Topic: The Ethics of Emulation and ROMs (edited)

@Rudy_Manchego A softmodded wii, a sd card and a program called "nintendont" are the only thing you need to have access to any gamecube game without the nedd of any unprecise emulation. You don't even need a gamecube controller though it's recommended for some games made for it. PS2 and OG Xbox libraries are much harder to have access to.

@glaemay Yeah there are a lot of good solutions. By preference, I tend to play my Wii library on PC where I can upscale them to 1440p. Personal preference of course. The Prime Trilogy, for example looks stunning scaled up.

@Eel it’s all good. I just didn’t like the idea of you guys banning certain topics but being able to discuss them yourselves.

Apparently I’ve been mislead by certain people claiming to know the current forum rules are, rest assured it won’t happen again

@ThanosReXXX thanks bruh. 👍

I think Tasuki was just referencing the fact that the writers for the main page on NLife have occasionally broken their own rules, which were supposed to be 'No discussions on emulation of current generation hardware'. I'm pretty sure it's fine to discuss everything pre-Switch though.

Personally my own standard is that you should generally pay for a game at least once if you're gonna play it, then after that it's OK to just emulate it if you want the game on PC, or want better visual quality, different controls, etc etc.

I don't feel bad for not paying for the 10th re-release of Final Fantasy 4. I've bought the game like twice before. If I feel like emulating it today instead of paying for the newest version, I don't think I'm committing some massive moral sin. Obviously that's different than the legality though.

Also, there are some games that you just can't play on any modern console, and frankly the developers desperately need to release a port/remaster of some kind. Skies of Arcadia comes to mind.

@kkslider5552000 I do understand that but I don't appreciate having my threads locked and told I will be banned if I argue about it only to see others doing it and it's OK. Basically what's good for the goose it's good for the gander type of situation. It would be like me getting a speeding ticket one day and then the very next day the same cop let's someone else blaze past them and do nothing.

In the end it is what it is. It's their site after all.

That was a business decision from the business side of Nintendo. No one who worked on Super Mario 64 in the mid 90s decided in 2020 "I want people to buy this as part of a collection, but only for a limited time".

I will occasionally start up an (old) game via emulation, usually something I've never owned before I'll admit, though I never stick through with it.

I'll get this grand idea in my head to explore the library of the GBA, PS1, PSP, or some such, play through the first couple levels of whatever game I've decided to start with, then soon realize I'd just rather stick to playing on my Switch, PS4, or more recently xCloud on my phone, and drop the idea altogether for about a year until the process repeats, lol.

I emulate all the time and have for many years. I have no reservations about it. I don't emulate anything new, though. And many old games that I can emulate, I do buy on modern consoles to support preserving old games.
But the emulation community has done more for preservation than any developer or company has ever come close to doing. It can be quite a journey through history, playing through betas, prototypes, and other unreleased versions of games.
And there's just a slew of games that just are not available anymore and likely never will be. I usually get hit with the option of buying preowned or whatever, but that also doesn't benefit the game maker at all.
As far as the ethics, as I said, I don't emulate anything modern and available in stores. If I like something, I buy and support it, which also holds true for retro games that get re-released. Right now I can play Metroid Prime in far better quality and more conveniently in an emulator, but I'll be there day one if it ever gets a Switch release.
Not to be that guy, and I think someone else already pointed out, emulation itself is perfectly legal. All the companies doing re-releases are doing so via emulation. Those games aren't ports, they're just ROMs running in an emulator. And emulators themselves made by other people are legal. The distribution of ROMs/ISOs is what's ethically questionable.

@SeantheDon29 You're most welcome. Coming from a guy who completely modded the living daylights out of his Wii, to turn it into the ultimate, multi-generation, multi-platform retro box.

I'll happily share the details in case you're interested. And all parts are previously approved and allowed, because I've already discussed them multiple times on this very site...

@ThanosReXXX hey good for you.

Thing is I already have a handheld about the size of a gba micro that emulates nes, snes, gb, gbc, gba, n64, ps1, psp and dc that I bought off Amazon awhile back. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll drop ya a link. 👍

@SeantheDon29 Haha, thanks but no thanks. I prefer my retro gaming on the big screen.
On a side note: I got about three times that many systems currently emulated on the Wii, so it also wouldn't be much of an adequate replacement, in that regard. But still, thanks for the offer anyways.

