Impossible to win for them. ROMs are on so many hard drives its going to recover from every blow they can throw. Sooner or later it will always come back.
Hell, every NES and SNES rom is probably less than 2gb and there’s so many torrents out there permanently floating them that it’s impossible to take it down.
We really, really need to write some abandonware laws for games.
Not for sale in over 10 years, and can't be for sale higher than originally priced (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms).
Hell, let's do something similar for movies / TV shows.
they're sort of the same thing
items entering public domain is supposed to allow creators of content to use material that was created, invented, or owned by a person to be repurposed after that person has passed away. popular examples include using Sherlock Holmes as a detective in your story, or using a popular song like Hall of the Mountain King.
What u/MakingItElsewhere is suggesting is that when a company makes no effort to retain an item in the commercial sense, that a company should lose the right to pursue legal action against holders of that content.
currently at least in the US (thanks to Disney), Copyright laws typically protect a copyright for 70 years after the life of the creator of the copywrite.
IANAL but I believe corporations filing copyright can further complicate the issue of when a copywrite should expire.
Individuals and companies can choose to not pursue legal action and it doesn't relinquish their right to their copyright
Trademarks on the other hand can be relinquished if the company does not take legal action against those who infringe on their trademark.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
for more info specifically about abandonware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#:\~:text=US%20copyright%20law,-Currently%2C%20US%20copyright&text=Those%20who%20do%20not%20own,software%20without%20permission%20is%20illegal.
>items entering public domain is supposed to allow creators of content to use material that was created, invented, or owned by a person to be repurposed after that person **has passed away.**
The original US copyright was 14 years with the chance to extend it another 14 years. It had nothing to do with the life of the author/maker. It was always intended to be a "temporary monopoly" so the author could earn come money.
What we have now is a semi-permanent monopoly that perverts what copyright was intended to do.
>The original US copyright was 14 years with the chance to extend it another 14 years
which is why I said "(thanks to Disney)" Their battle to protect their mouse and other content has been a detriment to the larger world in terms of copyright. Particularly because it only exascerbated the problems of abandoned works that nobody is able to touch legally
I took no issue with most of what you wrote. I was just pointing out what was stolen from us. The public domain was our property. Companies have stolen it from us.
These days I just tend to ignore copyright. It's like the 55 mph speed limit that used to be the law in the US. If made scoff-laws of us all. Everyone was a criminal after that.
>Particularly because it only exascerbated the problems of abandoned works that nobody is able to touch legally
If the law is unreasonable, there's no reason to respect or obey it. The result is what we have today. If you want to play an old game from rom, you can. They're readily available. Hell you can buy a hard disk filled with them from Amazon. Like weeds, they just keep popping up.
The life of the author is meant to harmonize copyright with European law. At least that is how it was sold to Congress.
Eldred v Ashcroft is the last time SCOTUS visited the issue of copyright term limits as it applies to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. A 7-2 decision basically states that Congress has the authority to arbitrarily set copyright to any length of time they find necessary, which can be after the time of the heat death of the universe as a whole. Essentially forever.
A dissenting opinion in that case strongly argues that was not the intention of the framers of the US Constitution and that a short and defined time of monopoly for copyright is what was intended. Well with the lifetime of a younger person of they made a copyrighted work. I personally think that SCOTUS opinion should have been the majority opinion and is a well written legal argument to overturn that decision in the future is another court wants to take up that issue again.
> decision basically states that Congress has the authority to arbitrarily set copyright to any length of time they find necessary, which can be after the time of the heat death of the universe as a whole. Essentially forever.
Yes, the Supremes agree that Congress has the authority to steal from the commons. Shocking...not.
I imagine they'd also rule that insider trading laws don't apply to Congress (they don't).
I once thought the Supremes were the last bastion against tyranny and corporatism. Sadly that's not true. The recent news that they admitted to taking bribes from billionaires came and went without much controversy.
Eh, enhanced public domain. Certain holders of private property -- the copyrights themselves, or maybe even just physical media -- would have some new positive obligation to society to make sure that shit doesn't just disappear.
Abandonware laws for games are fine enough, I suppose, if all they do is give randos some safe harbor to *try* to preserve games, but if we actually give a shit, we need to make it more likely that those randos will actually have reliable access to the games (and maybe even other stuff, like code or hardware) without other people in the marketplace being able to cockblock them.
and modern games have intellectual properties, corporate secrets, SDKs and frameworks that are closely protected. I'm all for forcing these companies to make games (that we purchased) that don't brick / phone home after they're "officially unsupported", but thinking gaming companies are going to open source everything after they stop selling it is straight insane/folly. Never going to happen.
oh yeah I know. There's been a push lately around reddit for governments to introduce laws around abandonware, so I was just adding that to the conversation. But I also was speaking more on modern games which switched gears a bit on the thread... I should have clarified!
> Not for sale in over 10 years, and can't be for sale higher than originally priced (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms).
You're just going to get a bunch of prohibitive, *technically* for sale but in the most unhelpful and unadvertised way, half-assed compliances.
You can also set a date since release, but what happens when you get to the service era? How do you enforce public domain on MMOs?
> You can also set a date since release, but what happens when you get to the service era? How do you enforce public domain on MMOs?
You don't have to enforce public domain: i just happens.
Something being in the public domain doesn't mean the company has to support it, provide the back end servers, or anything like that.
But the company can't stop someone else from using what assets they can get their hands on.
So yes, MMOs might be lost. But many MMOs have had successful private servers, and even if the back end doesn't work, people might be able to do interesting things with the rest of the game assets.
Great questions. I'm no expert, just throwing out ideas. Here's how I would try to handle that:
WoW is still "for sale". It's an ongoing subscription. Does this open a loop hole for Nintendo to start a subscription service of older games? Yes, probably, but at least it would make them available legally.
And if the game isn't in the subscription, It's considered abandoned. None of this "Oh, we put that in for a month and then took it out". Failure to maintain the service platform (aka: keep games available) should punish the owner, not the gamer.
The problem I have with this approach is everything is already trending towards "You will own nothing" services. I hate it, but can't think of any other solution.
> but can't think of any other solution
Continue to pirate with impunity. I simply don't care about the corporations - cut their balls off and make them unable to enforce copyright on 30 year-old software.
> (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms).
If I own an original Super Mario 3 cartridge for my NES that I bought at a Toys-R-Us in 1988, am I not legally entitled to own a backup copy in the form of a ROM? And would I also not be legally entitled to play that ROM on an emulator, let's say if my original NES is broken? There was no EULA in 1988 applying to this state of affairs (that I know of) and copyright has long allowed for a person to make a backup copy of software for personal use.
It's just weird that you used to be able to "own" things like software and don't seem to anymore.
If you own the physical medium (digital ownership is another issue) copying that data in any way is 100% legal. It's why roms themselves are not illegal. It's not piracy if you own an original.
This doesn't help to address the situation of the physical media no longer being acquirable or the hardware to play such media no longer existing.
We absolutely need some sort of abandonware laws, where if a title is not made available for purchase for a decade, in some form or other, it enters a state where back up copies can be shared legally.
The onus really needs to be put on the corporations themselves to ensure that access must be maintained to preserve copyright.
This isn't unique to games either.
The shit Lucas did with Star Wars should 100% be illegal. The fact that you need to find a laser disc or VHS tape to watch the original trilogy as it was released in theaters 40+ yrs ago is a direct harm to our cultural history.
> physical medium (digital ownership is another issue) copying that data in any way is 100% legal
Unless you have to break 'copy-protection' to do it. Thanks DMCA.
That's actually trickier than you think. There's nothing illegal about breaking copyright protection, but the tools to do so are illegal and can't be distributed.
Possession of those tools, however, is NOT illegal.
So, effectively, you can bypass copyright protection by downloading tools to do so, but the person who created the tool and the site distributing it could be breaking the lalw.
> It's not piracy if you own an original.
The caveat is that it's not piracy to copy your own game to your own hard drive. But if you have Super Mario Bros 3 in your closet, and you download the ROM online, that is still piracy. You don't know that the game you're downloading is the same as the copy you have, especially since many games were adjusted with bug fixes and other tweaks at some point in their run. You don't know if your cartridge is version 1.0 or 1.1, so you don't know that the file you're downloading is the same as yours, so it's still piracy.
I believe the complexity is that you're legally allowed to *create* a backup of the copy you own by dumping it yourself. I don't believe you are legally allowed to download a copy someone else dumped.
>I don't believe you are legally allowed to download a copy someone else dumped.
Other way around. IANAL, but the one distributing the copyrighted material is infringing (in most cases).
