First off, I'd like to apologize for both the lateness of this column. These past few weeks have been very stressful (what with the bevy of projects and finals before the end of the semester) so I haven't had the time to write all I wanted to. Still, I hope this covers all of the major points on what is becoming a very important aspect of the video game industry.
In any case, I would heavily advise reading Nintendo's Legal FAQ, which has a lot of wacky information about a big video game company's view of emulation.
Scary, idn't it? My favorite one is at the bottom - where I, as the website designer, can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations (along with the rest of Classicgaming.com, since various other sites have ROMs and emulators. I am willing to bet this statement is why you don't find any NES or SNES ROMs in Classicgaming's vault.)
However, I really have to wonder how much of this statement is legal truth and how much of it is Nintendo talking out of their ass. I know for a fact that emulators, the piece of software itself, are very legal. Why is this?
Emulators are basically designed through reverse engineering - that is, the behavior of the chips is examined and code is created that mimic the chips. There's absolutely nothing wrong with is, and is very much covered under current copyright laws. There's a little bit more complication when it comes to using the BIOS (specific code for a game console that takes care of its most basic functions) - that's why some Gameboy Advance emulators require you to find them yourself. However, other GBA emulators went around that, and emulated the BIOS - that is, created code that did the same thing as the BIOS without copying it directly. Again, perfectly legal.
Similarly, there is a statement in copyright law that it is indeed OK to own a backup of a game, in case the original fails. This was created due to the fraility of old computer disks. Cartridges are much more durable, but let's face it - after fiften years or so, those chips are going to be pretty coroded. And that's not even taking into consideration the life of lithium batteries used in save games.
Of course, Nintendo is going to be more scared of this than Sony or any other company, because for a long time, they insisted on using the easily-distributed cartridge format, and they still have a lot to lose through Gameboy Advance emulation.
So lets hear what the people say, shall we?
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To answer your first question, emulation is not at all integral to my
discovery of Castlevania or any other series. I've been around since the
old NES days, in fact, one of the first games I bought with my own money
was Castlevania 3 because I thought the box art looked damn cool. It is
this way that I found the gaming wonder that is Castlevania, and it goes
much like this for many of my other favorite series (Mega Man and Final
Fantasy for instance.) Now, more to the point, I really don't see a problem with emulation insofar as it's not taken to far. There is a very fine line that must be walked in the emulation issue. So, first the positives of emulation:
A. I can't help but think of some younger gamer discovering Castlevania
through emulation and growing to love the series just as I did with C3.
As for reasons against: So, to sum up, emulation is cool so long as the game is old enough to where the companies don't suffer or lose money because of it. Josh, Who is about to go stomp a mudhole in the ass of the guy who created a ROM of Circle of the Moon
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I have no real problem with PSX and PS2 (when it comes to be) emulation. As mentioned before, emulators are inded very legal, and you can play them with the actual Playstation CD. However, as Internet bandwidths become bigger, we're seeing the spread of copies ISOs around the Internet. That goes beyond emulation - that's flatout piracy.
Emulation also is invaluable for use web site designers - Lord knows I can't afford a video capture card, and emulation allows for very clean looking screen captures. Playing Castlevania 1 and 2 on Pasofami (anyone remember that old emulator? Anyone?) was one of the things that inspired me to start this site.
And I'll be honest - the moment the Castlevania: White Night Concerto ROM hits the scene (I've already been checking the IRC groups for any early leaks) I'll be downloading it, and I'm sure other people will be too, but it's mostly just to tide me over and to get pictures - I've had the Japanese version on preorder from NCS for a good few weeks now. I'm willing to bet that many who download this ROM will also be doing it in order to tide themselves over for the English release - but there are some that still won't.
There's also some interesting issues regarding the Game Boy Advance, as seen below.
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I'm all for emulation, in any form. I think its
great to be able to sit next to the computer and be
able to play every game I ever owned for the Nintendo,
SNES, or Gameboy without having to find those old
systems and drag them out in the flesh. I love
Dreamcast emulation even more, because using the
newest version of NesterDC, it seems like I'm actually
playing my old NES, without having to screw with pink
and white flashing screens or bust out old catridges.
