Nintendo Shuts Down JavaScript GBA Emulator Hosted On Development Platform

Also according to the source, they shut down a similar repository with a similar name a few years ago, and there are still plenty of others. ROM sites are like a Hydra. Chop one down, and two or three others appear in its place...

@CanisWolfred to bad we can't just crush them all at once.

Fascinating that they're deciding to do this now. I venture this means exciting news to come soon for those of us who have no problem paying for legacy software.

@edgedino I'm glad they don't. I hadn't ever heard of or used any of the 3 mentioned takedowns. But until Nintendo does something to make the games available again themselves I feel that it's an act of preserving video game history by having these sites.

Nintendo’s one company u don’t wanna piss off, I’d say. They’ve got loads to spend on burning pirates if they choose. Regardless of where u stand on the issue, this type of thing is inevitable, I think.

Nintendo, I don't want to download roms I WANT to pay you for your retro games. Give me GBA and Gamecube games on Switch and I will happily throw piles of money at you.

I don't want to use random Chinese emulation machines, I want access to these classic titles through a legitimate service on the Switch. Let me pay you!

@WillTheLion "An act of preserving video game history by having these sites"???

Who are you kidding?

If Nintendo cared more about ALL the games for their consoles and about their customers I would be happy to hear that.
BUT Nintendo don't care that much about games, they care only about the ones that ca make them earn the most money possible only because of that reason and also Nintendo clearly shows that they have no respect at all for their customers, they just want to suck money like a leech would suck blood, then this kind of news make me sad instead.
Nintendo should have all the rights to protect their own games, but they should earn those rights by keep caring about ALL their games and preserving them and this is not what they are doing except for the games that let them suck the most money possible in the most stupid and unconvenient ways possible (stupid mini consoles, online subscription...)

i really don't see how Nintendo benefit from doing this, must cost them a lot of money to make the effort and get them taken down and do they really make a lot of revenue from people who use roms when they do this? feel they are just a bit too bitter about it all and should concentrate more effort and that money on actually making more games!

Good job, Nintendo !
Now, Get rid ALL website which provides Pirated ROMs.

Nintendo can do whatever they want with their property. Release old games whenever they feel like it. It's their call and their right.

Sharing ROMS illegaly and getting money from this action is ... well illegal. These people are not preserving video game history (as someone else mentioned here). These people are getting rich from pure theft.

@Cosats
I've not seen any ROM site charge anything for them though so I don't see what you are getting at all. Maybe if Nintendo opened up the entirety of its video game library from all its systems on vc rather than dripping out the same old ones people would not have to resort to ROMs for older games!

@WillTheLion @GameOtaku They are available. You just need either a Wii U or a (2/3)DS to buy and play them. If you want them available on the Switch, that's a different issue, but you can't claim that they aren't available at all.

As for preserving video game history, plenty of people are already doing that by legally dumping the ROMs themselves and then NOT distributing them.

@GameOtaku is call "advertise revenue", show me a couple of rom's sites without any kind of advertisement. That's how they get money, as a professor say to us on class "there is no free lunch", they win something

@BulbasaurusRex
Not all games are available on vc on either of those platforms though. I've not seen any effort by either Nintendo or konami to put Castlevania Legends on vc so if I get a rom and play it on emu it's their loss.
@Samed
NintendoLife also gets ad revenue, so does, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, gamefaqs etc. That's a really weak argument especially when as I said above not all games are available on vc or switch online. If they want to prevent it give consumers a choice!

Just look at both original xbox and wii wads, you can't even get some of the games anymore all thanks to DMCA's.

@GameOtaku but Nintendo life, Youtube, etc do it in a legal way, that´s the difference. Them don´t use private property (trademarks, etc) from others, so, isn't a weak argument, because we´'re talking about legality, make money with others property is ilegal, directly or through advertisement

@Samed
This site and all the rest are constantly using others trademarks! There is a review of megaman legacy collection on here that draws people to this site that then see ads!

@GameOtaku Nintendo can't do anything if they can't get a licensing deal with third parties or there are other rights issues in general that make a rerelease impossible. All of their first and second party games up to the N64 that do not have rights issues are indeed available.

In that case, it's still not right to just steal the game just because you can't buy a digital version. Look for a used copy either online or in a store. If you can't find it at a reasonable price, that's just too bad for you. You'll just have to accept that you'll be unable to play it. You do not have the right to free entertainment just because it's otherwise unavailable.

As for your last comment, ever heard of "fair use"? Obviously, giving away someone else's trademarked data does not fall under fair use. Using even unrelated advertisements to then make money off of violating trademarks makes it even worse.

@BulbasaurusRex Then publishers should do something about that to have a legal way to preserve ALL games, and as I said in another topic in all those situations where they cannot sell the game anymore (as well as the ones when they just don't care to sell it anymore) games should become public domain. If they want to keep something under they control they should have the duty to put that thing to use. If they don't want to or just cannot anymore then that thing should become public domain. Until then roms of old games are more than welcome for me.

