5 ms·

People are making new games for the old systems. It's quite an active community. They make and sell cartridges that have brand new games on them. I dug out a l

by KGIII 9y ago

People are making new games for the old systems. It's quite an active community. They make and sell cartridges that have brand new games on them. I dug out a link, but it's just the tip of the iceberg: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-consoles-nes-snes-sega-genesis-famicom https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-c...

BearGoesChirp 9y ago
Just a word of caution for anyone looking to buy rom hack cartridges, many rom hacks were never intended to be put on cartridges and the original rom hack developers do not support nor benefit from doing so. It's also possible the rom hack on the cartridge isn't the final version.
- KGIII 9y ago
  I am not sure I understand, so I will defer to you. My understanding was that independent game authors were writing games and making cartridges for these games which they then sold. If I am understanding you correctly, somewhere in this chain is copyright infringement? Are people buying a cartridge, extracting the content, and loading it into new cartridges? Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense? Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission? If so, is the market large enough for that to go unnoticed? My understanding was a successful new game might sell a few thousand cartridges and great success was in the 10,000 units sold area. Being so small a market, and requiring the investment to even make the cartridges, it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses. Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? I am aware that some cartridges had custom chips on them and didn't confirm to any standard, like Zelda cartridges that contained memory and a chip for saving game states. I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission? I think they're talking about this case (based on the wording "rom hack cartridges"). Someone takes an original game ROM and modifies it in some way (translation, level mods, whatever). Someone else takes the modified code, burns it onto actual hardware, and sells the result. > Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? The usual method that I know is to remove the ROM chips from a donor cartridge (a working game), and replace them with chips flashed with customized data. The donor cart would need to provide the same custom chips/memory mappers/whatever that the game code expects to be present.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Ah! That explains the method, at least. I'm a bit surprised that the market is large enough to support the effort and expense. My limited exposure suggests that it isn't a very large market and I'd been led to believe that it wasn't very profitable. Though, I suppose it becomes more profitable if you're not paying to develop the game or for the rights to distribute the game. I wonder if there's technically a possibility for, and a market large enough, for generic cartridges - perhaps several kinds that had different standardized hardware in them.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        I don't know much about market size, but I know that some developers are working on physical releases of new games for old consoles. Written from scratch, with new IP. I found references to a few on my own, then found this article that mentions most of the ones that I found: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-consoles-nes-snes-sega-genesis-famicom https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-c... It says that the NES game Star Versus has sold about 300 copies since its release (in 2014, I think). So, there's an idea of the market, I suppose. I haven't found much in the way of information about its development, so far. There was a forum post that mentioned that it seems to use a new, undocumented memory mapper chip, which implies that the developer produced their own, rather than use the "donor" method that I suggested earlier. Just for curiosity's sake, an SNES game that was developed in 2013, and is available for purchase (I've no idea if they have the rights to sell it or not) : https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super-nintendo.html https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super...

by KGIII 9y ago

BearGoesChirp 9y ago

Just a word of caution for anyone looking to buy rom hack cartridges, many rom hacks were never intended to be put on cartridges and the original rom hack developers do not support nor benefit from doing so. It's also possible the rom hack on the cartridge isn't the final version.

KGIII 9y ago
I am not sure I understand, so I will defer to you. My understanding was that independent game authors were writing games and making cartridges for these games which they then sold. If I am understanding you correctly, somewhere in this chain is copyright infringement? Are people buying a cartridge, extracting the content, and loading it into new cartridges? Is the market large enough to support that much effort and expense? Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission? If so, is the market large enough for that to go unnoticed? My understanding was a successful new game might sell a few thousand cartridges and great success was in the 10,000 units sold area. Being so small a market, and requiring the investment to even make the cartridges, it'd seem easier to spot this (from the IP owner's perspective) and seek preventative legal responses. Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? I am aware that some cartridges had custom chips on them and didn't confirm to any standard, like Zelda cartridges that contained memory and a chip for saving game states. I am guessing, hopefully, that you know more about this stuff than I do.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  > Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission? I think they're talking about this case (based on the wording "rom hack cartridges"). Someone takes an original game ROM and modifies it in some way (translation, level mods, whatever). Someone else takes the modified code, burns it onto actual hardware, and sells the result. > Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? The usual method that I know is to remove the ROM chips from a donor cartridge (a working game), and replace them with chips flashed with customized data. The donor cart would need to provide the same custom chips/memory mappers/whatever that the game code expects to be present.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Ah! That explains the method, at least. I'm a bit surprised that the market is large enough to support the effort and expense. My limited exposure suggests that it isn't a very large market and I'd been led to believe that it wasn't very profitable. Though, I suppose it becomes more profitable if you're not paying to develop the game or for the rights to distribute the game. I wonder if there's technically a possibility for, and a market large enough, for generic cartridges - perhaps several kinds that had different standardized hardware in them.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      I don't know much about market size, but I know that some developers are working on physical releases of new games for old consoles. Written from scratch, with new IP. I found references to a few on my own, then found this article that mentions most of the ones that I found: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-consoles-nes-snes-sega-genesis-famicom https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-c... It says that the NES game Star Versus has sold about 300 copies since its release (in 2014, I think). So, there's an idea of the market, I suppose. I haven't found much in the way of information about its development, so far. There was a forum post that mentioned that it seems to use a new, undocumented memory mapper chip, which implies that the developer produced their own, rather than use the "donor" method that I suggested earlier. Just for curiosity's sake, an SNES game that was developed in 2013, and is available for purchase (I've no idea if they have the rights to sell it or not) : https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super-nintendo.html https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super...