Topic: Let's imagine a world without emulation

Interesting video explaining why emulation is necessary.

The lack of translated titles is one I haven't encountered but does make a lot of sense.

Fan mods is just Nintendo being Nintendo. But that seriously does need to change.

[shudders]
I watched that video a few days ago, and it made me sad.

I think this lawsuit happy era towards emulation is saddening.

I think of how the known history of modern music traces back to at least the year 1000, while music recording techniques didn't exist until the late 1800s. think of everything we've lost!
and that's how it seems it's gonna be with gaming, or at least much of gaming.
it's such a young medium, and already games have been lost due to lost source code, having been streamed somewhere, or just slipping away into obscurity.

emulation is the closest thing we have to archiving video games.
but no, major game companies gotta shut it down, because heaven forbid Nintendo allows people to remember games that haven't been sold in stores for 25 years.

Imagine you are an artist. You make your living making and selling art. Then someone comes along and starts copying your art and selling it, or even giving it away for free. There goes your livelihood. Why pay for new content anymore, when you can choose from any of the existing content for free?

Imagine you're a musician and the same thing happens. Why buy a copy of a new album when you can just hop on Livewire or some other file sharing site and get it for free?

Imagine the same kind of thing if you made movies, or wrote novels, or anything else along these lines.

Giving away other people's intellectual property is stealing from them.

I highly agree with the idea of video game preservation. Like @CharlieSmile pointed out, some of these games haven't been sold officially in 25 years. But to be fair, I have never heard of any of these lawsuits being over some obscure Sega Master System title that has never been ported to a newer system. They are almost 100% of the time over a major widely known IP that has been re-released. I want all classic games preserved in some fashion. Even the bad ones. I just don't want it done in such a way that it is effectively stealing them.

One of my biggest wants on the Nintendo Switch is Virtual Console. But although Nintendo hasn't directly stated it, I suspect one of the biggest reasons VC isn't coming back is because we live in this modern era of emulation. Why should people pay for a copy of Mario 3 when they can download a copy for free from some Chinese website for free? Why take the time to put the effort into building, marketing and selling a library of retro content when they are competing against dozens of people offering that same content, illegally mind you, for free? Nintendo can't compete.

I do think Nintendo is guilty of some over reach. Specifically with regards to shutting down fan projects. Free fan games, in my opinion, should be considered under the same category as fan-art and fan-fiction. You can make fan art and write fan fiction, for the most part, it has to be free, but you can. Fan games should be treated the same.

I love retro games, and I know a lot of people can't afford piles of retro hardware and converters. But I think we need to be looking for solutions that don't choke out all other competition. In effect, that is what the current state of emulation is. It's like a monopoly on retro gaming. Every time people talk about it now, the question always comes up "why would I ever buy retro hardware if I can just download all those games for free?" Even a big part of the success of the NES and SNES minis is because of how easily they can be hacked and have 1000 games loaded onto them. Free.

@Heavyarms55 "Imagine you are an artist. You make your living making and selling art. Then someone comes along and starts copying your art and selling it, or even giving it away for free."

If it is for NEW games then yes it is wrong. But if it is from games made 20 years ago that are no longer making profits then it is completely fine. Big companies are not longer profiting from their oldest titles that are NOT manufactured anymore.

I love to buy my games for my GBA, GB, DS second hand and Nintendo is ZERO profiting from that. So why should people NOT play those obsolete NOT-profiting titles anymore when there is NO way that Nintendo could provide them?

I understand if emulators and roms are for sale then it is WERY wrong! But if they are free and the company is not making money off those games, I say let people enjoy them.

Big companies lie that they care about their old titles. They are only money for them.

@Zuljaras Ownership doesn't end after a set amount of time. The reason buying games second hand is okay is the same reason selling anything second hand is okay. I am trading you money for an item, I lose money and get the item, you gain money and lose the money. It's totally different when you make endless copies of that item and give them away. Then that takes the value away.

Nintendo can't provide retro games because Nintendo, like any other game company can't compete with people copying and giving their games away for free. If companies could actually make money selling their backlog of games, they would, but they know they are competing with things like this. It is why we only ever see the most beloved, well known titles and that's pretty much it.

Do you think Disney would be okay with you copying and giving away thousands of copies of their old movies? How about Paul McCartney and Ringo Star? You think they would be cool with you making and giving away thousands of copies of their albums online? It's well established that it is illegal to pirate movies and music, so why should games get a free pass? That is nonsense.

@subpopz They wont give it to me, so I am gonna steal it. I can't play this cassette on my CD player, so I am gonna steal it. Not legitimate justification in the slightest.

You aren't wrong, companies are not competing where they could be. But that still doesn't justify theft.

@subpopz There are movies that never got released on platforms after VHS to this day. There are albums that are the same way. So that analogy DOES work. One of my favorite TV shows from when I was a teenager never even got a VHS release. Just because I really want to watch it again, would not justify me finding it and stealing it from some fishy website. Trust me, if I could find it, I probably would. I do understand the temptation. Just cause something isn't right has never stopped anyone. But that doesn't make it right, it just means people do it anyway.

