7 ms·

Did Nintendo download a Mario ROM and sell it back to us?

89 points by Jerry2 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago
See Reddit thread when the article was posted yesterday: https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nintendo_download_a_mario_rom_and/ https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nin... Consensus is that this is OK since Nintendo technically has copyright still.
- mod 10y ago
  The speculation I read in that thread was basically that if ripped properly into the .NES format, you would wind up with identical versions (for that game, and many--but not all--others).
  - coldpie 10y ago
    No. NES files as used today contain a few dozen bytes at the start which are used to tell emulators a little bit about the type of hardware that needs to be emulated. This header appears in the ROMs that Nintendo is selling. Nintendo would not have invented precisely the same header as is used by unofficial emulators by chance. Note that no one is claiming that this is illegal on Nintendo's part.
    - eridius 10y ago
      Nobody's suggesting that they chanced upon the same header. That's ridiculous. The suggestion is that they're using the same tools to rip the ROM, and/or they're just re-using the format because it's a pre-existing format that does the job.
DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
The ROM is their copyright, so this is the same thing as someone at Universal records 'torrenting one of their artist's discographies and selling it on a DVD instead of using their own archives (though this analogy holds true only if Nintendo acquired an originally unauthorized ROM dump made by an unaffiliated third-party and simply repackaged it in the Virtual Console - it could also just be the case that Nintendo made their own ROM dump but used the same tools as the scurvy pirates, that way it would still have the same ROM file header). I'm far more interested to learn if the Virtual Console itself uses any open-source code to power the emulator - and if it means there's a potential GPL or other copyleft license violation going on - because that would be deliciously ironic for their very strong anti-(unauthorized)-emulation stance - what better endorsement than to have your own open-source emulator repurposed by Nintendo themselves?
- sago 10y ago
  It's a little more than the torrenting analogy. The ROM is in a format that was developed by and for emulators that they claim should not exist. They relied on the work put in by emulator creators that they tried to fight into nonexistence. Your last paragraph is pertinent question. But even if not an infringement, it is surely hypocrisy of the highest order.
  - eridius 10y ago
    They used a format someone else defined. I don't know why you think that's hypocritical. It's not like defining a new file format is especially hard. If the format hadn't already existed, they could have created their own equivalent format. But since it does exist, it seems perfectly reasonable for Nintendo to re-use that format.
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      The format isn't the hypocrisy. Nintendo has always been very consistently anti-emulation. They always attempt to frame emulators as software that enables "downloading illegally copied software"[1] to be played on "unauthorized hardware"[1]. Of course they never mention the word "emulator" when talking about their "virtual console" games or their GBA "ports" of NES games that simply emulated the original ROM. [1] https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
      - toast0 10y ago
        Virtual console and the NES classic are legally copied software played on authorized hardware, so it's not the same thing as what they've vivified. If you stuff illegally copied roms onto your mini NES, they're not really going to be happy either - I don't see how this is hypocritical.
        pdkl95 10y ago
        This isn't about legal status. It's Nintendo's well-known bad attitude towards any use of their products that is even slightly outside their intended use. (Also, copyright is generally civil, not criminal. Copying a copyright protected work shouldn't be described as "illegal" or a crime, but may make you civilly liable for damages.) >> They always attempt to frame emulators as [...] For many, many years Nintendo tried to pain emulators as only being used to infringe copyright. They are have been dissembling about emulation (and copyright) for >15 years. "Emulator" is a bad word to Nintendo, far more so than other video game companies. This is why they called the network downloads on the Wii a "Virtual Console" (it's kind of like the original console, just "virtual"). They claim that the NES Classic "...is a miniaturized version of the groundbreaking NES, originally released in 1985."[1] which implies that they may have something resembling an actual 6502 when it's actually an Allwinner R16 SoC running Linux[2] and a software NES emulator. [1] http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/ http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/ [2] http://hackaday.com/2016/11/13/linux-on-your-nes-classic-edition/ http://hackaday.com/2016/11/13/linux-on-your-nes-classic-edi...
gilgoomesh 10y ago
[Edit: nevermind, I think I misread]
- RichWalton 10y ago
  The very next sentence in that paragraph goes on to say: " I have cut the ROM content out of the Wii file you sent me and it indeed matches the .NES file found online"
- johansch 10y ago
  Here's some data that indicates that this "law" is generally not valid: https://github.com/matslina/matslina.github.com/blob/master/_posts/2015-03-19-betteridges-law.md https://github.com/matslina/matslina.github.com/blob/master/... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232419
- pdkl95 10y ago
  You've left out the context of that quote to invert what the sentence actually said. Fayzullin's entire statement was: "[...] If you see that your .NES file DOES NOT match any of the ones found online, it is likely to be their own ROM dump. I have cut the ROM content out of the Wii file you sent me and it indeed matches the .NES file found online." > it does not appear that they downloaded a Mario ROM That is literally the opposite of what Fayzullin said.
bobajeff 10y ago
I want to know why wouldn't Nintendo put the effort into doing their own ROM dumps?
- ac29 10y ago
  Why bother? Who knows how much work it might be to get a physical copy of a 20+ year old game and the hardware to dump it. It also might have been outsourced and the developer just took a lazy shortcut.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    I'd hope Nintendo has copy of Super Mario Bros. in their possession. Since they made the system that read the cartridges in the first place. Modding it to dump ROMs shouldn't be much trouble