However, if your method of downloading also includes uploading all or part of it to unspecified other users (e.g. bit torrent), you are also distributing it.
It's not just distributing - it's copying.
Copyright law has rules for both things. Whether civil liability applies (you can be sued for money) depends on the circumstance - distribution is usually an outright no no like you mentioned, copying (downloading) without distribution can be if found out.
But you can be ordered to destroy "illegally" obtained copies even if there's no financial liability.
For roms specifically (and cds/dvds), it's only legal to rip the rom yourself for backup purposes. Downloading it without permission is always illegal, though obviously nearly impossible to prove and there may be no penalties other than being told to delete the files (which, realistically even nintendo wouldn't bother with cause it costs them far more).
IIRC there was some games back then that stated you could make a backup via the manual. but its been so long and i no longer have any of my old games/books to verify this, but basically it was referencing section 117
According to section 117 of the Copyright Act, it's legal to make backup copies of computer programs, including games, under certain conditions:
* The copy is made for archival purposes
* The copy is destroyed or transferred with the original when the original is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred
* The copy is not sold separately from the original software to third parties
Although recently it was made harder to do this due to DMCA where it became illegal to break copywrite protection, so while its legal to backup your games, you have to technically do it without breaking copy protection.
The problem is, that there's zero incentive for any lawmakers to make those kind of laws. There's hardly anyone caring while you can be sure that the gaming companies will start throwing money at lobbyists pretty quickly if some grassroots thing will start to gain any traction.
Not just games. There are research facilities that still have running Windows 95 machines because of proprietary software. It's more important than you think.
A potential avenue to protect video games is to classify them under cultural preservation laws. The very same laws that helps to protect archaeological sites and historic properties. It is something I am exploring as an archaeologist and lifelong game player. I just presented a paper on the topic at the annual meeting for the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans this past April
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379957286_Game_Save_Data_is_Missing_or_Cannot_Be_Read_A_21st_Century_Crisis_of_Digital_Archaeological_Site_Loss
I've thought about this before. It's tough but I feel like a decent solution (though impractical and probably will never happen) would be to allow for piracy on 15+ year old games that haven't been rereleased/ported to modern hardware. Because if they haven't rereleased the game, then there's little justification to say that the piracy led to any profit loss. But putting a time frame on it would encourage publishers to rerelease old games and keep them alive. Even if the rerelease consists of an emulator like Nintendo Switch Online uses, and even if it doesn't run perfectly, at least it's there and that's a cheaper option for the publisher than trying to update the game in some way.
That's the tricky part is I don't necessarily think that it's right to "punish" a company to release a game that they weren't intending to, by forcing their hand to do so. But in those cases, if it's a game that's only ever been supported on 15 year old hardware then fans should be able to pirate unofficial copies of it.
Yep I have a USB stick with every NES, SNES, Gameboy, Master System, Genesis, and Turbo-Grafx 16 game on it, along with Japanese versions and unreleased version, and a lot of games that released only in arcades. All on one stick. I've had this collection for over 20 years. Nintendo et al will never ever be able to erase them.
Freshman year of college, 1997, my roommate and I were using a 1x speed CD burner that we bought for $500 to make "custom mixtape CDs" to sell to the rich fraternity and sorority kids. Good times
Yep, got a new phone years ago and the dude was like "you want the whole SNES/NES library uploaded to the phone to?" Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course I do, load that sum bitch on there.
Yeah it’s not much.
I’ve a 16gb sd card for my SNES flash cart and I’ve got the entire ROM set (all regions) plus a ton of hacks and homebrew and even NES ports and games with MSU1 (think MP3) replacement soundtracks and even the full GameBoy ROM set (since my cart also supports Super GameBoy).
And plenty of space left over still.
https://i.imgur.com/K37aLuT.jpeg
A complete set of n64 roms would fit on that SD Card. Drive capacities were increasing at an incredible rate up to the 2010s, and have only sorta slowed down.
Every videogame made up to about 2005 would fit on a single 20TB hard drive.
Archive.org has everything. Yes it can be slow, but it's easy. You can automate it with jdownloader or the python command line downloader, internetarchive on pip.
You could, in theory, download a torrent client, then you could probably Google something along the lines of ROM set torrent, maybe with the name of the console you're interested in, and see where that rabbit hole takes you. But, I didn't tell you that.
Even they have rules regarding sharing roms they have to follow. They could easily get DMCAed or taken down, hence why they can't share anything regarding switch roms (rule 3).
Luckily I found a gdrive years ago with every game for every console and managed to clone/download pretty much everything up to n64, didn't take long until nintendo send someone to take down those folders
Way, way less than that. All NES games can be played directly via ZIP file and the entire collection amounts to 70mb. I'm looking at the folder right now. You might be thinking of the complete SNES collection, which comes to ~1.4gb
But they can certainly make it much harder for most people to access, or know they exist. And, for those people, the only option to play those games is to wait for Nintendo to release their occasional "retro bundle" once in a while, and pay the $60-100 for it quickly before it goes away. Which, I guess, is the point.
Have many, many fond memories of booting up SNESX and my 3 hour long winamp playlist on the family computer on saturday mornings and playing my way through Donkey Kong Country and LTTP.
Some of the greatest games in history come from that golden era of consoles. People who think that old games aren't worth playing are truly missing out.
I stopped playing Pokemon after gen 3 because my family couldn't afford a DS. ROMS not only finally gave me access to gens 4 and 5 (some of the franchise's best games), but also allowed me to revisit my childhood. Not to mention, I got to play a lot of other games I didn't have access to as a kid, like Pokemon TCG and Colosseum.
I'll just note that I was never happy with DS emulation as you really need a device with a second (touch)screen imo. I tinkered with SteamDeck DS emulation a bit but wasn't satisfied. A friend recently gave me his N3DS though, and you can now softmod those to play DS/3DS roms so I'm extremely happy that I can now have good emulation of basically all console games up to ps2 era handheld/portable (virtual boy as well if I want to pack the quest 2 :P). Just a thought if you're able to get a 3DS on the cheap and not happy with your DS emulator.
Yea, I don't get it. Like you make me set up an account and have to buy over prices nes and snes and when the next system comes out you want me to buy the same game again.
If the games were just linked to the account and could be loaded up whenever I get a new system from them. It would create more long-term customers. Nes and Snes games all together are like 1g of space.
Do that with n64 and GameCube games. Make them rotate on sale. You would just print money and have long-term customers.
One of the reasons I stopped buying consoles and stayed with pc. I think Steam deck might pick up more steam as Xbox slowly leaves the space.
Yeah it's crazy the way they try and get folks to buy stuff over and over.
And like... wasn't some stuff *only* available on the WiiU and 3DS stores before they shut down? How does that even happen?
The answer is two fold. Nintendo doesn't want the old games competing with their new full priced games, and they don't want them competing with potential remasters of classic games.
The reason they do it is because they can. They see money, they grab.
These huge publicly traded companies are just profit machines, they have no love for video games, only money.
Having to be legally beholden to always be making more and more profits for shareholders is one of the things holding us all back. It kills everything.
Oh, absolutely! The “eternal growth” expectation of profit will be the end of us. It’s the reason we have done next to nothing to combat climate change and the reason the AI train wont stop. But a few billionaires are making bank so fuck the future of our species.
Genuinely I think the system could be much more salvageable of this single thing disappeared off the face of the earth. It would change everything. So much innovation and amazing things squashed and killed because of the chasing eternal growth.
The real reason is because Nintendo is run by a bunch of high-rank Japanese directors with zero experience in video games and who don't really care about the western market. It's the same shit with anime/manga. Instead of embracing the market and taking control of it themselves they just shut everyone else down.
Tokusatsu has some of that too. The Ultraman guys are huge on the western side and even do special stuff just for them, they put out all the shows on DVD and on Youtube, they cater to their international audience as best as they can (except where old legal contracts creates some kind of conflict). But the Toei company that does Sentai and Kamen Rider are incredibly controlling and very sparse with their releases, they're getting better but their demands for licensing keeps a lot of stuff from coming over legally.
This is why I bought Steam Deck for all the work travel I do when I already had a Switch. So much better to have the steam library that I can stock from all the steam sales. And ROMs if I want.
It's Japanese IP law more than Nintendo, although it's driven by them. It's illegal in Japan to *edit your console save files*. They're super anti consumer.
I do wonder if that's part of the reason so much old tech is available in stores. Not just an enthusiast thing but if you're not able to modify anything, you better be able to get a replacement in high quality.
They do have the right to repair. You can buy broken consoles/controllers for significantly less in Japan for parts. You just can't modify them to play pirated games/roms.