So I think its really great. I can't wait until more
current systems are emulated. But I kind of waver on downloading games I don't own. I think lots of the laws are screwed up. For example, Nintendo says that its illigeal to own any ROMs, even for games you own, which is total BS. And, while I support companies having the legal means to check spread of their games, no matter how old, I often download roms when I can find them. For example, I have downloaded 50 something Gameboy Color roms, because virtually all Gameboy Color games sucked and were exercises in failed potential for that system. So whenever something cool came out, I'd download it, and then if I found myself playing it too much, I'd either choose to delete it or buy the thing. I bought Bionic Commando this way, and I sure wish I'd downloaded the ruined remake of Crystalis before I bought it sight unseen. It was a good way to avoid buying crap. But it pisses me off when people pirate games and then brag about how they save money. I think its morally reprehensible to steal, say, Circle of the Moon, a game that I knew I was going to love, just to avoid spending a few bucks. If anything, people should buy the game, even if they don't have the system and will only play it on an emulator, because its supporting the company who made it. Hard core gamers have a sort of duty to buy good games, especially with massive hordes of foolish children buying tons of crap games each year which adds no support for companies to make decent games. As for downloading games you don't own yet will never have the chance to play, I'm all for that. I downloaded the X68000 rom as soon as I could and never felt a twinge of guilt. But when Chronicles came out, I bought it instantly, despite the fact I'd already played the game to death. Tim "Super Tim" Simpson
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The laws are indeed screwed up, because there's none that deal specifically with consoles. There's a lot of "if"s and "but"s in the current law, but most of them grew out of the need to control computer software piracy. I'm guessing that console companies will eventually deal with it, somehow.
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Emulation. Without it, I wouldn't have re-discovered my love for
the Castlevania series. After CV 64, I wondered, why did I even like the
series in the first place? Not much later, I stumbled across a website
called the Castlevania Dungeon. There was a something on the menu bar
that said Emulation. "What is Emulation?" I asked myself. I clicked on
it, and realised that I could play the classics on my computer. I
downloaded the NES version of Castlevania. Then I remembered what made me
a fan. Without Emulation, I would have never been able to play Vampire Killer. It was kind of a waste of disk space, but still, I got to play it. Without Emulation, I wouldn't have been able to play Castlevania: Bloodlines for the sega genesis. Emulation even showed me how good of a game Castlevania 3 was, and how bad the Snes version of Dracula X was. Emulation brought back the memories of my young childhood. It educated me about the Castlevania series, and other games. So why must such a great thing be illegal? By downloading Vampire Killer, or the NES version of Castlevania, we do not harm the gaming industry. These games aren't even made in anymore. I don't understand why the law prohibits the downloading of games that virtually dont exist anymore. If the law prohibits emulation, why does it not prohibit the sale of classic video games at a garage sale, or a flea market? Emultion doesn't harm the industry. It helps it. By downloading classics, such as the NES Castlevania, or the original Zelda, or Contra, it helps persuade a person to buy a later title in the series. As for the download of the CD version of Dracula X being strongly prohibited, maybe Konami plans to make a Castlevania Chronicles 2 sometime in the future. From Pete Jakomin
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Ah, they're not made any more, but the company still owns the copyright. As a result, you might see them pop up on compilations in the future. That's why some companies feel threatened, because they can't make the same money by whoring out old titles.
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Hi, Kurt. The topic of emulation has been a big one for gaming in general
ever since games started to become retro classics. I admit being someone who
emulates games. Given, some roms that I have, like Chrono Trigger (USA), I
also own the cartridge for. But for the most part, my average sized archive
consists of games that are either very old, very rare, or very japanese. For
instance, I have a beta version of Chrono Trigger emulated and various "BS"
super nintendo games. I see emulation as an outlet for playing the games
that are virtually impossible to get or, in essence, not worth paying the
astronomically high prices for a rare game that you wanna try but isn't very
good. Example: Dragonball GT: Final Bout. Personally, if there is a game
that I want so badly, like Rondo of Blood, I will buy the legit game; not
download the iso. But even then, I bought it off of Ebay for 180 bucks.
