13 ms·

Even if you don't believe in emulation due to piracy, having an emulator around for the sake of archiving is good for the future, I think.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
I'm inclined to agree, but it's a debatable grey area. Archive.org has emulators for some older systems, so that's great. I've also heard of the big console manufacturers actually using community-built / open-source emulators themselves to allow for re-releasing their own games on newer systems. I think every console manufacturer should release their own legal emulators; companies like Nintendo could make a lot of money off of a NES or GB(A) emulator on smartphones, they can keep selling their classics for $1-$5 apiece.
- davweb 9y ago
  Nintendo have been doing exactly this for years [1], albeit only on their own hardware and not on smartphones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console
- dtech 9y ago
  Even with Virtual Console and backward-compatibility around emulators are still a good thing. Backwards-compatibility is usually only 1 generation, so it just pushes the bitrot forward 5-10 years. Relying on original manufacturers to re-release old games depends fully on that manufacturer's ability and willingness, and up to now the only manufacturer doing it, Nintendo, has been very selective in which games they re-release. And it's a separate release per console so again only pushes the rot for that game forward to that console's lifespan. Thanks to emulators I'm willing to bet that in 100 years you will be able to play currently-emulatable games since I expect a good Windows/PC emulator to exist at that time.
  - Brockenstein 9y ago
    Sure, but how many people run a CDC 6000 emulator today? Sure, there's a niche, albeit it a very small one. Certainly not enough to warrant the fuss that people tend to raise. Why would someone in a 100 years be using an emulator from today (say SNES) inside a Windows emulator? Seems like if there was any interest at all some folks would write a native SNES emulator in the native hard/OS of the time. There's nothing about Windows that makes is especially ideal for emulating consoles for the last 40 years.
syaz1 9y ago
I don't think you need an excuse, really. Could be educational, or other honorable things (or not), so long as they're open source for others to hack on top of or learn from.
ben-schaaf 9y ago
Emulators are also great for the speedrunning community. They especially help in developing TAS's (Tool Assisted Speedruns), which contribute strats back to the human runners and push the boundaries of how fast games can be beaten.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  The kind of insight offered by TAS experimentation and reverse engineering enables some really impressive stuff, like manual arbitrary code execution. There are multiple ACE exploits in Super Mario World, which have been used for credit warp runs and even poking code into RAM to turn the game into a Flappy Bird clone.
laumars 9y ago
I completely agree. In that regard reading the replies to the Twitter announcement[1] was an exercise in frustration [1] https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721 https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721
- reificator 9y ago
  I shouldn't have clicked that link, it was very frustrating. It's like when watching AVGN, any time they bring up emulators it's always in a negative way. "Yeah, this is where people on emulators would cheat and make a save state" etc... I've got a Switch, I buy all the games that I play, and I am extremely excited for this emulator to come out. In my Steam library I have several games that are DOSBox wrappers around the original title. They're emulators, and I paid money for them, and they're perfectly legal. Digital archival is a growing problem, so much of our culture is going to be lost without efforts like these. On a side note: When I talk to fellow gamers about my history of modding games, there's generally two groups. The ones who play on PC ask what I added, new levels, skins, etc.... And the ones who play only on consoles typically get upset because they think it means I made cheats for online play. (For the record it was usually new features in code)
  - bsimpson 9y ago
    When I was in film school (2004-8), there was a huge concern about what the growth of digital formats would mean for archiving. Film from the 1800s can still be projected (so long as it's in physically-good condition), but tape formats (at least at the time) went obsolete every few years.
    - kaoD 9y ago
      This is why open standards are so important. DRM and proprietary drivers/blobs/formats are enemy to humanity. This is also why it should be (and in some places is) 100% legal to circumvent such measures, including via reverse engineering. But it shouldn't be that way! I'd say society should go a step further and grant copyright on works only if the specification of the underlying formats is fully released, just like patents exist(ed?) to grant legal protection in exchange for disclosure.
dtech 9y ago
Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at the time emulators are good enough to enable piracy the impact is significantly less because you can't buy the original console and games anymore.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.
  - pizza234 9y ago
    Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
  - delroth 9y ago
    Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
      - delroth 9y ago
        Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.
OptionX 9y ago
I operate under this as a guideline. If the game can't be bought anymore in a way where money gets to the devs then (you can always get random box copy's from eBay or some such) then it's OK to use an emulator.
- astura 9y ago
  You're confusing (pirated) ROMs with "emulators." There are emulator products that you can only play with original games (such as bleem!) and/or ROMs provided by the publisher (such as Nintendo's eStore) The devs at mainstream game studios are salaried, they've already been paid for their work performed no matter if the game sells or not. If the game is never released (which happens) they still get a paycheck.
  - throwawayaway12 9y ago
    While this is true, I would imagine that sales figures affect the future of devs at the game studios (layoffs, new projects, etc).
  - OptionX 9y ago
    I know the difference, just stating my stance in this matter. Besides Yuzu can't even be used like that in it's current state, and like has been said if a game doesn't sell during its shelf life it doesn't bode well to any of the makers. It's enough to kill medium/small studios and entire IP's.
frik 9y ago
Exactly, emulator are good for archiving. It allows on to play decades old games. Even some museums use emulators. Yuzu Switch emulator is made by devs of a 3DS emulator Crita: https://citra-emu.org https://citra-emu.org 3DS is unique with its 3D display that doesn't need a 3D glass. The "New 3DS XL" is especially great, as it has a stable 3D effect because of infrared eye-tracking. While most gamer got a bad impression from the first gen 3DS 3D effect without eye-tracking. I would pay premium for such a 3D PC monitor. Unfortunately Nintendo Switch doesn't feature such a 3D display nor does any other device available.