eridius 10y ago
If they actually did what this video is suggesting, it's interesting, but there's nothing actually wrong with it. Yes, Nintendo says that third-party emulation is something they disagree with. But Nintendo isn't a third party. They actually own the system and games in question. If they actually did download a ROM (and I'm not convinced they did, they could have used the same tools and produced an identical ROM), while they say it's illegal for the ROM provider to provide said ROM, it's not illegal for Nintendo to use the ROM since it's their intellectual property.
- akjainaj 10y ago
  Exactly, I don't see the problem here. It's their intellectual property, they can do whatever they want with it. Just because somebody else dumped it from a cartridge and uploaded it, doesn't mean they own any kind of copyright or anything--Nintendo still does.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    There's code in there that Nintendo didn't write and thus doesn't own. The .NES header which tells the machines how to set up the machine state. Basically, this means Nintendo is selling code it didn't write and has no authorization to resell. Doesn't matter if the game is theirs or not, the specific code added which they are using for virtual console is not their property.
    - detaro 10y ago
      That's a 16 byte header which contains configuration flags describing the hardware of the cartridge and which target should be emulated, that's hardly "code" or copyrightable. https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES#iNES_file_format https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES#iNES_file_format
      - lightedman 10y ago
        Somebody had to come up with that originally so that everyone else would follow the format. BTW, your preferred data source is horribly lacking. No mention of NESticle in the popular emulators? No mention that the first NES emulator (where this header comes from/was made for) was a COMMERCIAL emulator? I think you need to pick a better source for your data.
bitwize 10y ago
Midway downloaded a ROM of Spy Hunter to get access to the game's sound effects for a pre-smartphone mobile port, and then had the ROM site shut down for copyright infringement. Happens all the time.
Scoundreller 10y ago
I recall in the N64 emulation days (back when the best that anyone could accomplish was emulate the loading intro sequence), emu writers would get recruited by Nintendo, and then be forced to drop the project due to "conflict of interest". I'm curious if they were hired for their skills, or just to kill their side-projects. Probably started far earlier than the N64 days.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  The guys that made Starfox got hired based on their ability to circumvent the copy protection on the gameboy [1]. So Nintendo, like many software companies do hire hackers based on things that Nintendo don't condone. Proud of his team's sneaky subterfuge, San wasted no time getting the results in front of Nintendo's key staff. "I turned up at Nintendo's booth at that year's CES and tried to find the most senior person at Nintendo at that time, which turned out to be Don James," he says. "I walked up to him and showed him our game, and his jaw dropped - both for the demo itself and also the way it defeated their protection. He roped in Wayne Shirk and Tony Harman to see the demo and they were extremely impressed with what we could do, and our enthusiasm. I told them we wanted to work with them and had a talented team in London, and that we were good at 3D games." [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the-making-of-star-fox http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the...
  - manarth 10y ago
    Poacher-turned-gamekeeper is an age-old practice.
kayamon 10y ago
Uh... of _course_ it's going to match a ROM found online -- because it's the same ROM, from the same cartridge. It'd be weird if it didn't match.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  Even in the cartridge days, game-devs still worked on patches and improvements for later publishing runs, so there can be many different versions of a cartridge game - and maybe the devs might have had even more recent builds of games that never got published because the publisher ended the run - so it's odd for Nintendo to go for the 'easy' route of repackaging an arbitrary version found online, compared to going through their own archives for something more recent, and presumably, of higher quality.
  - kayamon 10y ago
    Sure, Nintendo make several versions of each cartridge. But they've all been dumped and put on the internet. Whichever version Nintendo chooses to release in their new emulator, it'll already have been dumped by someone else years before.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  As the article comments, ROMs are not just bit-identical copies of the cart chips, but also contain various header metadata and eccentricities of how they're formatted based on what dumping tool you used, which exact cart, etc, and this one verbatim matches one found online.
hunter2_ 10y ago
This reminds me of when I used to do outdoor movie setups for a municipality's parks/culture group. We would obtain the necessary license for public performance of the film, and with that came a loaner DVD, but then I'd feed the projector from a laptop using a torrented Bluray rip for the higher quality. I'd then delete the file without playing it under any other circumstance. Not piracy, amirite?
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  What about the cases where the film distributors charge $x for the DVD version and $y (where $y > $x) for the BD version? - and you licensed the DVD version but played a BD torrent?
- DKnoll 10y ago
  I hate those DVDs with a passion... the password protection is a bit much. It wasn't so long ago that they still came on VHS, too.
  - hunter2_ 10y ago
    I actually didn't know about the password... we were popping them into a consumer DVD player and they just played. But between fiddling with remotes and the audience seeing the OSD play/pause I just got sick of it and switched over to the laptop... which has no optical drive, but does have a torrent client :)
    - DKnoll 10y ago
      Ah, might just be certain distributors or studios then. I did a similar movies in the park event many times and we tended to show Disney movies. I miss wrangling giant inflatable screens sometimes but quickly come to my senses.
- deleted 10y ago
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milankragujevic 10y ago
Why did the page redirect me to http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot ?!
deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago

