6 ms·

What a shame the article spreads some fud about roms and diminishes the community, making it seem like a futile individual effort: "In order to play a game on

by asdff 4y ago

What a shame the article spreads some fud about roms and diminishes the community, making it seem like a futile individual effort: "In order to play a game on an emulator, you need a copy of the original title, commonly saved as a ROM (or read-only memory) file. Depending on how the title is copied, what the condition of the cartridge or game disc is in, or the geographic region the game is locked to, you can find yourself with a buggy version of Pokémon Crystal or Super Mario Bros. 3 that can hardly run. Creating and distributing ROMs is also fraught with legal issues." Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years, and the strength of the community ensures you don't get burned. Every game for every region has a rom already, for each game a few roms of "analytical grade" at this point, and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days. Sometimes the community even fixes bugs nintendo left in. Here is a handy key for the identifiers the community often annotates for their roms: https://gist.github.com/ramiabraham/ff41ba74f2b7104ecece https://gist.github.com/ramiabraham/ff41ba74f2b7104ecece

boomboomsubban 4y ago
>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise. Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.
- asveikau 4y ago
  > You need to create your own copy, It's funny because custom electronics are way more cheap and accessible than they used to be. In the 90s, I wished I could dump my game carts and saves. I saw someone posted PCBs to do it over ISA bus but I didn't have the skills or ability to do it myself. Recently, I found this open project that can dump that era: https://github.com/sanni/cartreader https://github.com/sanni/cartreader
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    One issue with dumping, even if you have the equipment for it, is that in some cases you will still need to patch it to defeat the copy protection.
    - asveikau 4y ago
      Those can be distributed as patches. This is typically how people distribute fan translations, for example.
- jterrys 4y ago
  We live in a world where the common notion of buying something and owning it has been completely violated. I don't "own" the movie, music, or digital media I buy, I am merely "temporarily renting it" through "licensing agreements". Yet every other physical good that I own, I perform a cash transaction of it and it is understood that it is mine. I can do with it what I want. I buy eggs at the store. I can cook and eat them or throw them out the window. Nobody cares. I own them. I bought them. Only when my purchase is digital am I suddenly combated with "distribution rights", "reproduction rights", "rights to modify", etc. The laws need to be changed, I tell ya!
  - jonathankoren 4y ago
    We've been burned by this repeatedly. Remember several years ago when people "bought" Disney movies on Amazon Video, and then Disney pulled their catalog, and everyone's "purchases" subsequently disappeared? Good times. I thought that might be a catalyzing moment, but I've learned that literally nothing is a catalyzing in America. No matter the issue. No matter the act. Literally nothing changes.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      One half of politics makes "Nothing should ever change" basically their entire platform, and people LOVE it.
      - jonathankoren 4y ago
        This isn’t the time to politicize this tragedy. And it’s certainly not time to talk about the identical tragedy that earlier this year, or the identical one that happened last year, or the identical one that happened a decade ago, or the identical one that happened…
  - mattl 4y ago
    I don't think that's strictly true though... if you bought a Beatles' LP in 1971 you can't do what you want with it. There are still rules about what you can and cannot do with the reproduction of it.
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  One of the most fun small moments of my career was when I was working for a company that had licensed a bunch of old games. I had to download quite a few from shady warez/abandonware sites that put up a little "disclaimer" that said something along the lines of "unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder, do not download this file." I'm quite possibly one of the only people in history who clicked through on good faith, explicit written permission in hand.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  > puff piece How was this article a puff piece? It's highlighting a large and growing issue around preserving our culture, often overlooked by the mainstream.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    "Puff piece" may not be the best term, but I'd bet this story was reporting on a YouTube video someone at NPR watched. A somewhat low stakes story that didn't want to dive into legal minutia.
asveikau 4y ago
With these sorts of actions by Nintendo, the idea of keeping ROMs as backup for your purchases gains legitimacy. First party legit online stores for emulated classic titles could be a real disincentive to people playing on third party emulators, if they wanted it to be. But the fact that they'll shut off the stores means people will not consider those purchases to be stable. They'll turn to third party emulators and ROM dumps.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years And they have been successfully sued for it. So where is the FUD? People illegally share all kind of content, and sued for it, doesn't make it legal just because they do it. > and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days Maybe, if you need to get pointed somewhere, it might be because people are aware that they are doing something that is not without problems.