snausages 9y ago
True, but lets not forget when a fully playable version of Breath of the Wild became available on Wii-U emulators last year just after release. It's a tricky area.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
  The WiiU has been dead since the Switch released. Nintendo put out BotW on the WiiU because they hadn't put out a Zelda game on it yet and Switch supplies were short. I wouldn't say that it's hurt sales for the game for the Switch - BotW had an above 100% attach rate at launch on the Switch.
  - astura 9y ago
    It's not entirely true they didn't put out any Zelda games for the WiiU, just not any "flagship titles that were WiiU exclusives." They rereleased The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Hyrule Warriors was a WiiU Zelda title but it wasn't a flagship action RPG title, it was a hack and slash. (I also believe that Breath of the Wild was originally developed for the WiiU)
  - excalibur 9y ago
    BotW was developed for the Wii U. They've been promoting it to fans almost since the console's debut. Releasing it on that system was them living up to their promise. It's just a shame that it turned out to be the console's final major release.
    - Nexxxeh 9y ago
      In fairness though, talk about going out on a high! Twilight Princess was released on the Gamecube and Wii, as well.
- dtech 9y ago
  It doesn't seem to have hurt sales, it's outpacing Zelda: Twilight Princess in terms of sales and that's currently holding the record.
rplnt 9y ago
Emulators don't make piracy legal. So it would be the same argument as for DRM-enabled videos or music. And that is a pretty bad argument.
- astura 9y ago
  And there's great legal uses for emulation: https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ (it was pointed out to me they violate open source licenses, so forget this one.) every game system's "virtual store" wrapping old games around an emulator to make them (seamlessly) compatible with current computers. Allows the publisher to continue to sell decades old games with vert minimal effort. I don't know how much rereleases of games use emulation vs rewrites, but I assume at least some use emulation. I believe I heard that the xbox360 contains an Xbox emulator for backwards compatibility. If it wasn't the Xbox360 it was some other console. Then there's the failed bleem! commercial emulator.
  - jsheard 9y ago
    Funnily enough the Retron5 is illegal. Not because it emulates games, but because the emulators it uses are stolen from open source projects that forbid commercial use. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalists-about-retro-bit-and-about-the-new-retro-emulation-industry-in-general/ https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalist...
    - astura 9y ago
      Wow, I didn't know that. I don't know much about the product other than it's pretty mainstream so I assumed they played by the rules.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Aren’t open source licenses that forbid commercial use kind of rare? All of the big name ones I can think of have no such provisions.
      - 9y ago
iClaudiusX 9y ago
History is full of examples where a developer/publisher decided to port or remaster a game from its back catalog only to realize they have lost the source code and need to rely on an emulator ROM. Sega, Nintendo, and Capcom I think are the most infamous examples. Of course the hypocrisy is lost on these same companies who for decades have used piracy as the boogeyman to vilify archival work and fair use.
heywire 9y ago
Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in your browser. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
- distantsounds 9y ago
  bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!
  - comex 9y ago
    The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law
chrisper 9y ago
Emulators are not illegal. Sony even lost a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit
- slg 9y ago
  This the equivalent of "this pipe is for tobacco use only" or "BitTorrent is used to share Linux distros". Yes, emulators are legal. But we all know that the overwhelming use of them is in illegal situations. EDIT: Since this comment is currently sitting at -2 points, I figured I would expand on my rather glib comment. From Nintendo's website: >whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.[1] What percentage of emulators are only used to play homebrewed games or commercial games that an individual has personally backed up? Almost all other uses are illegal. [1] - https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
  - 15charlimit 9y ago
    They can claim something is illegal all they want, but that has no impact whatsoever on the actual legality of it. Anti-consumer EULA/TOS items haven't held up in court for a while now.
    - slg 9y ago
      That isn't a EULA/TOS rule, it is a summary of the law. Can you find any reputable source to disprove what Nintendo says? Here is an independent summary from Tech Radar that agrees with Nintendo. [1] [1] - http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-legal-1329264 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-lega...
      - ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
        Depends on jurisdiction a lot, quite honestly. Nintendo can say it's illegal all it wants, but if I own a physical copy of a game, and make a digital backup of such, then I'm in the clear as far as Canadian law (see our copyright bill C-11) goes. A ROM made from an official copy vs. downloaded from the internet are pretty hard to tell apart, but regardless you are allowed to own and retain such copies if you own the original. That being said, if there's DRM and you break it, then you have a different issue entirely. Owning the ROM wouldn't be illegal, but breaking the DRM certainly would be. Even if in the process of legally backing up your data off of the disc you break the DRM, you're still in legal hot waters. Quite frankly I'm convinced Nintendo can say all it wants, it's a scare tactic and for the most part they're full of shit unless you take into account a specific part of US or Japanese law in a specific state or jurisdiction. I would not assume that they know exactly what they're talking about globally.
balls187 9y ago
I bought my Switch after playing BotW via CEMU. I have a WiiU, but trying out BotW at 1600p was intriguing.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
I've been told that even some authorized arcade emulator releases actually use bootleg MAME sets because they lost the original code that ran in the "protection MCU". If you don't know what that is: to delay bootleg production, arcade vendors used to put some bit of important code inside a microcontroller, so that just copying the ROM chips produced a broken game and bootleg vendors would have to reverse engineer it and reproduce it in the main CPU program, sometimes leading to gameplay differences (IIRC, the generation of the "EXTEND" bubbles in Bubble Bobble was an example noticeable to expert players).
Sephr 9y ago
Not just for archiving, but also for playing at higher framerates and resolutions. 30fps games give me headaches but the same game running at 120fps can make a huge difference.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