89 points by Jerry2 10y ago

See Reddit thread when the article was posted yesterday: https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nintendo_download_a_mario_rom_and/ https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nin... Consensus is that this is OK since Nintendo technically has copyright still.

mod 10y ago
The speculation I read in that thread was basically that if ripped properly into the .NES format, you would wind up with identical versions (for that game, and many--but not all--others).
- coldpie 10y ago
  No. NES files as used today contain a few dozen bytes at the start which are used to tell emulators a little bit about the type of hardware that needs to be emulated. This header appears in the ROMs that Nintendo is selling. Nintendo would not have invented precisely the same header as is used by unofficial emulators by chance. Note that no one is claiming that this is illegal on Nintendo's part.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Nobody's suggesting that they chanced upon the same header. That's ridiculous. The suggestion is that they're using the same tools to rip the ROM, and/or they're just re-using the format because it's a pre-existing format that does the job.

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago

The ROM is their copyright, so this is the same thing as someone at Universal records 'torrenting one of their artist's discographies and selling it on a DVD instead of using their own archives (though this analogy holds true only if Nintendo acquired an originally unauthorized ROM dump made by an unaffiliated third-party and simply repackaged it in the Virtual Console - it could also just be the case that Nintendo made their own ROM dump but used the same tools as the scurvy pirates, that way it would still have the same ROM file header). I'm far more interested to learn if the Virtual Console itself uses any open-source code to power the emulator - and if it means there's a potential GPL or other copyleft license violation going on - because that would be deliciously ironic for their very strong anti-(unauthorized)-emulation stance - what better endorsement than to have your own open-source emulator repurposed by Nintendo themselves?