- throwaway472919 4y ago
  People get sued and the sites might be hard to find for some, but I don't think buggy ROMs are really a thing. Buggy emulators maybe, but even then not for Pokémon Crystal.
billjings 4y ago
For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation (https://gamehistory.org/ https://gamehistory.org/) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes. For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and accessible.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Are the statements about the quality of the copy true as well? I had always assumed, it's digital, so it either works or it doesn't. I know there are problems emulating some games well, but I always thought that was because of shortcomings in the emulator or things like chips on the game cartridge that also need to be emulated.
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    I'm not sure exactly what statements you're referring to, but consider if you've ever seen a [b] in a rom filename, that means it's known to be a "bad dump". Compare this to roms with [!] in their filename, which signifies a "verified good dump".
    - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
      Damn. I wonder how many games I fully played through back in the day against a known "bad" dump. EDIT: Now I'm even more confused as to why some of those "good sets" would even contain known bad dumps.
      - dfxm12 4y ago
        I think the Good Sets were meant to archive every single dump of every game.
      - wk_end 4y ago
        Once upon a time there was a program called "GoodTools" that maintained a database of all known dumps, so you could run it against your ROMs and it could identify which ROMs were known bad. Dumb completionists then decide to collect and distribute sets containing every ROM - including the bad ones - in the GoodTools database, so-called "good sets", which besides wasting lots of bandwidth and storage space (at a time when this stuff wasn't quite so cheap!) also unfortunately helped bad dumps stick around.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Thank you for that gist. I had assumed that rom codes were just region codes and it never occurred to me to even look for a key.
Fnoord 4y ago
> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Longer. I had a Chinese friend on vacation who had like 64 Gameboy games on one cardridge. Meanwhile, I had only one. His method was more convenient, legality be damned.
bastardoperator 4y ago
My kid has been playing with mame and roms since around 8 years old, he's 16 now, sure I used to have to jump in from time to time, but if anything ROM's and custom built images are what got my son into a basic understanding of how a lot of tech works. If a kid can do it so can others. The sheer amount of effort that goes into emulators is insane and I'm grateful for being able to share a lot of my childhood with my son because of those people's work and dedication.
andrepd 4y ago
It's funny he gives those examples in particular, as Pokemon Crystal and SMB3 both have commented source code (by disassembly ofc), let alone bit-perfect roms.
ginko 4y ago
>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years, and the strength of the community ensures you don't get burned. Not just that, Nintendo got caught distributing community ROMs in their own virtual console.
- OatmealDome 4y ago
  I assume you mean Nintendo using the iNES file format to distribute NES ROM files? All evidence currently points to them simply using the format (possibly because they hired an iNES developer way back in the day), not them selling you pirated ROMs. For one, none of Nintendo's ROM files match any pre-existing ROM files you can find on the internet. [1] During the gigaleak (an event where Nintendo's internal network was breached and many files were stolen), it was found that Nintendo has a vast archive of master ROMs that they pull from whenever they need to re-release a classic game. While they may use community-dumped ROMs for internal testing, they are highly insistent that they ship their own original copies in retail products. In fact, it was even found that they had a tool to convert from their internal format for storing NES ROMs (CHR and PRG ROM data stored in separate files) to the iNES format. [2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/uaszvp/no_nintendo_using_a_flashcart_is_not_surprising/i63v774/?context=10000 https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/uaszvp/no_ninten... [2] https://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/682410911082921985/no-nintendo-using-a-flashcart-is-not-surprising https://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/682410911082921985/no-nin...
AussieWog93 4y ago
>Every game for every region has a rom already, for each game a few roms of "analytical grade" at this point, and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days. It goes deeper than that. I run an online retro games business, and occasionally get extremely specific requests from the preservationists, like particular AU-exclusive serial numbers that still haven't been dumped. The .iso for the PAL demo version of Sega Soccer 97 was from a disc in our possession too, although due to not realising what we had we let it go for $10...
mid-kid 4y ago
Since the 3ds/wiiu, games are signed, and these signatures are difficult if not impossible to forge. This makes it really easy to verify whether a dump is correct, at least for the encrypted portions of a cartridge.