I'm inclined to agree, but it's a debatable grey area. Archive.org has emulators for some older systems, so that's great. I've also heard of the big console manufacturers actually using community-built / open-source emulators themselves to allow for re-releasing their own games on newer systems. I think every console manufacturer should release their own legal emulators; companies like Nintendo could make a lot of money off of a NES or GB(A) emulator on smartphones, they can keep selling their classics for $1-$5 apiece.

davweb 9y ago
Nintendo have been doing exactly this for years [1], albeit only on their own hardware and not on smartphones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console
dtech 9y ago
Even with Virtual Console and backward-compatibility around emulators are still a good thing. Backwards-compatibility is usually only 1 generation, so it just pushes the bitrot forward 5-10 years. Relying on original manufacturers to re-release old games depends fully on that manufacturer's ability and willingness, and up to now the only manufacturer doing it, Nintendo, has been very selective in which games they re-release. And it's a separate release per console so again only pushes the rot for that game forward to that console's lifespan. Thanks to emulators I'm willing to bet that in 100 years you will be able to play currently-emulatable games since I expect a good Windows/PC emulator to exist at that time.
- Brockenstein 9y ago
  Sure, but how many people run a CDC 6000 emulator today? Sure, there's a niche, albeit it a very small one. Certainly not enough to warrant the fuss that people tend to raise. Why would someone in a 100 years be using an emulator from today (say SNES) inside a Windows emulator? Seems like if there was any interest at all some folks would write a native SNES emulator in the native hard/OS of the time. There's nothing about Windows that makes is especially ideal for emulating consoles for the last 40 years.

syaz1 9y ago

I don't think you need an excuse, really. Could be educational, or other honorable things (or not), so long as they're open source for others to hack on top of or learn from.

ben-schaaf 9y ago

Emulators are also great for the speedrunning community. They especially help in developing TAS's (Tool Assisted Speedruns), which contribute strats back to the human runners and push the boundaries of how fast games can be beaten.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago
The kind of insight offered by TAS experimentation and reverse engineering enables some really impressive stuff, like manual arbitrary code execution. There are multiple ACE exploits in Super Mario World, which have been used for credit warp runs and even poking code into RAM to turn the game into a Flappy Bird clone.