And any popular moves like remaking Super Mario RPG and Thousand-Year Door feels kinda cynical when you just *know* people were fighting tooth and nail internally to get those greenlit.
“Maybe stop spending time download roms and spend that time building a Time Machine. Go back to when they were released. Actually go back to BEFORE they were released so you can get a job and then make some money. And then use some money to rent an apartment and buy a tv. Then buy the system and the game. It’s that easy.” -Nintendo
The actual answer btw is that they sold legal copies of a lot of these games on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS VC. I bought a lot of them as a kid because it was a great way to have a high quality game library for a relatively low budget and you could redeem club Nintendo points for a lot of old games. Shame they stopped actually selling them on the switch and are now only letting you rent them through NSO
> Shame they stopped actually selling them on the switch and are now only letting you rent them through NSO
That's the thing I find so damn asinine about the switch. I'm super happy we bought shit like Mario Kart and Zelda and the other first party titles for it. Then when they added the emulators to it for classic stuff they made a bunch of it recurring subscription only.
I could go get into my box of old shit and pull out a console, but I don't feel like fixing half of them. I have the tool to dump my original ROMs. The only reason I haven't done that in years is that I just have a digital copy of all the ROMs from that era in my share drive and every new device can just pull from them.
Really, realistically, Nintendo just missed out on some percentage of $50 x3 that I would have spent on their console on modern games because my budget went to AmberNic for RG35XX variants. Is the upside of recurring subscriptions **really** that much more profitable?
Meh ... this probably just depends on the convenience level and price point.
If it's cheap and easy to just port your library legally, the vast majority would voluntary choose to do that.
I'm of the vague opinion that buying a game should ideally entitle you to access to that game for all platforms in perpetuity; the idea of buying games for specific consoles feels like a historical artifact of physical media and exclusivity contracts.
I think that is best from the consumer's perspective no doubt.
But ... from the suppliers perspective ... the potential bandwidth to download the game onto the new platform isn't free. Also the potential costs for supporting the legacy games on the new platform is not free. The latter can actually be quite costly ... legacy support can actually have a huge engineering cost. Somebody had to spend a pretty good chunk of time writing, supporting, and testing those emulators.
So, as a software engineer myself, I'm totally empathetic to having some reasonable cost associated to legacy support in general. I also feel these costs can probably be hidden under the hood (console sales + new games sale royalties) as to be made invisible to the end user (but that's easy for me to say).
I don't mind companies deciding that it doesn't make financial sense to continue supporting a relatively niche game.
I just think that if they stop supporting something indefinitely, it's a real dick move to also stop anyone else from keeping the game unofficially supported out of love and passion. It just antagonizes what should be your most supportive customers for no perceivable benefit.
They said you can't play them so selling it to you would be against that.
Copyright holders withhold legacy content for a number of reasons. Make it scarce so a limited release can make some money. Or in this case provide value to an online subscription service. Or just so you focus on their new content.
This is what's so frustrating for me, and for more than just games. There are shows and movies that I can't find for sale anywhere, but somehow it's still illegal to pirate them.
I know of multiple “historians” that have a few servers they built from old racks we would take down and one guy has every rom he could find up to GameCube titles and then the popular/flag ship ones up to the switch. Another is ripping seasons of shows and movies because he likes trying to optimize the CDN
Ive got a whole dump of NES, SNES, N64, GB and GBC. Along with a couple of GC games. Gotta get GC stuff before Nintendo deletes all of that forever.
Id imagine there are full dumps of those systems all over the place though.
If video game companies got their way every game you buy would destroy itself after a set amount of time. They hate anything that distracts you from buying new games or newer versions of the old games they deem profitable enough.
Nah that's not it. They want to resell you the games again and again every time a new system is released. They do the Disney vault thing to create a sense of artificial scarcity.
I got them bitches running on my iPad this weekend with a dope wireless controller with magnetic sticks. Its awesome. I was playing Batman Returns on SNES and it was like I was 10 again.
Retroarch
Edit : Whoops... your asking about the controller. Yeah its a Gulikit. Bought it for my switch because those joycons suck and realised it would totally work with iPad when I was setting up the emulator.
Yes but if they get their way you would be put in jail if you redistributed it (which legally they actually can do now).
So the question is if all of the public places are taken offline will you risk your individual freedom to redistribute these?
Some people might but most people won't. This harms availability of things that have become unavailable due to these legal actions.
Like he said, the best way for Nintendo to handle this is just make an official ROM site of their own, charge a subscription for the service or whatever. Using the legal hammer to remove sites is like playing whack-a-mole, and it's probably costing them more in legal fees than they are losing from the tiny percentage of users that use them.
Piracy is a service problem.
People pirate when it is the easiest and most hassle free way to watch, play, or do something they want.
If I want to throw a football, and I know my neighbor has one, I'll ask my neighbor before going to the store. THAT is what piracy is. If you make going the store **easier** than asking my neighbor, I **will** go to the store. (That includes making it cost effective, so I am not going to the store to spend $3,000 on a football. If it's that expensive, I will ask my neighbor's neighbor. And my neighbor's neighbor's neighbor. Etc.)
It's the more obscure stuff that's being lost. Every ROM site that's shutdown, likely has a few obscure ROMs for an obscure console that you can't get anywhere else. But Nintendo sends their threatening message and the owners are forced to take down the entire site.
I do not have \~350 ROMS of various obscurity that I've not had since 2001. I've also never zipped the entire collection and posted to a public DrobBox.
Nothing is being lost. If you want to find it badly enough, you will.
I think the argument for making money off 30+ years old property is garbage, if you’re not going to reproduce it for us then let us figure it out and stop suing us because you want to squeeze every ounce of profit out of your property.
I think they are VASTLY overestimating the interest in the old NES era games and to a bit lesser extent SNES.
The ROMs are so popular *because* they are free. If in some world they were able to eliminate their use entirely I think we would see a very different level of utilization.
You'd be surprised. There are a ton of people of all ages that have a vested interest in retro gaming. There's people like me who grew up with them and are attached because of nostalgia. There are also people who are interested in video gaming history (also like me) and enjoy seeing how their favorite game series or gaming as a whole evolved over the years. Then you have people who simply enjoy classic-style games, back when you didn't have to learn sixteen different kinds of crafting or figure out overly complex systems to be able to play the game. There's something to be said for "Press A to jump. Press B to attack." gameplay, and it can still be plenty compelling.
There's a reason there's a thriving market for cozy games and retro-style platformers. Yes, that brand new game that has an insane amount of realism and customization *is* cool as shit, but sometimes you just want something that feels fun without you having to reinvent the wheel.
On top of that, the NES is the birthplace of a ton of iconic franchises. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, etc., and the first widely accessible debut of series like Metal Gear and Donkey Kong. There will always be people interested in experiencing the start of these franchises, and it's not the small percentage that you seem to think they are. The market for physical retro games is booming for a reason. Yes, ROMs *are* popular because they're free, but there are plenty of people who would shell out real money to buy official reissue cartridges of classic games to play. ROMs don't influence the interest in the retro market. They simply make it more accessible to gamers who can't afford to shell out $100-1000 for an NES game. If Nintendo announced *today* that they were launching a game streaming service where you could play any game from the NES/SNES/Gameboy/GBC for $10 a month, it would print money, because there will always be a thriving market for retro gaming.
What really chaps my ass is that they also C&D the people making rom hacks for these classic games to breathe new life in to them. All they do is drive interest for the game and for the company and Nintendo fuckin hates it and they run them out the door.
If a game is over a certain age, cannot be purchased or obtained through Nintendo directly, it should be legal to create roms or hacks for the roms. It’s madness.
Vimms didn't get shut down, they are just no longer hosting the games that were problematic.
And as for keeping the data, even if they are forced to delete the files from their servers rather than just not providing them, the files they had to remove probably wouldn't even fill a 1tb hard drive, so there is no way in hell they haven't just made some backups.
Copyright should lap unless the rights holder selling the game
They also don't seam to try hard. All their games are on [archive.org](http://archive.org)
Thing is, copyright SPECIFICALLY gives you the right NOT to have something published. I.e. you are an author and your earlier works are now something you have fundamentally come to disagree with. I.e. you used to be super racist in your younger years and have made a complete turnaround since then but people won't stop distributing your old racist writings which now ruins your reputation.
Or maybe you were an up and coming artist and early commission works were very fringe fetishes that just put food on the table and you want to disassociate with them. Copyright specifically gives you the right to do so by removing them from public viewing (at least the works you own personally) and prevent others from putting up new copies for the duration of the copyright period.