sago 10y ago
It's a little more than the torrenting analogy. The ROM is in a format that was developed by and for emulators that they claim should not exist. They relied on the work put in by emulator creators that they tried to fight into nonexistence. Your last paragraph is pertinent question. But even if not an infringement, it is surely hypocrisy of the highest order.
- eridius 10y ago
  They used a format someone else defined. I don't know why you think that's hypocritical. It's not like defining a new file format is especially hard. If the format hadn't already existed, they could have created their own equivalent format. But since it does exist, it seems perfectly reasonable for Nintendo to re-use that format.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    The format isn't the hypocrisy. Nintendo has always been very consistently anti-emulation. They always attempt to frame emulators as software that enables "downloading illegally copied software"[1] to be played on "unauthorized hardware"[1]. Of course they never mention the word "emulator" when talking about their "virtual console" games or their GBA "ports" of NES games that simply emulated the original ROM. [1] https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
    - toast0 10y ago
      Virtual console and the NES classic are legally copied software played on authorized hardware, so it's not the same thing as what they've vivified. If you stuff illegally copied roms onto your mini NES, they're not really going to be happy either - I don't see how this is hypocritical.
      - pdkl95 10y ago
        This isn't about legal status. It's Nintendo's well-known bad attitude towards any use of their products that is even slightly outside their intended use. (Also, copyright is generally civil, not criminal. Copying a copyright protected work shouldn't be described as "illegal" or a crime, but may make you civilly liable for damages.) >> They always attempt to frame emulators as [...] For many, many years Nintendo tried to pain emulators as only being used to infringe copyright. They are have been dissembling about emulation (and copyright) for >15 years. "Emulator" is a bad word to Nintendo, far more so than other video game companies. This is why they called the network downloads on the Wii a "Virtual Console" (it's kind of like the original console, just "virtual"). They claim that the NES Classic "...is a miniaturized version of the groundbreaking NES, originally released in 1985."[1] which implies that they may have something resembling an actual 6502 when it's actually an Allwinner R16 SoC running Linux[2] and a software NES emulator. [1] http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/ http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/ [2] http://hackaday.com/2016/11/13/linux-on-your-nes-classic-edition/ http://hackaday.com/2016/11/13/linux-on-your-nes-classic-edi...

gilgoomesh 10y ago

[Edit: nevermind, I think I misread]

RichWalton 10y ago
The very next sentence in that paragraph goes on to say: " I have cut the ROM content out of the Wii file you sent me and it indeed matches the .NES file found online"
johansch 10y ago
Here's some data that indicates that this "law" is generally not valid: https://github.com/matslina/matslina.github.com/blob/master/_posts/2015-03-19-betteridges-law.md https://github.com/matslina/matslina.github.com/blob/master/... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9232419
pdkl95 10y ago
You've left out the context of that quote to invert what the sentence actually said. Fayzullin's entire statement was: "[...] If you see that your .NES file DOES NOT match any of the ones found online, it is likely to be their own ROM dump. I have cut the ROM content out of the Wii file you sent me and it indeed matches the .NES file found online." > it does not appear that they downloaded a Mario ROM That is literally the opposite of what Fayzullin said.

bobajeff 10y ago

I want to know why wouldn't Nintendo put the effort into doing their own ROM dumps?

ac29 10y ago
Why bother? Who knows how much work it might be to get a physical copy of a 20+ year old game and the hardware to dump it. It also might have been outsourced and the developer just took a lazy shortcut.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  I'd hope Nintendo has copy of Super Mario Bros. in their possession. Since they made the system that read the cartridges in the first place. Modding it to dump ROMs shouldn't be much trouble

eridius 10y ago

If they actually did what this video is suggesting, it's interesting, but there's nothing actually wrong with it. Yes, Nintendo says that third-party emulation is something they disagree with. But Nintendo isn't a third party. They actually own the system and games in question. If they actually did download a ROM (and I'm not convinced they did, they could have used the same tools and produced an identical ROM), while they say it's illegal for the ROM provider to provide said ROM, it's not illegal for Nintendo to use the ROM since it's their intellectual property.