laumars 9y ago

I completely agree. In that regard reading the replies to the Twitter announcement[1] was an exercise in frustration [1] https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721 https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721

reificator 9y ago
I shouldn't have clicked that link, it was very frustrating. It's like when watching AVGN, any time they bring up emulators it's always in a negative way. "Yeah, this is where people on emulators would cheat and make a save state" etc... I've got a Switch, I buy all the games that I play, and I am extremely excited for this emulator to come out. In my Steam library I have several games that are DOSBox wrappers around the original title. They're emulators, and I paid money for them, and they're perfectly legal. Digital archival is a growing problem, so much of our culture is going to be lost without efforts like these. On a side note: When I talk to fellow gamers about my history of modding games, there's generally two groups. The ones who play on PC ask what I added, new levels, skins, etc.... And the ones who play only on consoles typically get upset because they think it means I made cheats for online play. (For the record it was usually new features in code)
- bsimpson 9y ago
  When I was in film school (2004-8), there was a huge concern about what the growth of digital formats would mean for archiving. Film from the 1800s can still be projected (so long as it's in physically-good condition), but tape formats (at least at the time) went obsolete every few years.
  - kaoD 9y ago
    This is why open standards are so important. DRM and proprietary drivers/blobs/formats are enemy to humanity. This is also why it should be (and in some places is) 100% legal to circumvent such measures, including via reverse engineering. But it shouldn't be that way! I'd say society should go a step further and grant copyright on works only if the specification of the underlying formats is fully released, just like patents exist(ed?) to grant legal protection in exchange for disclosure.

dtech 9y ago

Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at the time emulators are good enough to enable piracy the impact is significantly less because you can't buy the original console and games anymore.

chrisper 9y ago
Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.
- pizza234 9y ago
  Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
- delroth 9y ago
  Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
    - delroth 9y ago
      Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.

OptionX 9y ago

I operate under this as a guideline. If the game can't be bought anymore in a way where money gets to the devs then (you can always get random box copy's from eBay or some such) then it's OK to use an emulator.

astura 9y ago
You're confusing (pirated) ROMs with "emulators." There are emulator products that you can only play with original games (such as bleem!) and/or ROMs provided by the publisher (such as Nintendo's eStore) The devs at mainstream game studios are salaried, they've already been paid for their work performed no matter if the game sells or not. If the game is never released (which happens) they still get a paycheck.
- throwawayaway12 9y ago
  While this is true, I would imagine that sales figures affect the future of devs at the game studios (layoffs, new projects, etc).
- OptionX 9y ago
  I know the difference, just stating my stance in this matter. Besides Yuzu can't even be used like that in it's current state, and like has been said if a game doesn't sell during its shelf life it doesn't bode well to any of the makers. It's enough to kill medium/small studios and entire IP's.

frik 9y ago

Exactly, emulator are good for archiving. It allows on to play decades old games. Even some museums use emulators. Yuzu Switch emulator is made by devs of a 3DS emulator Crita: https://citra-emu.org https://citra-emu.org 3DS is unique with its 3D display that doesn't need a 3D glass. The "New 3DS XL" is especially great, as it has a stable 3D effect because of infrared eye-tracking. While most gamer got a bad impression from the first gen 3DS 3D effect without eye-tracking. I would pay premium for such a 3D PC monitor. Unfortunately Nintendo Switch doesn't feature such a 3D display nor does any other device available.

snausages 9y ago

True, but lets not forget when a fully playable version of Breath of the Wild became available on Wii-U emulators last year just after release. It's a tricky area.

cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
The WiiU has been dead since the Switch released. Nintendo put out BotW on the WiiU because they hadn't put out a Zelda game on it yet and Switch supplies were short. I wouldn't say that it's hurt sales for the game for the Switch - BotW had an above 100% attach rate at launch on the Switch.
- astura 9y ago
  It's not entirely true they didn't put out any Zelda games for the WiiU, just not any "flagship titles that were WiiU exclusives." They rereleased The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Hyrule Warriors was a WiiU Zelda title but it wasn't a flagship action RPG title, it was a hack and slash. (I also believe that Breath of the Wild was originally developed for the WiiU)
- excalibur 9y ago
  BotW was developed for the Wii U. They've been promoting it to fans almost since the console's debut. Releasing it on that system was them living up to their promise. It's just a shame that it turned out to be the console's final major release.
  - Nexxxeh 9y ago
    In fairness though, talk about going out on a high! Twilight Princess was released on the Gamecube and Wii, as well.
dtech 9y ago
It doesn't seem to have hurt sales, it's outpacing Zelda: Twilight Princess in terms of sales and that's currently holding the record.

