5 ms·

Nintendo certainly makes it difficult to consistently play their old titles.

by accountyaccount 10y ago

stale2002 10y ago
It's actually super easy. Just go to the pirate bay and download an emulator.
- 542458 10y ago
  To legally play their old titles then. And anyways, that's not Nintendo making it easy, that's the people who build emulators and rip ROMs making it easy.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    It is legal. I have every single NES cart I've ever owned sitting in storage. Format-shifting is perfectly legal.
    - kod 10y ago
      Downloading roms from pirate bay is not legal, regardless of whether you have the NES cart sitting in storage.
      - lightedman 10y ago
        The EFF says otherwise. https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php Also see the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision.
        joosters 10y ago
        Downloading a torrent has more complications that mere time-shifting. Users are also distributing copyrighted software to other torrent clients. (unless you've completely disabled uploads in your torrent app) Owning a cartridge may give you the ability to legally download the same software but it certainly doesn't give you permission to supply copyrighted works to other people.
        stale2002 10y ago
        That's why you never seed/upload.
        Fej 10y ago
        (IANAL.) Downloading ROMs is almost certainly illegal. Dumping cartridges one owns is almost certainly legal. I'm not saying that you shouldn't download ROMs, just that it isn't legally justified. The EFF says nowhere at that page that downloading files is legal. It does say that backup copies are.
        placeybordeaux 10y ago
        Typically it's not the downloading that gets people in trouble, but the fact that if you are downloading a torrent with default settings you are also uploading said torrent.
  - bisby 10y ago
    I don't generally condone piracy. But I also believe that when a company makes it hard to enjoy their games, or tries to milk money out of games that are 30 years old, that I've probably paid for several times over the years, then I don't care anymore. If even .1% of Nintendo's revenue comes from NES/SNES games, then they are doing it VERY wrong. And if it's less, I don't feel bad because I know I'm not ruining some market segment. I had an NES as a kid, rebought an NES in college with most of my childhood games, and bought quite a few games on Wii virtual console. These games arent easily portable, take up a lot of space, and I'm not even sure how to hook an NES up to a modern TV offhand. NES won't give me simplicity for the games I've paid for, so by definition of terrible copyright laws, I resort to "piracy". And while im there, theres other games i always wanted to try as a kid, that nintendo will make difficult for me to play (heck, if I went to piracy for legally owned games, why would games i dont own be any easier). It's a vicious cycle. steam has demonstrated that you can easily cut piracy simply by making things readily available and easy to use. dont give people incentive and then complain about it.
    - cr0sh 10y ago
      > I'm not even sure how to hook an NES up to a modern TV offhand. The original NES had RCA composite output (plus audio) - so all you'd need is a composite-to-HDMI adaptor, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Portta-Composite-Converter-Scaler-support/dp/B00CQ3K0PY/ https://www.amazon.com/Portta-Composite-Converter-Scaler-sup... For something like the Sega Genesis (not that you wondered), it also had composite output, but needed a "special" mini-DIN cable; the pinout is out there, and an RCA jack can be soldered in place if you wanted. Also, the same jack (IIRC) served up S-VIDEO, so you could use that instead (S-VIDEO to HDMI). If all you had was RF output (like for an Atari 2600) - you could do a RF-to-Composite converter, then from that into a Composite-to-HDMI converter. Where you might run into problems on all of these solutions are those areas where artifacting was used on-screen to generate false colors; sometimes the converters will strip that out (their conversion is too good), or the TV will (same thing, plus LCD vs CRT tech).
      - xanderstrike 10y ago
        Those adapters are fine now, but what about in 10 years when it's even harder to find a working NES? 20? 50? At some point there will be no more working systems and cartridges, but because of the efforts of pirates these games can and probably will live forever.
  - ungzd 10y ago
    There's something sick in recent trends when people fear of punishment or feel shame for using complete abandonware from early 80s. They absolutely need to pay money and get entertained, with convenient cloud-based DRM-enabled streaming service at sofa. This attitude is worse than any piracy. BTW, Nintendo and their Yakudza internet patrols don't care and you don't need darknet torrents to get ROMs, they're everywhere. Emulators are mostly opensource and banned only on iOS because iOS is for Clash of Kings and not for retrocomputing.
    - posguy 10y ago
      IP should enter public domain after a decade, the concept of multi-decade copyright/IP protection causes massive cultural losses by making products and ideas inaccessible and unusable in other creative works, stunting our society's development.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    You can still play the old titles legally - just get a copy of the original cartridge. Ideally, though - for absolutely-true-legal (pinky shake) - you'd have to build a device to read out the ROM from that cartridge, store it, then play that copy (and only that copy). Essentially - all of this boils down to it being legal to make a backup of the software media that you own. Then again, DVDs and CSS changed some of that, so...I dunno.
    - xanderstrike 10y ago
      Nintendo doesn't get any money from me buying a used cartridge though, so in terms of financial benefit to the rightsholders I don't see a difference.
      - zokier 10y ago
        Used cartridge trading keeps the market value of those games above zero
  - Fej 10y ago
    Emulators on PC are far more accurate than Nintendo's. The Wii U VC in particular had a lot of problems.
- jordigh 10y ago
  Erm, I can get an emulator from my operating system: "apt install fceux".
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    Presumably "go to Pirate Bay" was meant to imply "download a pack of ROMs".

