(Go go go! Hey, I own the cartridge! Nintendo’s coming! For profit, Nintendo? No, for me! ) Nintendo may be known as the bright and happy
kid’s company, but they can be pretty ruthless when it comes to their IP. For example- Sega hired people from the fan
game community to make Sonic Mania. Valve has a number of fan mods, including
a full remake of Half Life, available on their storefront. When Capcom had to shut down a fan remake
to avoid competition with their own, they asked the staff to shut it down themselves,
then invited them to Japan to see the real remake before the rest of the world and talk
with them about game development. It’s hard to be too mad about the shut down
when Capcom gave the staff a dream vacation and showed that they cared. And then there’s Nintendo, who, after blowing
Metroid’s 30th anniversary with one of the most disastrous flops in their recent memory,
issued a series of takedown notices to a fan remake that had been anticipated for years. Fans were already upset and it was obvious
this would make them even angrier. Nintendo had even more reason to reach out
to the community than Capcom did, but their attitude seems that if you’re using their
IP, you’re the bad guy- they don’t owe you anything. More recently Nintendo went after two ROM
sites and sued the owners for 12 million dollars- an amount that’s obviously been inflated
to deter other sites, like when the RIAA sued a woman 2 million for downloading “Hella
Good.” (legally safe approximation) Of course, Nintendo
has the right to protect their property in any way they see fit. But having the right to do something doesn’t
mean it’s the right thing to do. Many companies have shown that you don’t
have to respond to fan creations with a hammer, and in the case of ROM sites the issue is
complicated because it’s as much about preservation as it is piracy. Companies can’t always be trusted to preserve
their work and make it easily available. The original negatives of important films
are often lost or destroyed, and other times movies are only made available in inferior
forms. Amadeus has only been released on Blu-ray
in the director’s cut, which is widely agreed to be a worse version. The Star Wars negatives were famously and
permanently altered with special editions, which led to fans taking restoration efforts
into their own hands, usually with better quality than Lucasfilm’s offerings. Fans aren’t limited by deadlines and budgets,
and technology has enabled them to pick up the slack when companies fail. Video games aren’t much different. The only version of Silent Hill 2 playable
on modern systems is the disastrous HD collection port. With Konami moved on to Pachinko machines,
it’s safe to say that they don’t care which version of the game they leave behind. A team of modders recently fixed up the out
of print PC version, But more to the point Playstation 2 emulators have allowed people
to play the original release for years. Building an emulator is an immense job. Developers have to make a lot of assumptions
about how the original system operated, and for every problem they fix two more appear. It takes years before games are even playable,
let alone good, and developers don’t do this just because they want to pirate games
for free. They do it for the same reason that fans restore
classic film negatives- because they care about the games and want them to exist forever
in the best form possible. Newer consoles make it easy to get legal dumps
with homebrew apps, but older systems have a more complicated process with specific hardware
requirements, which is why ROM sharing is so popular. By attacking ROM sites, Nintendo is jeopardizing
fan efforts to preserve gaming history, because they’ve failed to provide an adequate replacement
for what those sites offer. Newer emulators are meant to be used with
game dumps obtained from a modded console, but older systems can’t be hacked and require
a specialized hardware. I’m not in any way advocating piracy or
encouraging anyone to download games they haven’t paid for- I’m just asking what
if. What if Nintendo succeeded in their efforts
and shut down all ROM sharing sites and ended all unofficial emulation of their games? (Would you like to see a world without emulation? That sounds cool as shit, Mr!) Nintendo’s platforms make up the biggest
and most important retro library held by any company, and the Wii virtual console has been
their biggest push to sell them. I’m going to repeat that- Nintendo’s retro
game library peaked in the Wii era. The emulation was barebones with no visual
options or button remapping whatsoever, with certain titles requiring a claw grip to play. It’s not as if the Wii couldn’t have done
better; a modded Wii can run fan made emulators that have far better features. Not only have fans made better emulators on
PC- they’ve made better emulators on Nintendo’s own hardware. The service ended at 397 games, which is not
a lot when considering the number of systems supported; the N64 only got 21 titles. Among the many games that never made it onto
the service is Goldeneye, one of the most important games of its generation. It’s never been re-released due to its entanglements
with Nintendo, Microsoft, and the James Bond license. It’s not as if companies haven’t tried;
Microsoft had to shelve a remastered version and Activision and Nintendo settled for a
remake that contained none of the Rare’s original game design. It’s entirely possible that the game will
never be released again. And in a world without emulation, that means
you’ll never play the game again. (Hey- This is where we used to play Goldeneye-
slappers only!) The original hardware isn’t an answer to
this problem either. It’s not practical to have dozens of systems
on hand to play classic games, systems that wear down and become harder to repair over
time, with connections that future displays won’t support, and cartridges with batteries
that die and render games unplayable. At some point the hardware will be gone and
these games will have to be emulated in order to exist, and you can expect a substantial
loss of gaming history if a company like Nintendo is the only game in town. The original hardware is also no help for
games that never released in the first place. If Seiken Densetsu 3 isn’t familiar to you,