Konami didn't make any money off of that transaction either. This brings me to my next point. Even if people don't wanna emulate the rare games, most of the time they end up buying them using a method that the company doesn't make a profit anyway. I have nothing against people who use emulation as an outlet for playing games that they can't get otherwise. It's when I see people I know with boxes full of disks holding literally hundreds of NES and SNES games and haven't bought a game since they've owned a computer that I get ticked off. It's a little extreme. Especially since most of these people don't even play the games. It's like they put them in just to see if it works and then pack it up. My video game collection, owned and emulated, consists of games that I play. It's large for me but relatively small compared to what's out there. I find that's where the most hardcore gamers I know stand. Tony T. Tiger
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There are a few cases where being able to play beta copies is extraordinarily cool. I finally got to try the Hidden Palace zone in the Sonic 2 Beta, that I wouldn't have gotten to try otherwise. And since I absolutely adore Chrono Cross, being able to try Radical Dreamers was extremely cool (even though most of the experience lost, being that it's almost a purely Japanese-text driven game.)
I'd have to say that, overall, that's the same view I take to emulation - if I REALLY want a game, I'll put forth the effort to go out and find it. Some people complain that finding old games on the marketplace is an arduous task, when it's really not - a few weeks scavenging eBay (sometimes longer, for rarer games) will usually result in success. Hell, I finally got around to grabbing Ys 3 for the Genesis last week, despite having the ROM on my computer for two years. It's one of my favorite games for the system (don't ask why, I can't explain it) and it's most definitely worth the $4 + shipping I paid for it. It's probably just because I'm a geeky collector though.
Obviously, price is another factor...and that's a good topic for the next column.
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My emulation guilt continues to mount as I download each new ROM, but I
never seem to stop hunting for my favorite classic titles. I read a blurb
someplace recently about Konami busting a prominent group of pirates in
Korea. It occurred to me that it MUST be more financially beneficial for
Konami to invest their own time & money in the pursuit & prosecution of
software pirates than it is to ignore them & hope their losses are minimal.
Konami is, above all else, a moneymaking business & if it were to cost them
more to chase pirates, they wouldn't do it. What's more, we all have to sit
back & take a look at what we're doing. By participating in emulation, we're
forcing Konami expend their resources on enforcing their copyrights,
diverting their focus from what they /should be doing: designing
increasingly great games for us. Of course, I realize Konami has their own
legal departments & that the game designers don't have to personally go out
to Jackie Chan the bad guys, but it does cost them & that means less money
in the game development end. Now for something completely different. As in the cases you mentioned in your solicitation for this topic, there are times when emulation is less malevolent & even when it can be justified, albeit arguably. However, let's look at a very different example in the form of Circle of the Moon for Gameboy Advance. This is one of those very recent games that most of the emulation poo-poo-ers would most certainly lynch us for downloading, & that makes perfect sense. On the other hand, I absolutely despise Gameboy Advance & will never buy it. I am, however, a long time Castlevania fan (since Simon's Quest) that demands to play anything similar to Symphony. I have to admit to owning a Circle of the Moon ROM & not any incarnation of the cartridge. I fully plan to repeat this when Harmony of Dissonance has been successfully dumped & circulated. Nintendo saw fit to release a tiny handheld console with (at the risk of restating the clichéd) no built-in light source & a screen that's just unreasonably minuscule. I have 20/14 vision (6 degrees better than 20/20) & I'm not comfortable trying to focus on the GBA screen. If someday Nintendo devises a method allowing me to play GBA games on a TV sized screen, THEN I'll legally purchase my own copies of Circle & Harmony in spite of already having finished & mastered both of them by then. After all, emulation is never really the same as playing the game on it's native console. Even if emulation were a perfect technology (ha!) it would still deny us the simple pleasure of owning the physical object & all it's marvelous trappings. In the interest of relative brevity I'll end here without addressing your other related concerns. All the issues are very valid & I'm sure others will have great comments about all of them, but I felt like this was an issue that needed to be raised. Kurt, so far all of your topics have been fantastically entertaining, engaging & extremely pertinent to any hard core gamer. For that & for your tireless dedication to one of the Internet's most prolific sites in any category, I applaud you. The Right Reverend Steven J. Minar; Vampire Hunter Extraordinaire P.S. Thanks for the link, I can hear Mr. Walken's distinctive annunciation even in his written word. P.P.S For the record: I'm fully aware that I was just reading the infamous Onion
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That's a very interesting take on the issue, and I'm sure it'd get you lynched in some circles, but honestly, I don't entirely disagree with you. (Beware: this goes back to the Gameboy Advance rantings of previous columns). Playing games on that thing can be a PAIN, especially for extended period of time. Playing on the computer (since GBC and GBA games can't be played on the TV without those unofficial products) is a lot less strainful on the body as a whole. I'm sure Nintendo will wake up and smell the money at some point, realize that there's a market for playing the GBA on the TV, and release it, but for now, emulation and expensive products are the only possibilites.