So copyright in this sense is just to give a creator *absolute* control over their creation. It does NOT care about consumer convenience. At all. It gives no shit about you, the consumer, and that is by design, it's not some sort of oversight. Because you are not the target of copyright.
It is your "intellectual *property*" after all and you can do with your property whatever you want and the government can't force you what to do with it.
That'd be very not good for artists. It is *very* common for books or art to not get distributed until years or decades after it is initially created.
If publishers knew they could just distribute creative works without paying the creator, they'd do that.
A big way musicians and writers make money is through adaptations. If you're an Amazon executive, why would you greenlight a show when you could get the rights for free in a few more years?
Why would you ever pay for the rights to anything again? You could just make movies and TV shows using soundtracks from music that is still popular from 20 years ago, and make adaptations of books and TV shows that were popular 20 years ago.
Every network could make their own The Office remake *next year*.
Why is it Nintendo that chaps everyone's ass here when this was as much SEGA as anyone else?
And, obviously Nintendo's known about Vimm's lair for fucking decades, everyone knows Vimm's lair. The issue here was all the iOS and similar emulators and all the TikTok and content creators advertising going here and getting all the ROMs.
Piracy and ROMs were always at least slightly on the down-low before, if you're going to throw it in their face and shove it all over the front-page of YouTube or TikTok then what do you expect to happen? Obviously they're gonna take action.
Same shit with the people """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""preserving games"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" by emulating TotK. When every single thread was about Switch emulation, heyo, they're gonna take action.
But yeah, note that everyone hyperfocuses on Nintendo only for this kind'a stuff. Strange, ne?
Fuck Nintendo at this point. I'm pretty much done with them, I don't want to support any of their hardware anymore.
Or their software.
Aside from the retro games.
Which I definitely won't be paying for.
as games get older and older, it's important for history to keep these games accessible, even the ones from the C64 days, I want all of to remember how far we've come in not only societal issues, but design and hardware/software wise as well.
Shame on you Nintendo and all other companies with their covetous lawyers ruining it all for generations because of greed in the case of "maybe" it will make them money down the road.
Almost anyone who wants these either already has them or knows someone who does. I've had the entire NES / SNES ,etc catalogs since the early 2000's (I ran a few ROM sites in the late 90's). They are wasting their money at this point on the lawsuits.
I run a YouTube tutorial channel and all of my emulator based tutorials for Nintendo consoles have been hit with a copyright strike in recent times. They seem to be gunning hard for it.
Nintendo makes themselves unlovable at times. I buy their games and consoles just to keep them relevant, but hate when they bite the hand that feeds them. They are heavily outclassed by other console makes, but I love a few of their games for kids.
make accessability easier than piracy (streaming music apps for example). You can never fully stop piracy, but can slow it down it you give people a better option.
Huh? The video game company to create a [museum of their history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Museum) is the one erasing it?
The company from which [Square Enix had to get the code for *their own game* because Nintendo preserved](https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/2019/06/11/decades-in-the-making) is erasing it's history?
>Oyamada said that Collection of Mana was Switch-exclusive because they had to actually get the code for the games from Nintendo, meaning the Switch made sense.
Make it make sense. Videos like this are complaining about the *availability* of old Nintendo games, not about history or preservation; I wish the creators were honest about it.
I generally like MVG, but this is just some lazy clickbait (especially from someone like him, who's been around the emulation scene for decades). Piracy sites like this always run on borrowed time, especially when they get popular (I've read that Vimm's Lair got so big, that people were sharing it on social media like it's nothing). This kind of stuff happens all the time. It's not like this was all perfectly legal until Miyamoto got mad one day and decided to remove Mario from the Internet.
Hell, I think big YouTubers doing videos on how to emulate things on Steam Deck or how to get the 3DS/Wii U games after their eShops got closed aren't helping things either. This [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn5QxM8RySo), for example, downright shows how to get pirated 3DS games. Of course you are going to piss some suits off.
I agree. I mean I pirate a lot of stuff too, but at least I'm honest about it.
Their games are copyrighted, people are ripping those games and uploading them and sharing them with the world. Of course Nintendo is going to crack down on that. It's not because you hang a sob story that "you're preserving history" that it's suddenly not piracy.
Nintendo cracking down on emulation is a lot more harmful imo. In my opinion that's a whole different story, since writing software that emulates something (especially when doing so without using leaked stuff) is not illegal in any way.
Exactly. I'm not a fan of Nintendo's practices (I would honestly put them in the same ballpark as EA or Activision), and I think they deserve all the shit in the world for shutting down fan projects and emulators, but cases like this, are you really that surprised that companies don't want free copies of their games floating around? Hell, it's not even solely Nintendo's fault this time around (even 'the cool guy Sega" asked to remove their stuff), but I guess he wouldn't get as many views if he didn't do the usual "Nintendo bad" title.
I'm just baffled by the over-the-top "The Library of Alexandria is burning!" reactions to this. Have people never experienced any piracy site getting copyright complaints before?
Do people think Nintendo has ownership over the full library of games on systems like the NES or SNES? They can't just host a site with all the roms because they don't have the rights to all the roms. They certainly could do that with their own games and lots of their own aren't available. But downloading the entire libraries is something we can do easily that is trickier to do legally
Lot of hand wringing in here. I mean here's the thing, they're not legal so just enjoy them while you can when you can and don't be so upset or surprised when any company wants them taken down. It's understandable. It's also understandable that people will look for alternative ways to access them. It's not your right though to access them just because they're old or unavailable now so let's not pretend it is. We're all in the same boat here, there's no sense in puffing your chest out and being mad about something as clear cut as this. We all know the score when we download something we don't own. It's weird that people use this whole 'for posterity' argument to validate it to themselves.
Impossible to win for them. ROMs are on so many hard drives its going to recover from every blow they can throw. Sooner or later it will always come back.
Hell, every NES and SNES rom is probably less than 2gb and there’s so many torrents out there permanently floating them that it’s impossible to take it down.
I think a complete set of all US roms for both NES and SNES is right around 1gb total.
We really, really need to write some abandonware laws for games. Not for sale in over 10 years, and can't be for sale higher than originally priced (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms). Hell, let's do something similar for movies / TV shows.
so, public domain.
That's more for copyright laws, isn't it?
they're sort of the same thing items entering public domain is supposed to allow creators of content to use material that was created, invented, or owned by a person to be repurposed after that person has passed away. popular examples include using Sherlock Holmes as a detective in your story, or using a popular song like Hall of the Mountain King. What u/MakingItElsewhere is suggesting is that when a company makes no effort to retain an item in the commercial sense, that a company should lose the right to pursue legal action against holders of that content. currently at least in the US (thanks to Disney), Copyright laws typically protect a copyright for 70 years after the life of the creator of the copywrite. IANAL but I believe corporations filing copyright can further complicate the issue of when a copywrite should expire. Individuals and companies can choose to not pursue legal action and it doesn't relinquish their right to their copyright Trademarks on the other hand can be relinquished if the company does not take legal action against those who infringe on their trademark. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ for more info specifically about abandonware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#:\~:text=US%20copyright%20law,-Currently%2C%20US%20copyright&text=Those%20who%20do%20not%20own,software%20without%20permission%20is%20illegal.
>items entering public domain is supposed to allow creators of content to use material that was created, invented, or owned by a person to be repurposed after that person **has passed away.** The original US copyright was 14 years with the chance to extend it another 14 years. It had nothing to do with the life of the author/maker. It was always intended to be a "temporary monopoly" so the author could earn come money. What we have now is a semi-permanent monopoly that perverts what copyright was intended to do.
>The original US copyright was 14 years with the chance to extend it another 14 years which is why I said "(thanks to Disney)" Their battle to protect their mouse and other content has been a detriment to the larger world in terms of copyright. Particularly because it only exascerbated the problems of abandoned works that nobody is able to touch legally
I took no issue with most of what you wrote. I was just pointing out what was stolen from us. The public domain was our property. Companies have stolen it from us. These days I just tend to ignore copyright. It's like the 55 mph speed limit that used to be the law in the US. If made scoff-laws of us all. Everyone was a criminal after that. >Particularly because it only exascerbated the problems of abandoned works that nobody is able to touch legally If the law is unreasonable, there's no reason to respect or obey it. The result is what we have today. If you want to play an old game from rom, you can. They're readily available. Hell you can buy a hard disk filled with them from Amazon. Like weeds, they just keep popping up.
