Nintendo is erasing its history - The war against ROMS

in the summer of 2018 the bestselling console in June of that year wasn't the Nintendo switch or the Sony PlayStation 4 it was the NES classic a miniature version of the NES that cost $60 and came with 30 classic NES titles and it sold well so well that Nintendo underestimated the demand the NES classic was frequently sold out and resellers took advantage of the pH mod from those who weren't able to get one the NES classic underneath the covers is nothing nothing more than a low powerered ARM device that runs an in-house Nintendo developed emulator and ROMs Nintendo would follow this up with the super enes classic which was just as successful and just like any other mini console at the time it would be quickly hacked to run just about any emulator and ROM that you wanted in July 18 of the same year as the NES classic Nintendo would file a lawsuit against the operator of a popular console ROM site known as L roms.com according to Nintendo the sites are among the most notorious online hubs for pirated games and just 3 days later love ROMs was shut down Emy Paradise out of fear of being targeted by Nintendo also ceased providing ROMs on their website in July of 2019 Nintendo went scorched Earth on another popular ROM sharing site known as ROM Universe stating the company alleges rum universe is built largely on Brazen and mcale infringement it was shut down shortly after and fast forward to today vims Lair is the latest in a string of high-profile rum sites that have been a target of Nintendo and their quest to eradicate illegal rums and piracy in the case of Ms Lair Nintendo along with Sega Lego and a group of companies who formed the esa was responsible now I do want to be very clear that Nintendo does have every right to protect what's theirs and rum sides do indeed host illegal rums but it's in my opinion that Nintendo is is causing irreparable damage to a community that's almost single-handedly kept game preservation efforts alive for decades and we're going to talk about why I'm generally concerned about the future of video game preservation after a quick word from today's sponsor today's episode is brought to you by delete me as someone who works in the video game industry and as a known public figure maintaining my privacy is extremely important and sometimes I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle last year I got an email from what appeared to be a YouTube rep representative now being Tech sevy I knew that this was a scam but what I didn't really understand at the time was how these scammers were able to get my information so easily well it's all thanks to data Brokers and these are large corporations that collect huge amounts of your personal identifiable information and package it all together and these data Brokers will also sell your data to other data Brokers and there are literally hundreds maybe thousands of these sites on the internet now you have the right to stay private and protect check your personal data and that's where 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try it out for themselves there are even family plans available for those who want to protect the privacy of their entire family so what are you waiting for get 20% off delete me Us customer plans when you go to join delet me.com mvg and use promo code mvg at checkout that's join delet me.com mvg code mvg at checkout Nintendo has a well documented stance against emulation and ROMs in 1999 when Ultra hle the first public Nintendo 64 emulator released they called emulation illegal but after it was tried in court and emulators were found to actually be legal Nintendo changed their strategy if they can't take down the emulators then why not go after the sides that host the ROMs now you might be thinking to yourself mvg Nintendo just took down Yuzu that's an emulator so what are you talking about Nintendo did shut down Yuzu however the dmca law was never tried in court Yuzu took an L to keep emulation legal which I think everyone can agree was the right thing to do but let's get back to ROMs which is the main topic of this video and mentioned that Nintendo has every right as the copyright holder to remove what belongs to them but did you notice that Nintendo is pushing for the removal of the entire sites threatening the preservation of ROMs that don't even belong to them but mvg what about archive.org I hear you ask that's never going to go away let's stop and discuss archive.org for a moment and while I do agree that with the loss of Love ROMs vims and other sites as long as archive.org exists then everything will be fine but it's really not the case first of all let's talk about why Nintendo hasn't gone after archive.org in the same way as they have with the other sites well it's because archive.org has a dmca exemption to help with the archival of vintage software it's vital to make proper archival copies of these artifacts the problem with this exemption is it's not forever every 3 years the copyright office holds a rulle making proceeding to determine the exemption status and for example if one year they rule against the dmca exemption the site is then exposed to the same takedowns as any other rum site it's as simple as that nothing lasts forever except for the ridiculous copyright laws when it comes to video games and if you didn't know here in the United States video game copyright lasts for the entire life of the Creator plus an additional 70 years and Nintendo themselves have been outspoken opposing the dmca exemption on archive.org if and when there is a reversal of the dmca exemption Nintendo will be the first company to strike so what can we do about this ROM sites are illegal but can we dump our own games is it even legal to do that I'm not a lawyer but my understanding of dumping is that it's perfectly legal to dump your own games as long as you're not circumventing any protection measures as stated by the dmca in general what this means is that anything up to around the sixth generation of game consoles would be perfectly legal to make backups of anything beyond that is a great area but for this discussion let's just assume that all ROMs can be done by individuals who own originals and it's perfectly legal to do that so if it's okay to download and use an emulator and dump your own games then what's the problem preservation lives on after all I'm making a legal backup of my games the problem is have you ever tried to dump a NES Super NES Genesis or old game cartridge it's not an easy thing to do you need some type of dumping Hardware like this thing here this is the Retro 2 it can dump SNES and Genesis ROMs and I even have an adapter for N64 and Game Boy the problem is these aren't readily available they are almost never in stock when you need one and have you tried dumping NES game cartridges I've tried a few different dumpers and all of them are terrible the best option is to use a dumping tool with the analog NT mini which isn't made