There's an aspect of emulation that can be positive - competition. If companies wake up and realize that emulation poses a threat, perhaps they're strive to match emulators (or emulated games) and make them even better for the consumer.
Yes, I'm too optimistic.
However, it still amounts that you are basically pirating products that are available on the marketplace at large. The most moral thing to do would be, as mentioned before, to buy the cartridge and given Nintendo the silent middle finger by not buying a GBA. In all honesty though, that's a bit silly, given that the cartridge itself would basically be useless.
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Kurt,
Hey there. I happened to read your last column and
was intrigued by the question of emulation. I feel
like I have to say something because I'm writing a GBA
emulator and in the process I've come into contact
with a lot of people in the GBA dev scene. My
attitude has changed quite a bit since I began. I
first started to become interested in the project when
I heard that Circle of the Moon was being released for
the GBA. Like a lot of people I'd been reliving my
80's childhood through emulation, and Castlevania was
a large factor in that. I'd say it's one of my top 3
favorite series, if not the first. It was a wonderful
thing to be able to re-experience all those console-games,
especially ones never released in the US. So when
news of the GBA came out and it was something I knew I
had the skills to emulate, AND it had a game that
reputedly played similarly to SotN, I couldn't resist. But the funny thing is, the best way to learn about the hardware of the GBA is through resources procided by home-brew software developers, and to test the emulator out on public-domain ROMs that these folks publish on the net. It's really a great, amazing community of people. Since I was writing an emulator and not developing a game (at the time) I was kind of at the fringes of this community, but I could sense that there was really a strong creative, artistic effort being put into development. And I don't think this just applies to home-brew developers either, since there are a few professional GBA developers poking in and out of the "scene" as well. They are not faceless grunt programmers. They are people. Anyway, to make a long story short, my opinion about the whole thing changed a great when I realized that a lot of these hardworking folks are hurt by the misuse of emulation. I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's more of a personal hurt than an economic one (though it is that too). If you put that much effort into something (and trust me, writing a game takes a LOT of effort), whether you care about how much dough it makes or not, it's probably not going to feel good to see that your effort has been subverted. Maybe it would be like if someone copied your Castlevania Dungone site, but didn't give any credit . . . Once you put a lot of work into making something great, does it feel right to have someone freeload off your efforts? So I guess my main point is to think about the folks behind the games and realize that they're people and they are wounded by the illegal distribution of ROMs. Personally, I wouldn't take this too extremes. Even though a Konami lawyer might do some jaw flapping about it, I doubt anybody will really be upset that you're distributing Haunted Castle on your site, since for most people there'd be no other way to play it without emulation. On the other hand, games like CotM and HoD are brand new . . . I think you should think twice before downloading these off the net. If you can afford the $1000 computer you're playing them on, you can probably afford $40 for the cartridge. I do disagree with what I just said on one point. I think you should be able to make a copy of a ROM you own for your own personal use. As I understand it, current US copyright law is that any copy of a cartridge ROM is illegal. But I think this is depriving you of your ability to use what you paid for in the event that your console breaks down, gets lost, stolen, whatever (or if the console happens to have a super dark screen and you really wish you could play your game at night *cough*). Anyway, my effort now is going into making the emulator more useful to developers by adding debugging options that you can't get on a real GBA. If it ends up being able to emulate a commercial game in the process, I think that's cool simply because of the technical accomplishment of it, but it's not something I would feel morally proud of. I may even add some safeguards to keep the emulator from running illegally distributed ROMs - if that's even possible. We'll see how it goes. And that's my two cents
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Very good points all, and from a side that most of us don't hear from.