rplnt 9y ago

Emulators don't make piracy legal. So it would be the same argument as for DRM-enabled videos or music. And that is a pretty bad argument.

astura 9y ago
And there's great legal uses for emulation: https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ (it was pointed out to me they violate open source licenses, so forget this one.) every game system's "virtual store" wrapping old games around an emulator to make them (seamlessly) compatible with current computers. Allows the publisher to continue to sell decades old games with vert minimal effort. I don't know how much rereleases of games use emulation vs rewrites, but I assume at least some use emulation. I believe I heard that the xbox360 contains an Xbox emulator for backwards compatibility. If it wasn't the Xbox360 it was some other console. Then there's the failed bleem! commercial emulator.
- jsheard 9y ago
  Funnily enough the Retron5 is illegal. Not because it emulates games, but because the emulators it uses are stolen from open source projects that forbid commercial use. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalists-about-retro-bit-and-about-the-new-retro-emulation-industry-in-general/ https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalist...
  - astura 9y ago
    Wow, I didn't know that. I don't know much about the product other than it's pretty mainstream so I assumed they played by the rules.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    Aren’t open source licenses that forbid commercial use kind of rare? All of the big name ones I can think of have no such provisions.
    - 9y ago

iClaudiusX 9y ago

History is full of examples where a developer/publisher decided to port or remaster a game from its back catalog only to realize they have lost the source code and need to rely on an emulator ROM. Sega, Nintendo, and Capcom I think are the most infamous examples. Of course the hypocrisy is lost on these same companies who for decades have used piracy as the boogeyman to vilify archival work and fair use.

heywire 9y ago

Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in your browser. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom

distantsounds 9y ago
bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!
- comex 9y ago
  The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law

chrisper 9y ago

Emulators are not illegal. Sony even lost a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit

slg 9y ago
This the equivalent of "this pipe is for tobacco use only" or "BitTorrent is used to share Linux distros". Yes, emulators are legal. But we all know that the overwhelming use of them is in illegal situations. EDIT: Since this comment is currently sitting at -2 points, I figured I would expand on my rather glib comment. From Nintendo's website: >whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.[1] What percentage of emulators are only used to play homebrewed games or commercial games that an individual has personally backed up? Almost all other uses are illegal. [1] - https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
- 15charlimit 9y ago
  They can claim something is illegal all they want, but that has no impact whatsoever on the actual legality of it. Anti-consumer EULA/TOS items haven't held up in court for a while now.
  - slg 9y ago
    That isn't a EULA/TOS rule, it is a summary of the law. Can you find any reputable source to disprove what Nintendo says? Here is an independent summary from Tech Radar that agrees with Nintendo. [1] [1] - http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-legal-1329264 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-lega...
    - ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
      Depends on jurisdiction a lot, quite honestly. Nintendo can say it's illegal all it wants, but if I own a physical copy of a game, and make a digital backup of such, then I'm in the clear as far as Canadian law (see our copyright bill C-11) goes. A ROM made from an official copy vs. downloaded from the internet are pretty hard to tell apart, but regardless you are allowed to own and retain such copies if you own the original. That being said, if there's DRM and you break it, then you have a different issue entirely. Owning the ROM wouldn't be illegal, but breaking the DRM certainly would be. Even if in the process of legally backing up your data off of the disc you break the DRM, you're still in legal hot waters. Quite frankly I'm convinced Nintendo can say all it wants, it's a scare tactic and for the most part they're full of shit unless you take into account a specific part of US or Japanese law in a specific state or jurisdiction. I would not assume that they know exactly what they're talking about globally.

balls187 9y ago

I bought my Switch after playing BotW via CEMU. I have a WiiU, but trying out BotW at 1600p was intriguing.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

I've been told that even some authorized arcade emulator releases actually use bootleg MAME sets because they lost the original code that ran in the "protection MCU". If you don't know what that is: to delay bootleg production, arcade vendors used to put some bit of important code inside a microcontroller, so that just copying the ROM chips produced a broken game and bootleg vendors would have to reverse engineer it and reproduce it in the main CPU program, sometimes leading to gameplay differences (IIRC, the generation of the "EXTEND" bubbles in Bubble Bobble was an example noticeable to expert players).

Sephr 9y ago

Not just for archiving, but also for playing at higher framerates and resolutions. 30fps games give me headaches but the same game running at 120fps can make a huge difference.