@BulbasaurusRex
I don't pay the ROM site and if they are not making any money off of the sale of the game what does it matter?

@WillTheLion depends really cause companies like Nintendo have all their games basically or at least mostly stored, some where even the arcade cabinet's for games. They just don't release them all for varying reasons like it won't sell or because it wasn't a great game at all and would be more of a pain to have it put on the shop compared to a game that would sell. Though I guess it mostly all boils down to whether it would sell or not.

@LuckyLand People ARE working on legally preserving all games. They just can't distribute them to other people afterwards.

It's not up to you to decide public domain law. Even if such a law were to be passed today, I'd imagine it would still require at least 30 years before the works could pass into the public domain, so you still wouldn't be allowed to download ROMs for systems such as the SNES or Genesis.

@GameOtaku We just explained that the ROM sites DO make money by having people pay them to run advertisements on their sites that are otherwise blatantlty breaking the law! What part of that do you not understand?!!!!! Just because it's not a direct profit doesn't make it any less illegal.

@WillTheLion If those devices and games weren't available in second hand game shops up and down the country then maybe. As it currently stands these emulators are not necessary to preserve these games at all.

@BulbasaurusRex so if things take 30 years to get better we shouldn't do anything because it takes too long? Is it better never than late for you? Laws can be wrong and that situation simply is wrong. Laws are protecting only Nintendo as a publisher and producer, they are not protecting the customers and they are not caring about the games preservation.
If laws protect only one side the other one can do something to protect himself as far as I'm concerned.

And if there are people who are legally preserving the games, why Nintendo used roms downloaded from internet to make Virtual console games?

@BulbasaurusRex
For the last time ad money is not money from sales of ROMs! NintendoLife uses Nintendo products to get people to their site to generate ad revenue but are not affiliated in any way. I see no difference in either one.

Id be interested to see what people think about online games which have been takendown, do people here think its okay for
fan servers, its not against the law?

Copyright originally lasted 20 years. Let’s go back to that so we can download these ancient games when we want and Nintendo can move on to making new content in the attempt to extract money from our pockets.

The repeated extension of Copyright Law in the US comes at the cost of eroding of the Public Domain.

I have ROMs/ISOs, but as others have said, if Nintendo bring GameCube games to the switch at €10 each I would buy the hell outta those. But, we all know they will be more than €10 each, since it's Nintendo... I'd still buy them, cause I'm a sucker for games, lol.

Nintendo really are clueless sometimes, this has no negative impact on their business and in many ways celebrates it with mods and hacks. Nintendo should try to embrace the community which gave us the likes of Mario 64 online instead of trying to shut everything down. Most of these games aren't available to buy and never will be again and certainly none of the are on Switch due to Nintendo always dragging their heels.

Did roms and emulators being freely available stop the Mini NES selling out? Did they stop the Mini SNES selling very well? If GameCube games appeared on the eshop tomorrow they'd sell very well despite Dolphin' s existence, I and many others would still buy them despite having emulators.

Sonic Mania exists because Sega took notice of what was happening in the homebrew scene rather than trying to shut it down. If they were current gen games then yes that is out of the question but older games that nobody is or ever will be selling again, I don't see the problem.

If it wasn't for Nintendo canceling the Virtual Console for the Nintendo switch nobody would need the emulators and ROMs to play all of the classic games when Virtual Console was the best thing a part of Nintendo they better start reconsidering the put the Virtual Console back where it rightfully belongs instead of trying to get people to pay for online service just to play the old classic games which is bs

See, here's where I have a big problem: This article seems to suggest Nintendo has shut down a site because of an emulator specifically. That's just wrong because emulators are legal. I do not like this, and I think some of these homebrew guys need to fight against Nintendo on this. Fine if Nintendo gets them to remove any illegal ROMs they are hosting, if that's the case, but that should be it.

@impurekind they can shut it down because the emulator included the BIOS and that is copyright protected.
However I have to say that this is a stupid discussion. Roms have absolutely no harm in it and people will keep on use it no matter what.
Even many studies proved that pc piracy helps the industry more than it hurts it bevause these people play more games than they would if had to pay and by word of mouth about the good games they end selling more.

I've got full ROM sets of NES, SNES, Genesis etc. and I still buy plenty of retro games when they are available and more than I should really. I don't feel any guilt at all.

I never understand how people think it is justified to defend criminal activity just because they seem to have some delusion they have a right to something that isn't theirs. There are plenty of things in this world I want some I can afford some I can't I don't believe it's my right to have everything I want.

Saying a game isn't available is utter bull as well. If I want a copy of Mr Classic Goes to Loopy Land on the NES then I can purchase both a NES and Mr Classic Goes to Loopy Land perfectly freely and legally second hand. Now if that happens to be more expensive then I can afford that does not give me carte blanche to commit crime.

@Arpie in your suggestion you are just giving money to a random person for a used copy to justify a sense of ownership, there's no benefit to the creator.