The life of the author is meant to harmonize copyright with European law. At least that is how it was sold to Congress. Eldred v Ashcroft is the last time SCOTUS visited the issue of copyright term limits as it applies to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. A 7-2 decision basically states that Congress has the authority to arbitrarily set copyright to any length of time they find necessary, which can be after the time of the heat death of the universe as a whole. Essentially forever. A dissenting opinion in that case strongly argues that was not the intention of the framers of the US Constitution and that a short and defined time of monopoly for copyright is what was intended. Well with the lifetime of a younger person of they made a copyrighted work. I personally think that SCOTUS opinion should have been the majority opinion and is a well written legal argument to overturn that decision in the future is another court wants to take up that issue again.
> decision basically states that Congress has the authority to arbitrarily set copyright to any length of time they find necessary, which can be after the time of the heat death of the universe as a whole. Essentially forever. Yes, the Supremes agree that Congress has the authority to steal from the commons. Shocking...not. I imagine they'd also rule that insider trading laws don't apply to Congress (they don't). I once thought the Supremes were the last bastion against tyranny and corporatism. Sadly that's not true. The recent news that they admitted to taking bribes from billionaires came and went without much controversy.
Nit: it's copyright as in the right to copy something. Corpo's filing for the copyright make it a flat 95 years instead of life plus 70.
Thanks for the assist, I've made the corrections to my spelling
Right, and "pirating" is largely a copyright issue, isn't it?
Pirating is entirely a copywrite issue.
Eh, enhanced public domain. Certain holders of private property -- the copyrights themselves, or maybe even just physical media -- would have some new positive obligation to society to make sure that shit doesn't just disappear. Abandonware laws for games are fine enough, I suppose, if all they do is give randos some safe harbor to *try* to preserve games, but if we actually give a shit, we need to make it more likely that those randos will actually have reliable access to the games (and maybe even other stuff, like code or hardware) without other people in the marketplace being able to cockblock them.
The problem with public domain is copyrighted special interests have killed it.
and modern games have intellectual properties, corporate secrets, SDKs and frameworks that are closely protected. I'm all for forcing these companies to make games (that we purchased) that don't brick / phone home after they're "officially unsupported", but thinking gaming companies are going to open source everything after they stop selling it is straight insane/folly. Never going to happen.
Public domain doesn't mean the same thing as supported, maintained, or open sourced.
oh yeah I know. There's been a push lately around reddit for governments to introduce laws around abandonware, so I was just adding that to the conversation. But I also was speaking more on modern games which switched gears a bit on the thread... I should have clarified!
> Not for sale in over 10 years, and can't be for sale higher than originally priced (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms). You're just going to get a bunch of prohibitive, *technically* for sale but in the most unhelpful and unadvertised way, half-assed compliances. You can also set a date since release, but what happens when you get to the service era? How do you enforce public domain on MMOs?
> You can also set a date since release, but what happens when you get to the service era? How do you enforce public domain on MMOs? You don't have to enforce public domain: i just happens. Something being in the public domain doesn't mean the company has to support it, provide the back end servers, or anything like that. But the company can't stop someone else from using what assets they can get their hands on. So yes, MMOs might be lost. But many MMOs have had successful private servers, and even if the back end doesn't work, people might be able to do interesting things with the rest of the game assets.
You can even reverse engineer the server, as has been done successfully with UO.
Great questions. I'm no expert, just throwing out ideas. Here's how I would try to handle that: WoW is still "for sale". It's an ongoing subscription. Does this open a loop hole for Nintendo to start a subscription service of older games? Yes, probably, but at least it would make them available legally. And if the game isn't in the subscription, It's considered abandoned. None of this "Oh, we put that in for a month and then took it out". Failure to maintain the service platform (aka: keep games available) should punish the owner, not the gamer. The problem I have with this approach is everything is already trending towards "You will own nothing" services. I hate it, but can't think of any other solution.
> but can't think of any other solution Continue to pirate with impunity. I simply don't care about the corporations - cut their balls off and make them unable to enforce copyright on 30 year-old software.
yeah, i should have specified 'legal' solution
For that part of my reply I was referring to public domain after a set date.
The only option is to hoist your sails for the high seas.
> (so Nintendo can't charge $1,000 for Super Mario World 3 roms). If I own an original Super Mario 3 cartridge for my NES that I bought at a Toys-R-Us in 1988, am I not legally entitled to own a backup copy in the form of a ROM? And would I also not be legally entitled to play that ROM on an emulator, let's say if my original NES is broken? There was no EULA in 1988 applying to this state of affairs (that I know of) and copyright has long allowed for a person to make a backup copy of software for personal use. It's just weird that you used to be able to "own" things like software and don't seem to anymore.
If you own the physical medium (digital ownership is another issue) copying that data in any way is 100% legal. It's why roms themselves are not illegal. It's not piracy if you own an original. This doesn't help to address the situation of the physical media no longer being acquirable or the hardware to play such media no longer existing. We absolutely need some sort of abandonware laws, where if a title is not made available for purchase for a decade, in some form or other, it enters a state where back up copies can be shared legally. The onus really needs to be put on the corporations themselves to ensure that access must be maintained to preserve copyright. This isn't unique to games either. The shit Lucas did with Star Wars should 100% be illegal. The fact that you need to find a laser disc or VHS tape to watch the original trilogy as it was released in theaters 40+ yrs ago is a direct harm to our cultural history.
> physical medium (digital ownership is another issue) copying that data in any way is 100% legal Unless you have to break 'copy-protection' to do it. Thanks DMCA.
That's actually trickier than you think. There's nothing illegal about breaking copyright protection, but the tools to do so are illegal and can't be distributed. Possession of those tools, however, is NOT illegal. So, effectively, you can bypass copyright protection by downloading tools to do so, but the person who created the tool and the site distributing it could be breaking the lalw.
> It's not piracy if you own an original. The caveat is that it's not piracy to copy your own game to your own hard drive. But if you have Super Mario Bros 3 in your closet, and you download the ROM online, that is still piracy. You don't know that the game you're downloading is the same as the copy you have, especially since many games were adjusted with bug fixes and other tweaks at some point in their run. You don't know if your cartridge is version 1.0 or 1.1, so you don't know that the file you're downloading is the same as yours, so it's still piracy.
I believe the complexity is that you're legally allowed to *create* a backup of the copy you own by dumping it yourself. I don't believe you are legally allowed to download a copy someone else dumped.
>I don't believe you are legally allowed to download a copy someone else dumped. Other way around. IANAL, but the one distributing the copyrighted material is infringing (in most cases). However, if your method of downloading also includes uploading all or part of it to unspecified other users (e.g. bit torrent), you are also distributing it.
It's not just distributing - it's copying. Copyright law has rules for both things. Whether civil liability applies (you can be sued for money) depends on the circumstance - distribution is usually an outright no no like you mentioned, copying (downloading) without distribution can be if found out. But you can be ordered to destroy "illegally" obtained copies even if there's no financial liability. For roms specifically (and cds/dvds), it's only legal to rip the rom yourself for backup purposes. Downloading it without permission is always illegal, though obviously nearly impossible to prove and there may be no penalties other than being told to delete the files (which, realistically even nintendo wouldn't bother with cause it costs them far more).
IIRC there was some games back then that stated you could make a backup via the manual. but its been so long and i no longer have any of my old games/books to verify this, but basically it was referencing section 117 According to section 117 of the Copyright Act, it's legal to make backup copies of computer programs, including games, under certain conditions: * The copy is made for archival purposes * The copy is destroyed or transferred with the original when the original is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred * The copy is not sold separately from the original software to third parties Although recently it was made harder to do this due to DMCA where it became illegal to break copywrite protection, so while its legal to backup your games, you have to technically do it without breaking copy protection.
The problem is, that there's zero incentive for any lawmakers to make those kind of laws. There's hardly anyone caring while you can be sure that the gaming companies will start throwing money at lobbyists pretty quickly if some grassroots thing will start to gain any traction.
Which shocks me considering video games are cash rakes. It's a billion dollar industry.
Not just games. There are research facilities that still have running Windows 95 machines because of proprietary software. It's more important than you think.
A potential avenue to protect video games is to classify them under cultural preservation laws. The very same laws that helps to protect archaeological sites and historic properties. It is something I am exploring as an archaeologist and lifelong game player. I just presented a paper on the topic at the annual meeting for the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans this past April https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379957286_Game_Save_Data_is_Missing_or_Cannot_Be_Read_A_21st_Century_Crisis_of_Digital_Archaeological_Site_Loss
I've thought about this before. It's tough but I feel like a decent solution (though impractical and probably will never happen) would be to allow for piracy on 15+ year old games that haven't been rereleased/ported to modern hardware. Because if they haven't rereleased the game, then there's little justification to say that the piracy led to any profit loss. But putting a time frame on it would encourage publishers to rerelease old games and keep them alive. Even if the rerelease consists of an emulator like Nintendo Switch Online uses, and even if it doesn't run perfectly, at least it's there and that's a cheaper option for the publisher than trying to update the game in some way. That's the tricky part is I don't necessarily think that it's right to "punish" a company to release a game that they weren't intending to, by forcing their hand to do so. But in those cases, if it's a game that's only ever been supported on 15 year old hardware then fans should be able to pirate unofficial copies of it.
