Nintendo Swashes Even More Pirates' Buckles

All these pirate jokes are starting to grind on me.

I sincerely oppose illegal downloads of games and other media. As an eventual small-time game designer myself who'll just wanna make an honest buck for a hard year's work on a couple games, I don't wanna see some snot-nosed, pimple-faced, internet techno-geek giving my project away for free. I got people's salary to pay for, man. Sometimes I wish I really COULD send a swarm of ninjas after these pirates. Score another one for the good guys.

@Big A2 - Wait until these comments get going, then

One down...millions to go....
At least it does send a warning to other sites like that. We need other ways to fight piracy, not one by one that'll never have enough impact......and no not ninjas either

I'll say it again. I pirate... but not games and definitely not indie games. I think piracy for the most part is a reaction to slow pace at which online and instant region free distribution has taken. Especially in places like Australia. We are NEVER going to get Excitebots are we?

Things like WiiWare, XBLA, PSN, Steam are going to solve that mostly. In many other cases there is no benefit for the end consumer to wait months or even years for content of the same, sometimes lesser, quality to appear in legitimate sources. If you reduce the time, cost and effort to get it legitimately piracy will reduce. In the meantime I will continue to pirate OneOne and Dr Who and legally download Portal and Bit Trip Runner.

@BigA2: It's tradition man!

And people thought we'd run out of pirates!

We have a shared archive of pirate photos here at Nintendo Life. It's currently 1.4TB.

@Skywake: I really do get your point, especially being Australian myself. Even the PSN is lacking, I believe last week 90% of the European updates made it over here, and Aviator reminds me constantly that we're lucky to get all the European updates on WiiWare/DSiWare as well.

I don't pirate anything, it's not my thing, and I've got plenty of games to keep me busy as is, I just wish they'd give us the chance to buy half of those games

I was mentioned. Without the word 'useless' in the same sentence. I'm loved!!

At least Dustin Hoffman as Hook gave kudos points for this article.

Good. Go Nintendo!!

I knew it. It's a conspiracy to make actual piracy look worse than it already does! DX

As others have stated improved release schedules will sort a lot of these issues and make modding and hacking of systems less likely, but the fact is that a lot of people will opt for free if they can without any regard for the greater impact.

Part of the problem is that there's a big disconnect between the art and the artist. Some people only associate the work they're downloading with some faceless corporation. I think if prices were deemed to be "more fair" and there was greater availability of product, then the overwhelming majority of piracy would cease overnight because it wouldn't be worth it.

Having a more streamlined method of getting games rated and alternate distribution models will hopefully have a similar effect. I think console makers could take a more active role in distribution of retail product than they presently do to ease access to overseas markets for smaller publishers, but it would be nice to start with in-house projects.

I don't understand why Nintendo would even bother spending the money to develop games like Excite Bots, Disaster: Day of Crisis or Captain Rainbow if they're not going to try to maximise their return with a global release, but like Brad I cannot be bothered chasing these things any more and will simply wait patiently like my fellow PAL-landers for North American exclusives.

lol, so much for people hiding behind the 'look at all the ROM sites that Nintendo hasn't shut down yet, it must be OK to download them' excuse. they're coming for 'em... eventually :3

hahahahaha, that is officially my favorite picture+caption ever. Best movie ever, thank you for making my day.

Arr mateys! These wanna-bes are giving real pirates a bad name

@skywake: Unfortunately gamers in Japan and America have no real excuse. Even if they improved the release schedule people are still not gonna pay for the games if they can get them for free.

Here's another pirate joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLsJyfN0ICU

@Raylax. You mean Wii games aren't supposed to be on DVD-Rs with market pen saying what game they are

But this case has to be dumb. Re-directing the URL is one dumb thing but handing out ROM links and the like on said website is another. Then again I guess most customers are not savvy enough to work out such things for themselves.

Well, at least they weren't Space Pirates. We would have to call Samus!

With all this hatred toward pirates, no wonder the Pittsburgh Pirates have terrible attendance and haven't had a winning season since 1992.

On a more serious note, I hate pirates. I especially abhor DS piracy, there is no excuse.

Dustin Hoffman is an amazing actor.

@24: He's one of the greats. I know that movie catches a lot of flack, but on a certain level, it's enjoyable from a cheeseball POV. Certainly not a film classic, but OK if it's late and there's nothing else on TV and it happens to be on.

This is why we don't have gaming companies there, other than Rockstar Games. Piracy in NYC prevent development companies from being established there.

Is it really rampant in New York?

@WildPidgeyAppears. Yes, it is. The crime rate keeps growing in Brooklyn and the Bronx. And we just had a bomb scare in Times Square. But also, a lot of movies get pirated. And R4 game cards are sold there.

@WildPidgeyAppears. And if you ever played a GTA game, then you probably know that the game's setting, Liberty City, is a lampoon of NYC.

I know of a great site for ROMs that has been around for literally ten years, and Nintendo has yet to shut it down. Then there was that debacle back in the day with the Power Joy III being sold openly at the mall down the street from my house. Nintendo not only shut down their little multi-games operation, but even attempted to sue Mall of America for knowingly allowing those rats to set up shop in their malls. I got one online for half what they were selling it in the mall - it was junk, trust me You just don't see that type of stuff getting sold here in Shreveport that much.

But if you'd also seen the hoard of NES carts I have stuffed in my bookcase, you wouldn't think I knew ROMs existed, would you? I've also spent more points on Virtual Console than I did on the Wii itself. Aye Mateys, I support the retro cause in whatever way I can

Respect the mighty N