akjainaj 10y ago
Exactly, I don't see the problem here. It's their intellectual property, they can do whatever they want with it. Just because somebody else dumped it from a cartridge and uploaded it, doesn't mean they own any kind of copyright or anything--Nintendo still does.
- lightedman 10y ago
  There's code in there that Nintendo didn't write and thus doesn't own. The .NES header which tells the machines how to set up the machine state. Basically, this means Nintendo is selling code it didn't write and has no authorization to resell. Doesn't matter if the game is theirs or not, the specific code added which they are using for virtual console is not their property.
  - detaro 10y ago
    That's a 16 byte header which contains configuration flags describing the hardware of the cartridge and which target should be emulated, that's hardly "code" or copyrightable. https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES#iNES_file_format https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES#iNES_file_format
    - lightedman 10y ago
      Somebody had to come up with that originally so that everyone else would follow the format. BTW, your preferred data source is horribly lacking. No mention of NESticle in the popular emulators? No mention that the first NES emulator (where this header comes from/was made for) was a COMMERCIAL emulator? I think you need to pick a better source for your data.

bitwize 10y ago

Midway downloaded a ROM of Spy Hunter to get access to the game's sound effects for a pre-smartphone mobile port, and then had the ROM site shut down for copyright infringement. Happens all the time.

Scoundreller 10y ago

I recall in the N64 emulation days (back when the best that anyone could accomplish was emulate the loading intro sequence), emu writers would get recruited by Nintendo, and then be forced to drop the project due to "conflict of interest". I'm curious if they were hired for their skills, or just to kill their side-projects. Probably started far earlier than the N64 days.

wodenokoto 10y ago
The guys that made Starfox got hired based on their ability to circumvent the copy protection on the gameboy [1]. So Nintendo, like many software companies do hire hackers based on things that Nintendo don't condone. Proud of his team's sneaky subterfuge, San wasted no time getting the results in front of Nintendo's key staff. "I turned up at Nintendo's booth at that year's CES and tried to find the most senior person at Nintendo at that time, which turned out to be Don James," he says. "I walked up to him and showed him our game, and his jaw dropped - both for the demo itself and also the way it defeated their protection. He roped in Wayne Shirk and Tony Harman to see the demo and they were extremely impressed with what we could do, and our enthusiasm. I told them we wanted to work with them and had a talented team in London, and that we were good at 3D games." [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the-making-of-star-fox http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the...
- manarth 10y ago
  Poacher-turned-gamekeeper is an age-old practice.

kayamon 10y ago

Uh... of _course_ it's going to match a ROM found online -- because it's the same ROM, from the same cartridge. It'd be weird if it didn't match.

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
Even in the cartridge days, game-devs still worked on patches and improvements for later publishing runs, so there can be many different versions of a cartridge game - and maybe the devs might have had even more recent builds of games that never got published because the publisher ended the run - so it's odd for Nintendo to go for the 'easy' route of repackaging an arbitrary version found online, compared to going through their own archives for something more recent, and presumably, of higher quality.
- kayamon 10y ago
  Sure, Nintendo make several versions of each cartridge. But they've all been dumped and put on the internet. Whichever version Nintendo chooses to release in their new emulator, it'll already have been dumped by someone else years before.
rincebrain 10y ago
As the article comments, ROMs are not just bit-identical copies of the cart chips, but also contain various header metadata and eccentricities of how they're formatted based on what dumping tool you used, which exact cart, etc, and this one verbatim matches one found online.

hunter2_ 10y ago

This reminds me of when I used to do outdoor movie setups for a municipality's parks/culture group. We would obtain the necessary license for public performance of the film, and with that came a loaner DVD, but then I'd feed the projector from a laptop using a torrented Bluray rip for the higher quality. I'd then delete the file without playing it under any other circumstance. Not piracy, amirite?

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
What about the cases where the film distributors charge $x for the DVD version and $y (where $y > $x) for the BD version? - and you licensed the DVD version but played a BD torrent?
DKnoll 10y ago
I hate those DVDs with a passion... the password protection is a bit much. It wasn't so long ago that they still came on VHS, too.
- hunter2_ 10y ago
  I actually didn't know about the password... we were popping them into a consumer DVD player and they just played. But between fiddling with remotes and the audience seeing the OSD play/pause I just got sick of it and switched over to the laptop... which has no optical drive, but does have a torrent client :)
  - DKnoll 10y ago
    Ah, might just be certain distributors or studios then. I did a similar movies in the park event many times and we tended to show Disney movies. I miss wrangling giant inflatable screens sometimes but quickly come to my senses.
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milankragujevic 10y ago

Why did the page redirect me to http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot ?!

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