SNES emulators are running an open source emulator that they’ve tried to shut down.
Throwback to the NES Classic ROM having a ripper/uploader’s signature in the game code. Because Nintendo didn’t ever bother archiving their own games, and just downloaded ROMs from the same sites they were trying to shut down.
I would. They would have been found out already if it were the case, and they already proved they can develop their own emulators.
They’ve been caught using ROMs downloaded from some ROMs download website, so it wouldn’t be that surprising.
No they have not. If they dumped their own cartridge or had the ROM somewhere in their archives, it would be identical to one downloaded from the Internet. The whole controversy happened because someone saw the iNES headers in whatever release of Super Mario Bros was new at the time. Those headers are added by all NES cartridge dumpers, and the creator of this format developed the NES emulator used by Nintendo in Animal Crossing for the GameCube.
Rom pirates usually trim and sign their releases, specially if they have to break or decode any encryption. These pirate’s signatures have been found in official Nintendo releases. Some of their own emulators have also been found to run piracy emulation software. They are pretty much hypocrites.
Moreover, they’re going to want an emulator that can be managed alongside the rest of the museum software.
pull a WordPress and force a TOS in the license to say you cannot be affiliated with Nintendo in any way in order to use this software.
they want to emulate their hardware? then they can build their own emulator.
I believe they do have their own emulator. It logically would be what powers the Nintendo arcade
folks thought the same for the Genesis and Atari flashbacks but some tinkering found they were using FOSS emulation. IMO FOSS projects should start charging companies that use their products dependent on scale.
Agreed I would totally support emus using a business software license just because of how they’re treated by business.
I assume most FOSS emulators have a non-commercial license, so if a company is using it to make money they are already violating the law, but who is gonna go after Nintendo for that?
If they had that, they’d no longer be FOSS and instead “source available” and half the community will raise the pitch forks. Best FOSS licence to protect against this sort of thing is AGPL because it’s toxic for corporations. But even that could be used in this case if they had the source on the same computer imo (IANAL though)
Good to know, ty!
I would because it’s an open and shut case no judge would deny.
and you would be incorrect, most GPL/fossy licensing doesn’t specifically prohibit commercial use.
The thing is, we know Nintendo does have in-house developed emulators that they used for Virtual Console and then NSO and the Classic Edition.
It’s fairly likely they didn’t take the effort to port those to PC for the museum, but still.
I was joking when in a previous post about the museum I said it better not run on any emulators…
So… Why aren’t they selling said emulators and roms? I ain’t gonna travel half the world to play one in an overpriced museum.
Um… they are, and have been for almost 20 years, since the Wii. Or the N64 depending on how you look at it.
What did you think Virtual Console was? How about the NES and SNES mini? What about the “Nintendo Game Pass” or whatever they’re calling it?
Animal Crossing’s original Japan release had NES games in it, and so did the GC rerelease/psuedosequel we got internationally too.
Even better: During the Wii era, the Wiis at the Nintendo Store in New York City ran official Nintendo made software to load games off a connected hard drive, so you could play multiple of their new releases without workers having to switch discs.
It has always been about attempts to prevent piracy and keep control over how people access their games for Nintendo, and they are roughly 10 years behind the curve on modern tech trends.
Either stop supporting them or get used to it.
The problem is that they had stuff like Virtual Console and then decide to pull the plug. Then rebrand as some other feature in an online service, which is yet another service that’s gonna be a wait and see on whether or when they’ll pull the plug again. Forcing people to pay for old stuff over and over again.
They should sell this kind off stuff independently from their consoles/handhelds, preferably something that runs on a PC or any platform.
The NES and SNES mini were great examples of how it could be done, except there too they decided to only make a limited amount, essentially the same as pulling the plug.
Nintendo’s truly an awful company. It’s baffling how often they get praised for their stuff, they only dangle some 15+ year old reskinned game and people forget all about it.
This is an excellent article that covers how and why the VC died.
People say they want it back, but most titles never sold all that well back then.
I think, like that post mentions as well, that prices were the biggest issue. The points system being a garbage system in the first place, easily a system I would instantly be turned off from, I absolutely hate buying currencies to buy something, instead of just outright seeing the actual prices in the store. But if you’d want to buy a small collection for a couple of decades old games it would add up quickly.
The problem with Nintendo’s always been the insane prices. I’m especially hesitant to buy anything digital or any services from Nintendo. Knowing they could decide to pull the plug any time again.
Probably after people learned that nintendo had no proper account system so you would lose your purchases if your console died and needed the hassle of sending it to them for them to transfer to a new console.
Yeah, I stopped buying from the VC when the Wii U asked me to pay to “upgrade” my games.
There is no way to legally buy their ROMs anymore. You can only rent them in perpetuity. When they did sell them, they didn’t forward port your purchases to their next device, which is hilariously stupid, and you know they’d take you to court for dumping those same ROMs to your PC to organize, customize, and play the way you like them. If they just sold these things DRM-free on a web site for me to put in Emulation Station, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
I’d bet the emulators in use are actually publicly available ones. Not anything Nintendo made. Adding to the hypocrisy.
I hate to defend Nintendo, but they used their own Emulators in the NES and SNES Mini (Kachikachi and Canoe respectively). I would be surprised if they just yoinked one from the internet here.
I mean, they’ve done it before in part.
I can see Nintendo shutting down his own museum for piratery.
His?
John Nintendo, founder and CEO?
I think they dropped a T
Hits
So you admit that emulation is the best way to preserve old forms of interactive media?
if its under GPL couldn’t they be forced to disclose the source code?
Maybe the emulator maker should sue
Maybe they wrote their own emulator
But they own it. I thought even I could download a ROM if I have the actual game no?
No, at least in the US, you can only back up your own ROM if you own the game, not download someone else’s backup. The real problem here is that Nintendo’s (idiotic) stance is ALL emulation/backups are piracy and here they are being hypocrites about it.
ITT: people think emulators are only the ones you can download
In this comment: Someone who is not familiar with the history of Nintendo selling pirated versions of their own games and ripping off pirate emulators then passing them as their own.
or the history of nintendo falsely claiming that emulation itself was an illegal practice when trying to bully and scare people into submission…
Did the terms of the emulators they ripped off allow them to? Not saying it’s morally okay.
Anyway, what’s the point of a museum of a console maker without showing original hardware?
That’s like saying what’s the point of the air and space museum if they’re not actually flying the planes.
They’re not going to use the original hardware and put wear on them. That’s a standard part of archiving.
No it is more like saying “What is the point of going to an museum of art when all the paintings and statues are only photocopies and 3D printed replicas”
They have original hardware on display.
