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It's sad that Nintendo doesn't seem to see this as an opportunity to earn free press and goodwill by simply releasing all the design documents, mask images, etc
by nullc 7y ago
It's sad that Nintendo doesn't seem to see this as an opportunity to earn free press and goodwill by simply releasing all the design documents, mask images, etc.
The community is going to get there eventually without their help, but they could probably make it much faster and cheaper to get there.
Doubly so because they sell products which almost certainly benefit from these open source emulation efforts.
- kingbirdy 7y agoNintendo is still actively selling SNES games via Nintendo Switch Online, and as far as I know rolls their own emulator(s) for this rather than using existing open source ones as Sony did for the PS Classic, so I doubt this will happen any time soon.
- 0x00000000 7y ago> using existing open source ones as Sony did for the PS Classic That’s interesting, I wonder if that is the case the for the PS1 emulator on the PS3/Vita used for the PlayStation Classics titles
- rossy 7y agoI think that's a proprietary in-house emulator known as POPS. The fact that Sony already had an in-house PlayStation emulator for the ARM-based Vita makes their decision to use something else for the PS Classic a bit strange.
- monocasa 7y agoI imagine some third party approached Sony with a "we'll do the work, take the risk, etc. You just give your blessing, tell us who do we need to contact for final approval to make sure the brand is being well represented, and where to send the royalty checks" kind of deal.
- danhor 7y agoWhilst the vita was an arm based system, it also included almost all of the psp hardware for backwards compatability. They simply reused pops from the psp, with no major changes, so it still ran on a mips system.
- LeonidasXIV 7y agoThis is also how the PSP runs PS1 games - by essentially being a PS1 and loading the game data from UMD or Memorystick.
- scrooched_moose 7y agoTangentially related, there's some evidence the ROMs Nintendo was selling a couple years ago were ones they downloaded. Not bulletproof, but more likely than not. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-18-did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-18-did-nintendo-d...
- aikinai 7y agoI can almost guarantee Nintendo did not use a downloaded ROM. I don’t have direct experience with how the ROMs are sourced, so it’s not 100%, but I worked on a team handling emulation at Nintendo and can say the processes are incredibly careful and strict. The company is extremely micromanaged and pedantic, and this is not the kind of thing that could possibly be overlooked at Nintendo.
- monocasa 7y agoIt's just weird then that they put a header originally defined by pirates, and now otherwise only used by third party emulators. Including matching the even more informal parts of the header byte for byte with the most common dump of the ROM on the high seas.
- derefr 7y agoI mean, you'd want to use a file format that would allow you to cross-test your emulator's behavior on the same ROM files against existing emulators' behavior on those ROM files. So you'd format your ROMs (which you dumped yourself) the way that existing emulators would expect them to be formatted.
- monocasa 7y agoSorry, I was being a bit coy when I said the "more informal parts of the header". It literally still has the dumper's signature in the unused portion of the header. Traceability as to who gets props for the first good dump drives a lot of decisions in that scene.
- nullc 7y agoThe level of perfection being sought in this article is essentially irrelevant to competition with emulators + illicit copying. The existing emulators are more than good enough to be replacements to the commercial offerings (and in most cases, a lot better... e.g. the lookahead rendering). While what you suggest might be a factor in their actions, I don't think it's an especially good one. As far as rolling their own emulators, I don't doubt that they do. But I do doubt that they're doing so without researching the existing open source emulators.
- 87zuhjkas 7y ago"Nintendo ... rolls their own emulator(s) ... rather than using existing open source ones" Wouldn't it be possible to reverse engineer these emulators? Maybe the official Nintendo SNES emulator has all the right S-PPU1/2 values in it.
- LocalH 7y agoDoubtful. Byuu’s emulator is already much more accurate than Nintendo’s own.
- overcast 7y agoWhat's sad is they don't just release the entire SNES/NES library for people who buy into their Nintendo online service. It's shameful how they've treated people who have bought and rebought into previous iterations only to have their libraries wiped out with new hardware generations. I'm looking at you virtual console.
- Talanes 7y agoThey don't have rights to the entire library, but yeah, just release everything you own on there at once and move on to ironing out N64.
- derefr 7y agoIt's not just about what they own; it's also about what they think they can get away with bundling into "collections" alongside spiritual sequels/HD remasters/etc. (S)NES Online is just for everything left over after the other departments slice the IP up for remixing.
- Talanes 7y agoAnd then they don't seem to have any real sense of urgency at actually making those collections. Earthbound is obviously missing so they can do a big bundle collection, but also their not confident enough in it to put the resources into translating Mother 3.
- matheusmoreira 7y agoWhat's truly shameful is the fact these 30+ year old games are still protected by copyright. Nintendo and all the third party developers have already made their money many times over. It's time for these works to enter the public domain.
- rhinoceraptor 7y agoAlso, none of these companies would even be able to sell old games if it weren't for amazing developers writing the emulators (and people playing pirated games on them). All these games would be lost forever.