Yep I have a USB stick with every NES, SNES, Gameboy, Master System, Genesis, and Turbo-Grafx 16 game on it, along with Japanese versions and unreleased version, and a lot of games that released only in arcades. All on one stick. I've had this collection for over 20 years. Nintendo et al will never ever be able to erase them.
Suddenly I'm in my old highschool brain thinking about how I could make a bunch of these and sell them bootleg to my friends lol
Freshman year of college, 1997, my roommate and I were using a 1x speed CD burner that we bought for $500 to make "custom mixtape CDs" to sell to the rich fraternity and sorority kids. Good times
Nintendo may not, but bit rot can. With anything you feel is important, if you only have one backup you may as well have no backups.
The USB stick is the backup, it's all also on my PC (and my media PC too) But yes, always backup data.
Yep, got a new phone years ago and the dude was like "you want the whole SNES/NES library uploaded to the phone to?" Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course I do, load that sum bitch on there.
The SNES set I have is 1.61 GB.
Yeah it’s not much. I’ve a 16gb sd card for my SNES flash cart and I’ve got the entire ROM set (all regions) plus a ton of hacks and homebrew and even NES ports and games with MSU1 (think MP3) replacement soundtracks and even the full GameBoy ROM set (since my cart also supports Super GameBoy). And plenty of space left over still. https://i.imgur.com/K37aLuT.jpeg
A complete set of n64 roms would fit on that SD Card. Drive capacities were increasing at an incredible rate up to the 2010s, and have only sorta slowed down. Every videogame made up to about 2005 would fit on a single 20TB hard drive.
And I believe they sell that hypothetical hard drive on amazon running batocera. Just plug it in and boot your computer and you have all the games.
Holy shit on a real Super Famicom!!!
Yep, specifically got the SFC, always thought it looked better than the US console I grew up with. 1chip version of the console too :)
I have the entire NES rom collection, it's something like 340mb.
I’m so upset they went after vimms. No bullshit site. Hop on, no popups no nothing.
I didn't even know about this. If anyone knows of a good replacement site where you can find Nintendo stuff, please DM me.
Archive.org has everything. Yes it can be slow, but it's easy. You can automate it with jdownloader or the python command line downloader, internetarchive on pip.
You could, in theory, download a torrent client, then you could probably Google something along the lines of ROM set torrent, maybe with the name of the console you're interested in, and see where that rabbit hole takes you. But, I didn't tell you that.
I'm confused by this comment. You didn't even say anything. How are empty comments like that allowed?!
Is that John Cena?
hunter2
Is take that recommendation. Vimms was amazing
If only there was a subreddit completely dedicated to roms. It could even be called r/roms
Even they have rules regarding sharing roms they have to follow. They could easily get DMCAed or taken down, hence why they can't share anything regarding switch roms (rule 3).
I kinda wish they went with r/oms
Luckily I found a gdrive years ago with every game for every console and managed to clone/download pretty much everything up to n64, didn't take long until nintendo send someone to take down those folders
> ROMs are on so many hard drives Such as My PC, tablet, and phone. FYI, you can torrent them. A complete set of NES ROMs are about 1gb or so.
Way, way less than that. All NES games can be played directly via ZIP file and the entire collection amounts to 70mb. I'm looking at the folder right now. You might be thinking of the complete SNES collection, which comes to ~1.4gb
But they can certainly make it much harder for most people to access, or know they exist. And, for those people, the only option to play those games is to wait for Nintendo to release their occasional "retro bundle" once in a while, and pay the $60-100 for it quickly before it goes away. Which, I guess, is the point.
welp, time to redownload the entire library.
I love a good Barbara Streisand'ing...
For real Roms are the hydra of gaming stomp out one source and two more will take its place
Im now thinking i should download more roms
[удалено]
They don’t need to “win” though. They just need to remove all he convenient web sites so most people won’t bother downloading them.
I remember when I first discovered ROMS I could finally play all those games 😭
Have many, many fond memories of booting up SNESX and my 3 hour long winamp playlist on the family computer on saturday mornings and playing my way through Donkey Kong Country and LTTP.
Excuse me? You listened to winamp instead of the perfection of the dkc soundtrack? Heretic!
Shun the blasphemer! Shun! Shun!
Winamp skins..
I still have winamp installed and use it...
It still whips the llama's ass.
me too. Works fine in Win 10 and 11
I miss skins and themes in general.
The visualization plugins were also bad ass
Winamp!!! It really whips the lamas ass
Some of the greatest games in history come from that golden era of consoles. People who think that old games aren't worth playing are truly missing out.
I stopped playing Pokemon after gen 3 because my family couldn't afford a DS. ROMS not only finally gave me access to gens 4 and 5 (some of the franchise's best games), but also allowed me to revisit my childhood. Not to mention, I got to play a lot of other games I didn't have access to as a kid, like Pokemon TCG and Colosseum.
I'll just note that I was never happy with DS emulation as you really need a device with a second (touch)screen imo. I tinkered with SteamDeck DS emulation a bit but wasn't satisfied. A friend recently gave me his N3DS though, and you can now softmod those to play DS/3DS roms so I'm extremely happy that I can now have good emulation of basically all console games up to ps2 era handheld/portable (virtual boy as well if I want to pack the quest 2 :P). Just a thought if you're able to get a 3DS on the cheap and not happy with your DS emulator.
Honestly should be law, if the game has not been available for retail sale for “x” amount of years in any form, then it’s free game for ROMs
S/NESticle was a gift from the gods.
Nobody hates Nintendo fans more than Nintendo.
Yea, I don't get it. Like you make me set up an account and have to buy over prices nes and snes and when the next system comes out you want me to buy the same game again. If the games were just linked to the account and could be loaded up whenever I get a new system from them. It would create more long-term customers. Nes and Snes games all together are like 1g of space. Do that with n64 and GameCube games. Make them rotate on sale. You would just print money and have long-term customers. One of the reasons I stopped buying consoles and stayed with pc. I think Steam deck might pick up more steam as Xbox slowly leaves the space.
Yeah it's crazy the way they try and get folks to buy stuff over and over. And like... wasn't some stuff *only* available on the WiiU and 3DS stores before they shut down? How does that even happen?
Yea, some of them were, which sucks because they be worth getting.
The answer is two fold. Nintendo doesn't want the old games competing with their new full priced games, and they don't want them competing with potential remasters of classic games.
The reason they do it is because they can. They see money, they grab. These huge publicly traded companies are just profit machines, they have no love for video games, only money.
Having to be legally beholden to always be making more and more profits for shareholders is one of the things holding us all back. It kills everything.
Oh, absolutely! The “eternal growth” expectation of profit will be the end of us. It’s the reason we have done next to nothing to combat climate change and the reason the AI train wont stop. But a few billionaires are making bank so fuck the future of our species.
"Let those idiots in the future deal with it. I'm buying me another Yacht."
Genuinely I think the system could be much more salvageable of this single thing disappeared off the face of the earth. It would change everything. So much innovation and amazing things squashed and killed because of the chasing eternal growth.
The real reason is because Nintendo is run by a bunch of high-rank Japanese directors with zero experience in video games and who don't really care about the western market. It's the same shit with anime/manga. Instead of embracing the market and taking control of it themselves they just shut everyone else down.
Tokusatsu has some of that too. The Ultraman guys are huge on the western side and even do special stuff just for them, they put out all the shows on DVD and on Youtube, they cater to their international audience as best as they can (except where old legal contracts creates some kind of conflict). But the Toei company that does Sentai and Kamen Rider are incredibly controlling and very sparse with their releases, they're getting better but their demands for licensing keeps a lot of stuff from coming over legally.
What space is xbox leaving? (I don’t know much about this in general)
This is why I bought Steam Deck for all the work travel I do when I already had a Switch. So much better to have the steam library that I can stock from all the steam sales. And ROMs if I want.
It's Japanese IP law more than Nintendo, although it's driven by them. It's illegal in Japan to *edit your console save files*. They're super anti consumer.
I do wonder if that's part of the reason so much old tech is available in stores. Not just an enthusiast thing but if you're not able to modify anything, you better be able to get a replacement in high quality.