by asdff 4y ago

boomboomsubban 4y ago

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise. Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.

asveikau 4y ago
> You need to create your own copy, It's funny because custom electronics are way more cheap and accessible than they used to be. In the 90s, I wished I could dump my game carts and saves. I saw someone posted PCBs to do it over ISA bus but I didn't have the skills or ability to do it myself. Recently, I found this open project that can dump that era: https://github.com/sanni/cartreader https://github.com/sanni/cartreader
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  One issue with dumping, even if you have the equipment for it, is that in some cases you will still need to patch it to defeat the copy protection.
  - asveikau 4y ago
    Those can be distributed as patches. This is typically how people distribute fan translations, for example.
jterrys 4y ago
We live in a world where the common notion of buying something and owning it has been completely violated. I don't "own" the movie, music, or digital media I buy, I am merely "temporarily renting it" through "licensing agreements". Yet every other physical good that I own, I perform a cash transaction of it and it is understood that it is mine. I can do with it what I want. I buy eggs at the store. I can cook and eat them or throw them out the window. Nobody cares. I own them. I bought them. Only when my purchase is digital am I suddenly combated with "distribution rights", "reproduction rights", "rights to modify", etc. The laws need to be changed, I tell ya!
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  We've been burned by this repeatedly. Remember several years ago when people "bought" Disney movies on Amazon Video, and then Disney pulled their catalog, and everyone's "purchases" subsequently disappeared? Good times. I thought that might be a catalyzing moment, but I've learned that literally nothing is a catalyzing in America. No matter the issue. No matter the act. Literally nothing changes.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    One half of politics makes "Nothing should ever change" basically their entire platform, and people LOVE it.
    - jonathankoren 4y ago
      This isn’t the time to politicize this tragedy. And it’s certainly not time to talk about the identical tragedy that earlier this year, or the identical one that happened last year, or the identical one that happened a decade ago, or the identical one that happened…
- mattl 4y ago
  I don't think that's strictly true though... if you bought a Beatles' LP in 1971 you can't do what you want with it. There are still rules about what you can and cannot do with the reproduction of it.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
One of the most fun small moments of my career was when I was working for a company that had licensed a bunch of old games. I had to download quite a few from shady warez/abandonware sites that put up a little "disclaimer" that said something along the lines of "unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder, do not download this file." I'm quite possibly one of the only people in history who clicked through on good faith, explicit written permission in hand.
jonny_eh 4y ago
> puff piece How was this article a puff piece? It's highlighting a large and growing issue around preserving our culture, often overlooked by the mainstream.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  "Puff piece" may not be the best term, but I'd bet this story was reporting on a YouTube video someone at NPR watched. A somewhat low stakes story that didn't want to dive into legal minutia.

asveikau 4y ago

With these sorts of actions by Nintendo, the idea of keeping ROMs as backup for your purchases gains legitimacy. First party legit online stores for emulated classic titles could be a real disincentive to people playing on third party emulators, if they wanted it to be. But the fact that they'll shut off the stores means people will not consider those purchases to be stable. They'll turn to third party emulators and ROM dumps.