anymore and back in the old days way before fpj based dumping tools disc and cartridge copiers were all the rage now I've used disc copiers on the channel before these devices were also successfully blocked in US courts as illegal now of course it was still very possible to import them via Hong Kong electronic stores such as lick sang but you start to see the frustration dis based games like the Dreamcast OG Xbox and GameCube aren't really much better either you can use either a specific drive with a hacked firmware or you can use a hacked console it shouldn't be this complicated to make backups of your own games and yet it is why not just leave everything up to Nintendo after all they did successfully launch the Virtual Console on the wiii Wii U and recently the NSO service on the Nintendo switch not only this they have a very long history of providing backward compatibility options for Hardware going as far back as the Game Boy Color Nintendo can't be trusted the Virtual Console on the Wii was a very good service they provided when it was all said and done there was a total of 427 virtual conso titles available on the service in North America and in 2019 the Wii U online service service was shut down so let's move over to the Wii U many games had to be ported to the Wii U virtual console and there's a total of 318 titles available in North America it's a pretty significant reduction and of course as we know just recently the Wii U Store was also closed but of course now we come to the Nintendo switch online service which is the service-based Netflix style model Nintendo has always wanted to provide and the smart money suggests that Nintendo will transfer over the NSO with your Nintendo account to Future Nintendo Hardware including the switch 2 this of course is a good move as of the making of this video there's only a poultry 275 titles available on the NSO service and we only get a very small drip feed of new games every single month I remember back in the days of the Wii Virtual Console we were getting games every single week the Nintendo switch has sold over 155 million units but Nintendo is all but doing the absolute minimum to offer retro games to their customers the number of old clusty games Nintendo is providing on their Hardware Services is shrinking with every single generation and you've probably noticed that every single month people are asking for games like Chrono Trigger or secret of Evermore on the service how many years will people need to wait before they show up if ever there's no guarantee that anything will ever appear on the NSO as someone who does work on Commercial emulation projects I can tell you categorically that many Publishers see value in part partnering with companies like limited run or digital Eclipse to help bring back their back catalog the reality is Nintendo switch online is just another Revenue stream for Nintendo's bottom line the emulation quality while decent enough doesn't hold a candle to community developed efforts that run on their own Hardware the emulators at The Homebrew Community built on the wiii Wii U 3DS and the Nintendo switch are far superior to anything that Nintendo has ever provided the community who downloads ROMs shouldn't all be labeled as filthy Pirates who deserve what's coming to them it's the resellers who attempt to profit from them that really should be targeted if Nintendo really cared about ROMs they'd be taking down every single seller on Amazon who's selling knockoff handhelds with 10,000 games on them I can literally buy one right now and get it delivered tomorrow and if it wasn't for ROMs fan translations would not exist and this is something that people pour their hearts and souls into to provide localization efforts to games that were never released in that particular country but it doesn't even stop there things like full color translations widescreen mods ROM hacking built out of completely new games updating and adding quality of life features even building demakes of games anytime a remaster is announced people ask what quality of life features will there be well if ROMs didn't exist that would be a big fat zero and I'll fill you in on a secret commercial Retro Game collections I've been involved with we frequently work with ROM hacking experts experts in the community everyone does who works on retro collections experts in reverse engineering rum hacking and localization efforts are essential to bringing back old games to modern times the fpga community just saw the release of the N64 Mysore an incredible piece of work that will surely benefit N64 Hardware preservation but it still requires ROMs to play it's easy to say that the internet is vast and ROMs will never be eradicated but the reality is every high-profile ROM site that's shut down it's a blow to preservation we can't trust Nintendo or the esa to be in charge of preservation efforts they've failed in doing so time and time again their motives aren't to preserve rather to control they make it clear that they will go after any ROM site that gets in their crosshairs and unfortunately for vims Lair this was become of more ironic ticktockers who were playing Pokémon on their iPhones via the Delta emulator thinking that it was cool which clearly got the attention of the esa if Nintendo was serious about their history they'd Prov buy their entire library of ROMs on a service this could be either a rental or a purchase and run on any legal emulator on your PC I know it sounds crazy but think about it if Nintendo set up their own vims Lair which had checks and balances people would buy those ROMs because they know that it's something that is not illegal sites like fims Lair moders fan translations and ROM hacks should not be punished these talented people are what the industry needs right now many ROM hackers and modders got their start in the industry from their hobby work work and it would be a shame to see all that disappear but these are just one man's thoughts and opinions and I do know that this topic is polarizing for many of you so if you did make it to the end of this episode I do thank you for listening let me know your thoughts in the comments below I understand that a lot of people don't like emulation and ROMs and a lot of people obviously do but I definitely want to hear what you guys have to say in the comments below but we are going to leave it here for today's episode thank you so much for watching if you liked it please don't forget to leave me a thumbs up and I'll catch you guys in the next episode bye for now [Music]

Channel: Modern Vintage Gamer

Views: 803,198

Keywords: emulation, nintendo switch, super nintendo, roms, nintendo, switch, nso, nintendo switch online, preservation, war against roms, mvg, modern vintage gamer, virtual console, wii, wiiu, nes classic, snes classic, video game, dolphin, snes9x, retro, classic, ROM, piracy, war on roms, dmca, archive.org, vimms lair

Id: m2KV8MHRJlQ

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2024