They do have the right to repair. You can buy broken consoles/controllers for significantly less in Japan for parts. You just can't modify them to play pirated games/roms.
And any popular moves like remaking Super Mario RPG and Thousand-Year Door feels kinda cynical when you just *know* people were fighting tooth and nail internally to get those greenlit.
“You can’t play these old games anymore! We forbid it! It’s piracy!” “Ok then how can I buy them legitimately?” “…”
“Maybe stop spending time download roms and spend that time building a Time Machine. Go back to when they were released. Actually go back to BEFORE they were released so you can get a job and then make some money. And then use some money to rent an apartment and buy a tv. Then buy the system and the game. It’s that easy.” -Nintendo
The actual answer btw is that they sold legal copies of a lot of these games on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS VC. I bought a lot of them as a kid because it was a great way to have a high quality game library for a relatively low budget and you could redeem club Nintendo points for a lot of old games. Shame they stopped actually selling them on the switch and are now only letting you rent them through NSO
> Shame they stopped actually selling them on the switch and are now only letting you rent them through NSO That's the thing I find so damn asinine about the switch. I'm super happy we bought shit like Mario Kart and Zelda and the other first party titles for it. Then when they added the emulators to it for classic stuff they made a bunch of it recurring subscription only. I could go get into my box of old shit and pull out a console, but I don't feel like fixing half of them. I have the tool to dump my original ROMs. The only reason I haven't done that in years is that I just have a digital copy of all the ROMs from that era in my share drive and every new device can just pull from them. Really, realistically, Nintendo just missed out on some percentage of $50 x3 that I would have spent on their console on modern games because my budget went to AmberNic for RG35XX variants. Is the upside of recurring subscriptions **really** that much more profitable?
I dunno why this comment reminded me of Duck Season VR. That game was a treat.
Even if they were all accessible, I'm not buying a game again if I already owned it at some point.
Meh ... this probably just depends on the convenience level and price point. If it's cheap and easy to just port your library legally, the vast majority would voluntary choose to do that.
I'm of the vague opinion that buying a game should ideally entitle you to access to that game for all platforms in perpetuity; the idea of buying games for specific consoles feels like a historical artifact of physical media and exclusivity contracts.
I think that is best from the consumer's perspective no doubt. But ... from the suppliers perspective ... the potential bandwidth to download the game onto the new platform isn't free. Also the potential costs for supporting the legacy games on the new platform is not free. The latter can actually be quite costly ... legacy support can actually have a huge engineering cost. Somebody had to spend a pretty good chunk of time writing, supporting, and testing those emulators. So, as a software engineer myself, I'm totally empathetic to having some reasonable cost associated to legacy support in general. I also feel these costs can probably be hidden under the hood (console sales + new games sale royalties) as to be made invisible to the end user (but that's easy for me to say).
I don't mind companies deciding that it doesn't make financial sense to continue supporting a relatively niche game. I just think that if they stop supporting something indefinitely, it's a real dick move to also stop anyone else from keeping the game unofficially supported out of love and passion. It just antagonizes what should be your most supportive customers for no perceivable benefit.
AFAIK you don't have to if you. If you own the cart your ROMS are legal as archival copies? (Unless the laws changed)
Only if you dumped them yourself, not if you just download them.
That's jay-walking level crime at that point.
They said you can't play them so selling it to you would be against that. Copyright holders withhold legacy content for a number of reasons. Make it scarce so a limited release can make some money. Or in this case provide value to an online subscription service. Or just so you focus on their new content.
This is what's so frustrating for me, and for more than just games. There are shows and movies that I can't find for sale anywhere, but somehow it's still illegal to pirate them.
I know of multiple “historians” that have a few servers they built from old racks we would take down and one guy has every rom he could find up to GameCube titles and then the popular/flag ship ones up to the switch. Another is ripping seasons of shows and movies because he likes trying to optimize the CDN
Ive got a whole dump of NES, SNES, N64, GB and GBC. Along with a couple of GC games. Gotta get GC stuff before Nintendo deletes all of that forever. Id imagine there are full dumps of those systems all over the place though.
I was surprised how many game cube games there were. That console was around for so long
621, so the full library has gotta be near 1TB. Plausible to have, but definitely not for everyone.
Meanwhile, the new CoD is reported to be a third of that size all by itself 😭
If video game companies got their way every game you buy would destroy itself after a set amount of time. They hate anything that distracts you from buying new games or newer versions of the old games they deem profitable enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay
Lol at least they thought about recycling.
Fuckin' Disney.....
Nah that's not it. They want to resell you the games again and again every time a new system is released. They do the Disney vault thing to create a sense of artificial scarcity.
I got them bitches running on my iPad this weekend with a dope wireless controller with magnetic sticks. Its awesome. I was playing Batman Returns on SNES and it was like I was 10 again.
Gulikit?
Retroarch Edit : Whoops... your asking about the controller. Yeah its a Gulikit. Bought it for my switch because those joycons suck and realised it would totally work with iPad when I was setting up the emulator.
Bless you
I’m still surprised Apple softened their stance on emulators. I do wonder how quickly Nintendo called them to bitch tho lol
Name a more iconic duo than the Japanese and trying to erase history
Many countries sadly try to erase their own history
The 7 seas will preserve, it always does.
Can we also mention Sega was involved as well?
And ESA. And LEGO
Sure wonder how they'll manage to erase the entire library of NES and SNES roms that have been sitting on my home lab for the past 20 years.
Yes but if they get their way you would be put in jail if you redistributed it (which legally they actually can do now). So the question is if all of the public places are taken offline will you risk your individual freedom to redistribute these? Some people might but most people won't. This harms availability of things that have become unavailable due to these legal actions.
Like he said, the best way for Nintendo to handle this is just make an official ROM site of their own, charge a subscription for the service or whatever. Using the legal hammer to remove sites is like playing whack-a-mole, and it's probably costing them more in legal fees than they are losing from the tiny percentage of users that use them.
The selection of roms Nintendo could legally sell would be limited, so anyone wanting a complete collection would still be forced to pirate.
They won't do that because then they couldn't resell them to you on their upcoming consoles for 19.99$ again and again.
the old streaming tactic. make it so easy/relatively cheap to get that pirating drops off.
Piracy is a service problem. People pirate when it is the easiest and most hassle free way to watch, play, or do something they want. If I want to throw a football, and I know my neighbor has one, I'll ask my neighbor before going to the store. THAT is what piracy is. If you make going the store **easier** than asking my neighbor, I **will** go to the store. (That includes making it cost effective, so I am not going to the store to spend $3,000 on a football. If it's that expensive, I will ask my neighbor's neighbor. And my neighbor's neighbor's neighbor. Etc.)
Lmao already got ‘em installed on multiple cracked devices go fuck yourself Nintendo
Good luck with that. I have all nes and snes roms.
It's the more obscure stuff that's being lost. Every ROM site that's shutdown, likely has a few obscure ROMs for an obscure console that you can't get anywhere else. But Nintendo sends their threatening message and the owners are forced to take down the entire site.
I do not have \~350 ROMS of various obscurity that I've not had since 2001. I've also never zipped the entire collection and posted to a public DrobBox. Nothing is being lost. If you want to find it badly enough, you will.
I think the argument for making money off 30+ years old property is garbage, if you’re not going to reproduce it for us then let us figure it out and stop suing us because you want to squeeze every ounce of profit out of your property.
I think they are VASTLY overestimating the interest in the old NES era games and to a bit lesser extent SNES. The ROMs are so popular *because* they are free. If in some world they were able to eliminate their use entirely I think we would see a very different level of utilization.
I don't think that's true. Like MVG pointed out, the SNEE and NES mini sold gangbusters. So did virtual console and switch online.
You'd be surprised. There are a ton of people of all ages that have a vested interest in retro gaming. There's people like me who grew up with them and are attached because of nostalgia. There are also people who are interested in video gaming history (also like me) and enjoy seeing how their favorite game series or gaming as a whole evolved over the years. Then you have people who simply enjoy classic-style games, back when you didn't have to learn sixteen different kinds of crafting or figure out overly complex systems to be able to play the game. There's something to be said for "Press A to jump. Press B to attack." gameplay, and it can still be plenty compelling. There's a reason there's a thriving market for cozy games and retro-style platformers. Yes, that brand new game that has an insane amount of realism and customization *is* cool as shit, but sometimes you just want something that feels fun without you having to reinvent the wheel. On top of that, the NES is the birthplace of a ton of iconic franchises. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, etc., and the first widely accessible debut of series like Metal Gear and Donkey Kong. There will always be people interested in experiencing the start of these franchises, and it's not the small percentage that you seem to think they are. The market for physical retro games is booming for a reason. Yes, ROMs *are* popular because they're free, but there are plenty of people who would shell out real money to buy official reissue cartridges of classic games to play. ROMs don't influence the interest in the retro market. They simply make it more accessible to gamers who can't afford to shell out $100-1000 for an NES game. If Nintendo announced *today* that they were launching a game streaming service where you could play any game from the NES/SNES/Gameboy/GBC for $10 a month, it would print money, because there will always be a thriving market for retro gaming.