PurpleRamen 4y ago

> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years And they have been successfully sued for it. So where is the FUD? People illegally share all kind of content, and sued for it, doesn't make it legal just because they do it. > and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days Maybe, if you need to get pointed somewhere, it might be because people are aware that they are doing something that is not without problems.

throwaway472919 4y ago
People get sued and the sites might be hard to find for some, but I don't think buggy ROMs are really a thing. Buggy emulators maybe, but even then not for Pokémon Crystal.

billjings 4y ago

For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation (https://gamehistory.org/ https://gamehistory.org/) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes. For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and accessible.

ajmurmann 4y ago
Are the statements about the quality of the copy true as well? I had always assumed, it's digital, so it either works or it doesn't. I know there are problems emulating some games well, but I always thought that was because of shortcomings in the emulator or things like chips on the game cartridge that also need to be emulated.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  I'm not sure exactly what statements you're referring to, but consider if you've ever seen a [b] in a rom filename, that means it's known to be a "bad dump". Compare this to roms with [!] in their filename, which signifies a "verified good dump".
  - AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
    Damn. I wonder how many games I fully played through back in the day against a known "bad" dump. EDIT: Now I'm even more confused as to why some of those "good sets" would even contain known bad dumps.
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      I think the Good Sets were meant to archive every single dump of every game.
    - wk_end 4y ago
      Once upon a time there was a program called "GoodTools" that maintained a database of all known dumps, so you could run it against your ROMs and it could identify which ROMs were known bad. Dumb completionists then decide to collect and distribute sets containing every ROM - including the bad ones - in the GoodTools database, so-called "good sets", which besides wasting lots of bandwidth and storage space (at a time when this stuff wasn't quite so cheap!) also unfortunately helped bad dumps stick around.

vorpalhex 4y ago

Thank you for that gist. I had assumed that rom codes were just region codes and it never occurred to me to even look for a key.

Fnoord 4y ago

> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Longer. I had a Chinese friend on vacation who had like 64 Gameboy games on one cardridge. Meanwhile, I had only one. His method was more convenient, legality be damned.

bastardoperator 4y ago

My kid has been playing with mame and roms since around 8 years old, he's 16 now, sure I used to have to jump in from time to time, but if anything ROM's and custom built images are what got my son into a basic understanding of how a lot of tech works. If a kid can do it so can others. The sheer amount of effort that goes into emulators is insane and I'm grateful for being able to share a lot of my childhood with my son because of those people's work and dedication.

andrepd 4y ago

It's funny he gives those examples in particular, as Pokemon Crystal and SMB3 both have commented source code (by disassembly ofc), let alone bit-perfect roms.

ginko 4y ago

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years, and the strength of the community ensures you don't get burned. Not just that, Nintendo got caught distributing community ROMs in their own virtual console.

OatmealDome 4y ago
I assume you mean Nintendo using the iNES file format to distribute NES ROM files? All evidence currently points to them simply using the format (possibly because they hired an iNES developer way back in the day), not them selling you pirated ROMs. For one, none of Nintendo's ROM files match any pre-existing ROM files you can find on the internet. [1] During the gigaleak (an event where Nintendo's internal network was breached and many files were stolen), it was found that Nintendo has a vast archive of master ROMs that they pull from whenever they need to re-release a classic game. While they may use community-dumped ROMs for internal testing, they are highly insistent that they ship their own original copies in retail products. In fact, it was even found that they had a tool to convert from their internal format for storing NES ROMs (CHR and PRG ROM data stored in separate files) to the iNES format. [2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/uaszvp/no_nintendo_using_a_flashcart_is_not_surprising/i63v774/?context=10000 https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/uaszvp/no_ninten... [2] https://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/682410911082921985/no-nintendo-using-a-flashcart-is-not-surprising https://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/682410911082921985/no-nin...

AussieWog93 4y ago

>Every game for every region has a rom already, for each game a few roms of "analytical grade" at this point, and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days. It goes deeper than that. I run an online retro games business, and occasionally get extremely specific requests from the preservationists, like particular AU-exclusive serial numbers that still haven't been dumped. The .iso for the PAL demo version of Sega Soccer 97 was from a disc in our possession too, although due to not realising what we had we let it go for $10...

mid-kid 4y ago

Since the 3ds/wiiu, games are signed, and these signatures are difficult if not impossible to forge. This makes it really easy to verify whether a dump is correct, at least for the encrypted portions of a cartridge.