you might recognize it as “Secret of Mana 2,” a sequel to one of the Super Nintendo’s
most beloved games. Despite being regarded as an even better title,
it has never been released in the West. Downloading an English patched ROM has been
the only option for the majority of players to experience this game, which raises the
question of whether it’s immoral to pirate a game you never even had the chance to buy. Are you willing to accept that you will never
play highly acclaimed games and entries into series that you love simply because the publisher
didn’t bother? Because without emulators and ROM sites, that
choice is made for you. You won’t. (Hey now, this is a bunch of crap! I was a level 59 Ninjablade!) Nintendo simultaneously made the virtual console
better and worse when jumping to the Wii U. The games now had button remapping and save
states, but the vast majority of games still had no visual options and were locked to a
dark, dull picture. Instead of starting where the Wii left off,
the entire library had to be rebuilt on Wii U, leaving players who had to wait for their
favorite games to appear on the Wii to wait once again for them to be uploaded on Wii
U so they could pay an upgrade fee to play them in a worse looking form. The Wii U virtual console ended at 311 games,
a sizable step downward from the generation before. It’s worth noting that these storefronts
are only temporary. The Wii storefront will close in a matter
of days, leaving Nintendo’s largest retro library permanently inaccessible. The Wii U shop will certainly end up the same
way, making the entire virtual console a meaningless footnote in the long term of game preservation. From here, Nintendo dabbled in classic consoles. As fun little novelty items, they’re pretty
neat. As a method of preserving a retro library? No fucking way. The systems include a few dozen titles with
no option to buy more, making it a Noah’s Ark-like situation where the vast majority
of games are left to drown. The emulation at least offers some basic visual
options, but still pales in comparison to PC emulators. It goes without saying that these systems
aren’t even on the radar when it comes to serious efforts at preservation. That leaves us with Nintendo Switch Online,
which appears to use the same emulator as the NES classic. Button remapping is once again not available,
conveniently making Nintendo’s $60 controllers the most comfortable option. Resolution is capped to 720p, which may seem
like a silly complaint but is important for how the games scale and particularly for scanline
filters like the one Nintendo is attempting here. Games are still being added at a snail’s
pace with libraries beyond the NES not started yet. I’m going to guess that the service will
slowly build to a library that is at best somewhat larger than the Wii before Nintendo
jumps to another architecture and forces the whole thing to start over once again. Nintendo has never made the preservation of
their retro games a high priority. It’s always been a neglected side project,
an extra feature to boost the appeal of their current system, or in this case, to polish
the turd of an online paywall. In the 12 years that Nintendo has been in
the business of selling classic games on a large scale, they’ve yet to find an acceptable
long term solution for making them consistently available. And in a world without PC emulators and ROM
sites, gaming history is entirely at the mercy of these half hearted efforts. This is opposed to playing every video game
ever made in any resolution or aspect ratio, with any controller you want in any configuration
you can imagine, with custom filters, unlimited savestates, texture packs, mods to add new
gameplay mechanics, and entirely new games built out of ROM hacks. Again- I’m not advocating for piracy on
PC. I’m just pointing out that there’s a reason
it’s so popular, and it’s not because people are cheap and don’t want to pay. If Patreon is any indication, lots of people
are willing to shell out for quality emulation. Valve has described Piracy as a services problem. When legitimate services fail customers, they’ll
resort to piracy to get what they want instead. And that’s basically the problem Nintendo
has- people aren’t downloading ROMs because they’re bad people who want to do bad things. They’re doing it because PC is a superior
platform to Nintendo’s services in every way. If Nintendo really wants to stop piracy of
their games online, their efforts shouldn’t begin with lawsuits and takedowns- they should
begin with building a better service. One meant for the long term that won’t die
out every time they change hardware, with a more complete library and emulation that
isn’t put to shame by fan software. I don’t have the answers for how they can
do that, but here’s a crazy idea that would never work- what if Nintendo opened a ROM
site, tolerating PC emulation and providing a legitimate way to access their games. They wouldn’t have to do any work other
than just hosting the ROMs and taking the money. If Nintendo could fill the role of the sites
it’s closing then its actions wouldn’t nearly be as troubling. And if they were to price the games reasonably,
a lot of the people pirating now would probably buy them. Until Nintendo figures something better out,
ROM sharing on the internet is going to persist by necessity. Because people aren’t willing to deny themselves
access to the media that has shaped their lives, no matter how many legal barricades
a company may put up to stop them. No amount of litigation can hold back the
love that people have for these games, and Nintendo’s problems will continue until
they show the same amount of love for their own history that their fans have. (Get me back! Get me back I don’t care if Nintendo sues
me! … I just want to play Mother 3 again… Aw, here come the ninjas to take me away! Well George, the fellas and I wanted to see
if you’d play some Goldeneye. Goldeneye? Wait- my Raspberry Pi, still loaded with all
my games! Bert! What do ya know about that! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas Snes9x! Merry Christmas Dolphin emulator! Hey get your goddamn shit together, but also
Merry Christmas! And happy new year to you- in jail! Merry Christmas!)