Ah, come on. I'm pretty sure that the people who make the marketing decisions for Nintendo are below Shigeru Miyamoto in the management structure. While he probably doesn't have much to do with that side of the business on a day to day basis, if he really wanted Mario 64 and the other games to be permanently available on the eShop it would happen.

Ultimately, Nintendo are pretty poor at making their back catalogue available when compared to other companies. Microsoft still basically sell everything they've ever made for the Xboxes, except where licensing precludes it, and Sony aren't too bad, even if the only way to play most of their PS2/3 games these days is via streaming.

There certainly are a wide range of opinions here, and the facts differ a lot based on local laws (I think in France it is illegal to copy games at all). I'm no expert, but my understanding was that in the US it's all about the license to the content. If you own a game and make a backup copy, then it doesn't matter how you play that, so long as you don't use more licenses than you own at a time (e.g. play through a game with a partner on separate devices at the same time when you only own one copy)

There are things that are obviously illegal, like selling copies of a game you own, things that are probably illegal, like distributing copies of a game for free on the internet, and then things that are much more gray, like downloading a copy of a game that you own, or a game that hasn't been sold anywhere for a really long time. 🤷‍♂️

@kkslider5552000 I don't know if the tightening of forum rules have actually brought more civil discussion but that's definitely within their rights to run it how they want to. Some of the banned words seem a little weird, though. Oh well. shrug

I think the problem with emulation is that the copyright system is too much of a "One size fits all" type of deal, 95 years for a book, music track, and movie is sort of fair, but I think games need a shorter time window for the code itself.

And before anyone brings it up....

DISNEY DID NOT BREAK THE COPYRIGHT SYSTEM!

I hate that I have to say it, but while Disney has done many bad deeds in the past and present, bending the copyright system is NOT one of those. Please watch this video for more details on what I mean. https://youtu.be/4b_5MO04qGg?t=667

I have absolutely zero moral qualms about emulating stuff, basically due to three points:

• There is no difference to Nintendo (or whoever developed it) whether I download a ROM or buy a second-hand copy from eBay or my local game retailer. They're not seeing a penny of the sale in either case.
  • If devs could be proven to be able to consistently make their old games available for a fair price & good service, I'd be a little more inclined to lean on the side of "maybe don't pirate that." But they have not. They've shown that what they will do is overcharge for a sluggish trickle of releases with the promise that maybe, maybe one day they'll make some of the more obscure or high-demand titles available. If you're very lucky and very very well behaved. But probably not. I'm not saying there's not valid reasons for games not being rereleased (mess of copyright holders, would it affect new game sales, etc), but even with titles they have absolute rights to, they get sat on for years on end. We've watched Virtual Console and its NSO equivilant restart the slow trickle from scratch for 4 consoles now, each having a successively less comprehensive library than the previous. People are stil hoping we'll get Earthbound on NSO. That's madness, we've had it released 3 separate times before now. It should have been available from word go. Don't let companies get away with wasting your time.
• Even if the games were available, assuming that a rom download equals a lost sale is fallacious. Most of the time that 'pirate' was never going to pay for the game in the first place. Nintendo aren't losing a significant number sales

Also, as an aside, archiving old games is extremely important and the corps sure aren't gonna do it.

Ethics?

You are taking something you do not own without permission. I empathise with some of the drivel that folk say to help them sleep at night, but ultimately, that justification is followed with '...and I don't care' or '...that's there problem.' Not sure if folk are oblivious to how obnoxious that sounds. Buuut, in a nutshell, putting the ethics to one side...

Free games is cool y'all. You don't have to be full of it to say so. Hee hee

I have to admit, I've been considering picking up an emulation handheld recently. Taking long, hard stares at Anbernic's line of products in particular. I haven't played Treasure Hunter G since I owned a modded OG Xbox nearly twenty years ago. And that RG351V is mighty interesting.

Last week I got the RG351p but I am disappointed in the screen for anything that is NOT a gba game

My advice is to wait for the next thing

Also I could not get to run StarCraft 64 to run without many issues