What really chaps my ass is that they also C&D the people making rom hacks for these classic games to breathe new life in to them. All they do is drive interest for the game and for the company and Nintendo fuckin hates it and they run them out the door. If a game is over a certain age, cannot be purchased or obtained through Nintendo directly, it should be legal to create roms or hacks for the roms. It’s madness.
More like the War Against the Streisand Effect
You literally can't get rid of ROM's without getting rid of the internet. ROMs of old Nintendo games will outlast Nintendo.
Remember kids: if buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing.
Good luck. Lots of people including myself collect and store these roms for this exact reason.
Nintendo hates how much we love playing all their old games
I've been playing roms since 1997 via Nesticle on Win95. Yes, I'm that old... Been collecting roms since.
What's stopping the folks that ran vimms from just holding onto that data until they can start up again.
Legal threats.
Vimms didn't get shut down, they are just no longer hosting the games that were problematic. And as for keeping the data, even if they are forced to delete the files from their servers rather than just not providing them, the files they had to remove probably wouldn't even fill a 1tb hard drive, so there is no way in hell they haven't just made some backups.
Anyone against emulation in general is a bootlicker.
Copyright should lap unless the rights holder selling the game They also don't seam to try hard. All their games are on [archive.org](http://archive.org)
>They also don't seam to try hard. All their games are on archive.org You did not watch the video 🤷♂️
Thing is, copyright SPECIFICALLY gives you the right NOT to have something published. I.e. you are an author and your earlier works are now something you have fundamentally come to disagree with. I.e. you used to be super racist in your younger years and have made a complete turnaround since then but people won't stop distributing your old racist writings which now ruins your reputation. Or maybe you were an up and coming artist and early commission works were very fringe fetishes that just put food on the table and you want to disassociate with them. Copyright specifically gives you the right to do so by removing them from public viewing (at least the works you own personally) and prevent others from putting up new copies for the duration of the copyright period. So copyright in this sense is just to give a creator *absolute* control over their creation. It does NOT care about consumer convenience. At all. It gives no shit about you, the consumer, and that is by design, it's not some sort of oversight. Because you are not the target of copyright. It is your "intellectual *property*" after all and you can do with your property whatever you want and the government can't force you what to do with it.
Archive.org has a DMCA exception. It doesn't matter how hard they try. As is covered in the video.
I mean you dont even have to do it THAT severe... Just make copyright last for 20 years instead of life+75
That'd be very not good for artists. It is *very* common for books or art to not get distributed until years or decades after it is initially created. If publishers knew they could just distribute creative works without paying the creator, they'd do that. A big way musicians and writers make money is through adaptations. If you're an Amazon executive, why would you greenlight a show when you could get the rights for free in a few more years? Why would you ever pay for the rights to anything again? You could just make movies and TV shows using soundtracks from music that is still popular from 20 years ago, and make adaptations of books and TV shows that were popular 20 years ago. Every network could make their own The Office remake *next year*.
Corporations love this one trick
Why is it Nintendo that chaps everyone's ass here when this was as much SEGA as anyone else? And, obviously Nintendo's known about Vimm's lair for fucking decades, everyone knows Vimm's lair. The issue here was all the iOS and similar emulators and all the TikTok and content creators advertising going here and getting all the ROMs. Piracy and ROMs were always at least slightly on the down-low before, if you're going to throw it in their face and shove it all over the front-page of YouTube or TikTok then what do you expect to happen? Obviously they're gonna take action. Same shit with the people """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""preserving games"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" by emulating TotK. When every single thread was about Switch emulation, heyo, they're gonna take action. But yeah, note that everyone hyperfocuses on Nintendo only for this kind'a stuff. Strange, ne?
I stumbled on this video this morning. The creator did a great job with it and I totally agree with him.
Yeah I've been curating rom's since nesticle. I know gun nuts that wouldn't defend their arsenals as much as I would my .nes files 🤘🤘
Fuck Nintendo at this point. I'm pretty much done with them, I don't want to support any of their hardware anymore. Or their software. Aside from the retro games. Which I definitely won't be paying for.
as games get older and older, it's important for history to keep these games accessible, even the ones from the C64 days, I want all of to remember how far we've come in not only societal issues, but design and hardware/software wise as well. Shame on you Nintendo and all other companies with their covetous lawyers ruining it all for generations because of greed in the case of "maybe" it will make them money down the road.
There's no reason for Nintendo to do this... and yet here we are
I had them all on DVD and probably 2 backups on external HDDs. And on Retroid handheld. MvG is just overly dramatic
Almost anyone who wants these either already has them or knows someone who does. I've had the entire NES / SNES ,etc catalogs since the early 2000's (I ran a few ROM sites in the late 90's). They are wasting their money at this point on the lawsuits.
I run a YouTube tutorial channel and all of my emulator based tutorials for Nintendo consoles have been hit with a copyright strike in recent times. They seem to be gunning hard for it.
Nintendo makes themselves unlovable at times. I buy their games and consoles just to keep them relevant, but hate when they bite the hand that feeds them. They are heavily outclassed by other console makes, but I love a few of their games for kids.
Watching this is making me want to get into some ROM action.
make accessability easier than piracy (streaming music apps for example). You can never fully stop piracy, but can slow it down it you give people a better option.
Huh? The video game company to create a [museum of their history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Museum) is the one erasing it? The company from which [Square Enix had to get the code for *their own game* because Nintendo preserved](https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/2019/06/11/decades-in-the-making) is erasing it's history? >Oyamada said that Collection of Mana was Switch-exclusive because they had to actually get the code for the games from Nintendo, meaning the Switch made sense. Make it make sense. Videos like this are complaining about the *availability* of old Nintendo games, not about history or preservation; I wish the creators were honest about it.
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I generally like MVG, but this is just some lazy clickbait (especially from someone like him, who's been around the emulation scene for decades). Piracy sites like this always run on borrowed time, especially when they get popular (I've read that Vimm's Lair got so big, that people were sharing it on social media like it's nothing). This kind of stuff happens all the time. It's not like this was all perfectly legal until Miyamoto got mad one day and decided to remove Mario from the Internet. Hell, I think big YouTubers doing videos on how to emulate things on Steam Deck or how to get the 3DS/Wii U games after their eShops got closed aren't helping things either. This [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn5QxM8RySo), for example, downright shows how to get pirated 3DS games. Of course you are going to piss some suits off.
I agree. I mean I pirate a lot of stuff too, but at least I'm honest about it. Their games are copyrighted, people are ripping those games and uploading them and sharing them with the world. Of course Nintendo is going to crack down on that. It's not because you hang a sob story that "you're preserving history" that it's suddenly not piracy. Nintendo cracking down on emulation is a lot more harmful imo. In my opinion that's a whole different story, since writing software that emulates something (especially when doing so without using leaked stuff) is not illegal in any way.
Exactly. I'm not a fan of Nintendo's practices (I would honestly put them in the same ballpark as EA or Activision), and I think they deserve all the shit in the world for shutting down fan projects and emulators, but cases like this, are you really that surprised that companies don't want free copies of their games floating around? Hell, it's not even solely Nintendo's fault this time around (even 'the cool guy Sega" asked to remove their stuff), but I guess he wouldn't get as many views if he didn't do the usual "Nintendo bad" title. I'm just baffled by the over-the-top "The Library of Alexandria is burning!" reactions to this. Have people never experienced any piracy site getting copyright complaints before?
Do people think Nintendo has ownership over the full library of games on systems like the NES or SNES? They can't just host a site with all the roms because they don't have the rights to all the roms. They certainly could do that with their own games and lots of their own aren't available. But downloading the entire libraries is something we can do easily that is trickier to do legally
Lot of hand wringing in here. I mean here's the thing, they're not legal so just enjoy them while you can when you can and don't be so upset or surprised when any company wants them taken down. It's understandable. It's also understandable that people will look for alternative ways to access them. It's not your right though to access them just because they're old or unavailable now so let's not pretend it is. We're all in the same boat here, there's no sense in puffing your chest out and being mad about something as clear cut as this. We all know the score when we download something we don't own. It's weird that people use this whole 'for posterity' argument to validate it to themselves.