Nintendo certainly makes it difficult to consistently play their old titles.

stale2002 10y ago

It's actually super easy. Just go to the pirate bay and download an emulator.

542458 10y ago
To legally play their old titles then. And anyways, that's not Nintendo making it easy, that's the people who build emulators and rip ROMs making it easy.
- lightedman 10y ago
  It is legal. I have every single NES cart I've ever owned sitting in storage. Format-shifting is perfectly legal.
  - kod 10y ago
    Downloading roms from pirate bay is not legal, regardless of whether you have the NES cart sitting in storage.
    - lightedman 10y ago
      The EFF says otherwise. https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php Also see the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision.
      - joosters 10y ago
        Downloading a torrent has more complications that mere time-shifting. Users are also distributing copyrighted software to other torrent clients. (unless you've completely disabled uploads in your torrent app) Owning a cartridge may give you the ability to legally download the same software but it certainly doesn't give you permission to supply copyrighted works to other people.
        stale2002 10y ago
        That's why you never seed/upload.
      - Fej 10y ago
        (IANAL.) Downloading ROMs is almost certainly illegal. Dumping cartridges one owns is almost certainly legal. I'm not saying that you shouldn't download ROMs, just that it isn't legally justified. The EFF says nowhere at that page that downloading files is legal. It does say that backup copies are.
        placeybordeaux 10y ago
        Typically it's not the downloading that gets people in trouble, but the fact that if you are downloading a torrent with default settings you are also uploading said torrent.
- bisby 10y ago
  I don't generally condone piracy. But I also believe that when a company makes it hard to enjoy their games, or tries to milk money out of games that are 30 years old, that I've probably paid for several times over the years, then I don't care anymore. If even .1% of Nintendo's revenue comes from NES/SNES games, then they are doing it VERY wrong. And if it's less, I don't feel bad because I know I'm not ruining some market segment. I had an NES as a kid, rebought an NES in college with most of my childhood games, and bought quite a few games on Wii virtual console. These games arent easily portable, take up a lot of space, and I'm not even sure how to hook an NES up to a modern TV offhand. NES won't give me simplicity for the games I've paid for, so by definition of terrible copyright laws, I resort to "piracy". And while im there, theres other games i always wanted to try as a kid, that nintendo will make difficult for me to play (heck, if I went to piracy for legally owned games, why would games i dont own be any easier). It's a vicious cycle. steam has demonstrated that you can easily cut piracy simply by making things readily available and easy to use. dont give people incentive and then complain about it.
  - cr0sh 10y ago
    > I'm not even sure how to hook an NES up to a modern TV offhand. The original NES had RCA composite output (plus audio) - so all you'd need is a composite-to-HDMI adaptor, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Portta-Composite-Converter-Scaler-support/dp/B00CQ3K0PY/ https://www.amazon.com/Portta-Composite-Converter-Scaler-sup... For something like the Sega Genesis (not that you wondered), it also had composite output, but needed a "special" mini-DIN cable; the pinout is out there, and an RCA jack can be soldered in place if you wanted. Also, the same jack (IIRC) served up S-VIDEO, so you could use that instead (S-VIDEO to HDMI). If all you had was RF output (like for an Atari 2600) - you could do a RF-to-Composite converter, then from that into a Composite-to-HDMI converter. Where you might run into problems on all of these solutions are those areas where artifacting was used on-screen to generate false colors; sometimes the converters will strip that out (their conversion is too good), or the TV will (same thing, plus LCD vs CRT tech).
    - xanderstrike 10y ago
      Those adapters are fine now, but what about in 10 years when it's even harder to find a working NES? 20? 50? At some point there will be no more working systems and cartridges, but because of the efforts of pirates these games can and probably will live forever.
- ungzd 10y ago
  There's something sick in recent trends when people fear of punishment or feel shame for using complete abandonware from early 80s. They absolutely need to pay money and get entertained, with convenient cloud-based DRM-enabled streaming service at sofa. This attitude is worse than any piracy. BTW, Nintendo and their Yakudza internet patrols don't care and you don't need darknet torrents to get ROMs, they're everywhere. Emulators are mostly opensource and banned only on iOS because iOS is for Clash of Kings and not for retrocomputing.
  - posguy 10y ago
    IP should enter public domain after a decade, the concept of multi-decade copyright/IP protection causes massive cultural losses by making products and ideas inaccessible and unusable in other creative works, stunting our society's development.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  You can still play the old titles legally - just get a copy of the original cartridge. Ideally, though - for absolutely-true-legal (pinky shake) - you'd have to build a device to read out the ROM from that cartridge, store it, then play that copy (and only that copy). Essentially - all of this boils down to it being legal to make a backup of the software media that you own. Then again, DVDs and CSS changed some of that, so...I dunno.
  - xanderstrike 10y ago
    Nintendo doesn't get any money from me buying a used cartridge though, so in terms of financial benefit to the rightsholders I don't see a difference.
    - zokier 10y ago
      Used cartridge trading keeps the market value of those games above zero
- Fej 10y ago
  Emulators on PC are far more accurate than Nintendo's. The Wii U VC in particular had a lot of problems.
jordigh 10y ago
Erm, I can get an emulator from my operating system: "apt install fceux".
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Presumably "go to Pirate Bay" was meant to imply "download a pack of ROMs".