I understand your position, it IS a problem, there are plenty of games that haven't been re-released and I even agree with the proposed solution to have a subscription service to play retro games on a modern device of some kind, (I'd even go a step further and have hardware that lets us dump roms from physical cartridges we own, but I know how much less likely that is.) but the lack of that solution doesn't make piracy somehow not piracy.

People can Google and see the Mona Lisa for free. A digital reproduction of it. It's perfectly fine and legal to do so.

So, the artist analogy doesn't really work as well.

Work doesn't fall into the public domain until something ridiculous like 80 years after the date of publication or creator's death. I think the Mona Lisa ticks that box. A game that is 40 years old still has a long way to go before it's pd.

@Heavyarms55 So emulating old games does not hurt companies. Who cares if people play them?! Please get real! The main issue is pirating NEW games.

If people are not selling roms and emulators then it is 100% fine with me.

@Heavyarms55 The thing about theft is that you're taking a physical thing away, an object with intrinsic value. Digital goods though, they can be copied indefinitely, and so it loses any intrinsic value.

I'm not saying it's OK to pirate games, but I don't think you can compare them 1 to 1.

I emulate older games myself. They're games I already own, but I don't want to be tethered to an old GameBoy or GBA to play the old Pokemon games for example.

What's your opinion on the second hand market? Doesn't have to be game related, but just in general. You're not paying the artist when you buy a game, music, or a painting second hand either.

What makes something new or old? Is it that physical copies are no longer being made? MK Wii still sells plenty of copies per quarter, so Nintendo must still be making new copies of a decade old game.

somethin that's been discontinued by the company that distributed it, and therefore something the company can no longer profit from.

@Octane
"What's your opinion on the second hand market? Doesn't have to be game related, but just in general. You're not paying the artist when you buy a game, music, or a painting second hand either."

Well...
I really depend on Second handed market like Ebay / Amazon because i want specific games that has been Sold Out from playasia. I knew it will contribute nothing to developers since i bought the games from the seller with very cheap price, but at least i didn't buy pirated games anymore.
Oh, i still own NDS Lite to play Old GBA games.
And its color is..... Pink from Love & Berry. 😆

@Octane The second hand market is a completely different thing. It's long been established that you can buy and sell things from individuals. You aren't making copies and diluting the value of other's property. You can buy a used car, you can buy a used book. That's totally different than making copy reproductions without permission. When you buy something second hand, you are trading money for an item, it's effectively a 1-1 trade. When you make copies of something and give them away, or sell them, it's not the same thing, it's not an even trade at all. Especially if you are selling the copies. But even giving them away distorts the market value of legitimate originals and discourages official reproductions/re-releases.

But what's the difference really?

That's a perfect description of the digital market.

@Octane
"But what's the difference really?"

As a Former Pirated games player, i found the quality of pirated games in disc (PS1, PS2, wii, Xbox360) in Indonesia were really Abbysmal. From the disc cover, disc jacket, packaging, they were really heck cheap. I still kept 3 discs of pirated Wii games which has been MOLDED by fungi (the disc surface turned into White like paper). It has been damaged so i can throw away like a Frisbee. Weeee...!

I regret with my pirated games, so i have removed all my pirated collections, started again from Zero.

Of course, from Quality aspect, having Original games is like having real treasures, doesn't matter Brand New or Second handed.

alternatively, consider:
nah.
you could also, like, take people at face value and believe them. that's free, too.

there's games like the satella view, or relics like the Sega channel, that streamed things that have had a lot of bits lost to time.
there's more modern digital exclusives like Scott Pilgrim, Out Run Online Arcade, or P.T. that are scarce in that they are tethered to a few thousand systems. if all those systems are gone, poof. there go the games.

for me, personally, I consider this: I've bought several games over the last 33 years. I wanna be able to still play them all in another 33 years from now. I feel we need to consider ways of making sure a lot of good games that aren't the usual suspects of retro re-releases aren't lost 33 years, 66 years, or 99 years from now.

@CharlieSmile
99 years from now, LOL 😆

The used markets for games is worse than emulation. Specifically because emulation usually takes a few years to get going, by the time the emulators are good enough to provide an experience equal to or better than original hardware? The games made for that hardware are not being profited from anymore.

Used copies come out within a week or so of launch for some titles. There's a bit of a culture amongst some of the community to buy a game and flip it for a bit of cash back immediately after they beat it. That game then sits on the shelf to be purchased by someone willing to pay money for the game. The publishers and developers see none of that money.

Used game sales, more than anything else I can think of, is the only thing I can think of that is a direct lost sale. Piracy was never that to the same degree because people who pirated content weren't necessarily people who would have purchased that same content. Emulation is certainly not that because those games aren't on shelves anymore. Used games, particularly recent used games, are by definition a lost sale.

The only difference is that used sales are also 100% legal and always will be. Well that and the fact that publishers don't really need to keep the pirate bay, gbatemp or dolphin happy. Nintendo doesn't want to start a war with EB Games because they're the ones who decide how visible their hardware is.