@boatie I didn't say there was a benefit to the creator. I said by doing that I'm not committing crime. If someone wants to commit crime that's their choice but don't try and justify it when there is no justification.

@Kriven Or the Great Library was destroyed by Genghis Khan. I wonder who the equivalent of Genghis Khan is here...

"To prevail emulators, one must be Nintendo."
im shock to see a such thing to happening, my goodness this will destroy all emulators...

"I never understand how people think it is justified to defend criminal activity just because they seem to have some delusion they have a right to something that isn't theirs"

My old Gameboy got broken, I have bought some games for it full price back then and then I bought even more Gameboy games on the Virtual Console (I even bought again some of the games that I already had in physical form) but yeah, if I play those games on my computer (since my Gameboy got broken and I don't even have it anymore) I'm committing a crime because those games ARE NOT MINE???? ARE NOT MINE????? So what did I do when I bought them?????????

I didn't dump the rom myself, I downloaded them, this makes those games not mine????? LOL

@Arpie there's no need to justify, either.

For some reason, comment sections for articles like this make me think of the CollegeHumor parody "We Didn't Start the Flame War".

@Zuljaras so, how are they making money off of **this**?

Running an emulation site is risky business. But I'm glad they exists as long as there's no legal way to buy and play them.
I wonder what would happen if some dev released a ROM of their own game for free? It has happened with Command & Conquer, the first two games were released for free as CD images. Technically you needed an "emulator" to run them.

The problem with the videogame industry since its inception, is that contrary to books, movies and music, games were designed as products to make money out of, first and foremost. Books, movies and music are essentially created by a creator who wants to express its creativity. I won't dispute that there were game creators out there falling into this category as well, but most of what was available to consumers in the early days came from programmers hired by a company to create games, sometimes not even being credited for them. Games were considered a simple product, a toy, like any other. They weren't designed as something that needed to be "preserved". Technology was, and is still, proprietary, despite gaming having grown up to be now a medium almost as important (if not as important) as movies, music and books.

Music, books and movies always were about the content in itself, mostly irrelevant of the medium it was put on. If music was created as a product, like games were (and still are), we wouldn't be able to play or music on devices it was not licensed to be played on. Imagine! You buy an LP that was made to play only on Pioneer turntables and not anything else. And even if some services tried to sell music with DRM at some point (cough cough Apple cough cough), many if not most modern platforms have reverted to files you can share across devices without any problem.

I'm not going to argue for or against emulation. But while piracy IS a problem, and preserving gaming history is another, the MAIN problem with gaming is that it is still viewed as a proprietary product that should be locked to specific devices that are themselves relevant only for a short period of time. The old argument of "go buy an old console and play your old game on it" is completely bonkers. This argument would be laughed at everywhere EXCEPT in the gaming world, where most gamers seem to find this completely normal. IT IS NOT. Imagine if whatever music you buy on your iPhone (or any other mobile) would be eternally stuck to that particular model of mobile. How "just keep your old mobile to play that piece of music, you stupid you" sounds? Is having to keep your old mobiles forever to play the music you bought on them sounds "normal"?

Gaming need, at some point, to free itself from being "just another product sold for money". There is NO reason why I cannot play old games without an old console gathering dust in the house. This is backwards. I didn't bought the game for its cart or disc. I bought it for what these contained. Game code. The same I didn't bought CDs for the medium, I bought it for their contents. I'm not buying a Switch game because of Nintendo. I'm buying it because of the game itself. The platform is a vessel. It's a turntable. It's a disc-based movie player.

For gaming to evolve, it doesn't need better hardware. It actually NEEDS to be separated from hardware. I understand this would require console makers to completely change their business model. But if we want to get rid of illegal emulation and rom websites, that's the ONLY way to do it. Eliminate the need for people to resort to them, and you'll eliminate them.

And right now, that's not what most console makers are doing.

@Realnoize

Spot on. Emulation does not equal piracy.

So dolphin’s next?

So...Nintendo will sell me GBA games on 3DS and/or Switch, right? Why do they despise people playing their games?

To me if the game can be legally bought that leads to developers/ publishers getting money then it is piracy in my eyes if you download it for free.

But when there is games where the dev/pub has no way in making money from the game then I see those games as abandonware.

I can understand why people can see abandonware as piracy but if there is no legal way where the dev/pub can earn money from it then I see it as fair game to download these games.

Example of 2 of my favourite games back in the day (1 nes and 1 mega drive game).

Available: Shining force can be gotten legally as it is on steam so this is not classed as abandonware (I still count it as legal if it was part of a compilation of games).

Not Available: The Adventures of Rad Gravity is not available to buy digitally so I see this game as abandonware as there is no way for me to buy this game where the dev/pub can earn money from.

I put games I may or may not own on my SNES mini. No way to not do that "illegally" like my Oracle games on 3ds. I'd pay $2-3 for some games. They just dont make it available.

Love Nintendo. I will absolutrly put Goldeneye and all the other Rare games on an N64 classic when it comes. I own them, and the 64 wouldn't be the same without it.