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Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online
- softwareman 9y agoNo sound...but awesome stuff \o/
- gge 9y agoThanks. I've managed to get the sound working somewhat locally. Since this is based on JSNES (https://github.com/bfirsh/jsnes/ https://github.com/bfirsh/jsnes/), I'm gonna submit a pull request to that repo and push the latest commit to my repo.
- 1011_1101 9y agoLawsuit incoming?
- sunilkumarc 9y agoI had forgotten about Golf. One of my favorites video games! Awesome stuff this is.
- jwebgordon 9y agoSimpler times when you could name a golf video game, "Golf."
- optikals 9y agoAs a fan of Nes, I thank you.
- gge 9y agoHave you been playing since the NES was released or recently? I only started recently with emulators.
- kreetx 9y agoYou shouldn't have posted this :) EDIT: I remember playing a copycat of konami's contra at childhood, and had wondered what the name of that game was. Now I know the original, thanks!
- baldfat 9y agoI would have thought the Nintendo Lawyers would have sent out their Scud Missile on that server within 5 minutes.
- jimmaswell 9y agoI have an idea: make it so that you have to supply your own rom files that the site will only store locally, and you then can get matched with anyone else who has roms with the same md5s. No legal problem because nothing copyrighted will be on the server, and it'll support much more roms than the small selection supplied.
- Karunamon 9y agoNeat idea, but I guarantee they would find a way to shut that down too, even if it's completely legitimate and completely non-harmful from a copyright stance. Nintendo is incredibly hostile to even fair use, let alone something closer to the line like what you described.
- oculusthrift 9y agoyes. Nintendo is even hostile to Youtubers playing their games. Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? I know that they sued someone who created an emulator while they were still selling the NES.
- Karunamon 9y agoIs it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided. More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company out of business anyways. So really, if you want to develop an emulator for modern hardware without getting lawyerpwned, you have to do something like: 1) Figure out a way to dump the (copyrighted) ROM that makes the various bits of the system work. The code signing involved makes this process completely illicit per DMCA, but there's apparently no standing to sue as long as you aren't distributing the results. (And then there's that fair use exemption for discussion and education besides) 2) Either clean room reverse engineer it with help, or make the dumping process easy enough that you can instruct others how to do it. PS2 emulator devs take the second option - every PS2 emulator requires a copy of the PS2 bios to work. 3) Hardware design isn't copyrightable, so you're fine with reimplementing the CPU in code. This means that if you want to make your hardware emulator-proof, it's just like all DRM. You are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of how long.
- samuraijack 9y agoPeople, you need to stop disconnecting the moment you realize you are player 2 in super mario bros 1985!
- chc 9y agoWhy? Who would want to be a stranger's player 2 in Super Mario Bros.? It's alternating multiplayer — you may as well just play the game single-player.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marxdeveloper 9y agoLooks fun, too bad everyone quits after I play for 5 seconds as 1st player! https://puu.sh/vuGsj/77a05399eb.png https://puu.sh/vuGsj/77a05399eb.png
- DrSayre 9y agoDoes the Arrow keys not work for anybody else?
- dmitripopov 9y agoSeems like the emulator window does not get cursor keys, cursor down, for example, selects a ROM.
- n-gauge 9y agoHehe... like the way you load all the javascript inside a div before removing the div - sneaky.
- gge 9y ago:)
- bruceb 9y agoRBI baseball two player online would be awesome. (If taking requests)
- jgritty 9y agoCame here to say this. Also Tecmo Bowl
- ssharp 9y agoThere has to be enough nostalgia over Tecmo Super Bowl to warrant such a thing. People organize tournaments all over the country, a car company based a commercial on it, and stuff like the NES Classic shows a lot of interest in throwback gaming. Whoever owns Tecmo's IP now put out a modern version of it, but it wasn't very good and was based on the the 16-bit version, not the 8-bit classic. I'm sure there are issues still using the player's names, but those could be replaced with something generic, like QB Eagles :)
- gge 9y agoCertainly! Anyone can request more games by replying to this post.
- scottmsul 9y agoIt think the edges might be cutoff by a few pixels.
- oculusthrift 9y agohosting ROM's like this is extremely illegal with respect to IP
- JauntTrooper 9y agoWhy doesn't Nintendo port old NES/SNES/GameBoy games to smartphones and sell them for $1-$2 each? They're so much more fun than all these compulsive microtransaction games.
- saltedshiv 9y agoLicensing
- aplose 9y agoBecause it would reduce demand for them if they were to try to get them onto the Switch with a much higher markup.
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoIt might, but they've only shipped about 1M Switch units, which is a rounding error compared to the ~2B smartphones in use. If Nintendo really doesn't want to port/emulate because they want to prop up their hardware sales (or because they dislike touchscreen-only controls), they're acting very much against their best interests.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vlunkr 9y agoCause without buttons they suck :)
- exclusiv 9y agoThey could design a classic bluetooth controller and sell it for cheap. I'm using the expensive, but awesome Switch Pro Controller on my Android's SNES emulator.
- derefr 9y agoPeople have their phones with them in a lot of cases where they just can't or won't bring any accessories: at a nightclub, in the toilet, etc. If this is the majority of time when you'd want to kill time on your phone, controller-requiring games would be pointless for you. Mind you, if you can force people to bring the accessory wherever they bring the phone, the calculus shifts. The Switch essentially is a Pro Controller duct-taped to an Android tablet; and it's a lot easier to convince people to buy one. :)
- aplose 9y agoGiven the list of mirrors, it appears the author knows what they're doing is illegal. You don't have to agree with copyright law (and by all means, please try to change it!), but please don't take other people's work and build products out of it without their permission.
- lubujackson 9y agoIf I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes? I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms. It didn't used to and I'm not sure how this changed mindset in any way helps creators or society.
- aplose 9y ago> If I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes? No, that's not how copyright works. That's a myth. In some cases you can make a backup of the game if you do it yourself. But you still can't download someone else's copy. > I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms. Because copyright means the company that sold you the product retains the right to copy it. That's not a right you bought when you paid for the game. > It didn't used to and I'm not sure how this changed mindset in any way helps creators or society. I'm not sure it's been a help either. Someone should change the laws to align them with modern society. But this isn't the way to do it.
- binarymax 9y agoYour first point is not so clear cut. A ROM is a ROM is a ROM. Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright?
- mathgeek 9y agoNot sure about the legality of downloading it, but it's established that providing it (uploading it to someone else) is where you're usually in hot water.
- knux 9y agoMake sure you keep the display pixelated when you scale it for "zoom in". .nes-screen { image-rendering: pixelated; /* webkit */ image-rendering: optimizespeed; /* firefox */ }
- gge 9y agoAhhh ok. I'll add this to the next commit.