For the record, the Castlevania Dungeon has been stolen on at least three or four occasions - whether it was the graphics/text or the whole layout copied (and my name removed), each time, it's made me more than a little bit irritated. .
I'm a burgeoning computer programmer myself, inspired entirely by my love (lust?) for video games. Seeing a bunch of upstart little punks tossing your hard work around, because they don't think its worth paying for would, I'd imagine, cause quite a bit of rage.
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Hello ~ I suppose that this would be the first time that I've written for your column. I'm a longtime gamer (I learned how to turn on an Atari before I was 1, LOL), but I never had much interest in the Castlevania series until now. I found the concept interesting, but the control drove me nuts. To me, Simon and Trevor sure walked slowly, and they had a painfully low jump. How could they possibly keep up with somebody like Dracula? Well, anyway, I got into Castlevania via Symphony of the Night, not Emulation. Alucard and Richter were so fluid and easy to control, and the gameplay so interesting, that I had to immediately had to run out and buy Circle of the Moon. Unfortunately, when I finished these two wonderful adventures, I was presented with a problem - Where to get more Castlevania? These days, it is powerfully difficult to find a copy of Castlevania 1, 2 or 3 for the Nintendo, much less the Game Boy Adventures or even the SNES Games. You have to look around a bit. For me, Emulation provided a nice alternative to having to dig through Amazon.com and Funcoland. The way I rationalize it (and it's rationalizing, trust me), many of the old Castlevania games that I download likely provide Nintendo and Konami with less then a percentage point in the bottom line when it comes to royalties. These games are so old that they simply don't sell through the main outlets anymore. In fact, I'm willing to bet that at least half of the Nintendo Castlevanias are sold between gamers, which also deprives Konami of royalties. If you want to know the truth, I would rather play my Castlevania on the real system rather than the emulator. I, however, accept that it's very difficult to do such a thing, so I shrug and go with the nearest, convenient alternative. If I were Nintendo and Konami, I would upload ROMS of all of their old games (American and Japanese) and offer downloads for a very marginal price. Something to the affect of, "Pay $25.00, and you get 25 downloads from our archive!" Obviously, they would have to figure a reasonable price for old, outdated games. If nothing else, it would give me a reasonable shot at Rondo of Blood. It pains me that I will likely be able to play what many consider "the greatest Castlevania ever" because I'm not quite willing to drop $200 for a copy of the game and another $50 for the system (or however much the system goes for). Similar feeling for Megaman Anniversary Edition - I would kill to get all 6 Megaman games updated for the Playstation, but they are only available in Japan for $35 plus import AND I have to buy a MOD Chip. Oogh.. Emulation, anyone? Comment on previous column - Even if it isn't *terribly* deep, I find the plot for Castlevania to be very entertaining and I wouldn't find the series quite as compelling if it was merely, "Kill Dracula." It's just neat to find yourself running with a family possessing an invariably cool name (I love "Belmont"), makes the storyline seem like an epic (as you said). For me, the series isn't really about the storyline, it's more about the characters. Alucard and his relationship with Richter and Trevor. Dracula and his antipathy toward humanity for the murder of his wife. The legendary Simon, and the somewhat enigmatic Christopher. Pffta, even Nathan Graves and Quincy Morris are rather interesting protagonists. It's also a lot of fun to bump into Death, my favorite of them all. =) Thanks for reading, I hope to write again. ^^ -Kat
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Ahhh, the moronic Megaman Anniversery editions. Let me explain a bit, for those who aren't familiar. A few years ago, Capcom started releasing the NES Megamans for the Playstation in Japan, one by one, each on its own disc costing 2800 yen or so (roughly $20.) I went ahead and bought Rockman 3, because I was able to snag it pretty cheaply, but even that was a waste of money - outside of some minor comestic enhancements (life bars look a bit nicer), useless additions (Pocket Station games and gameplay tips in Japanese) and some a bit of remixed music in later edition, they're just the same as their NES counterparts.
I don't understand this release. Maybe if they put all of them together in one package, and release it at a low price point, or enhance the graphics(like The Wily Wars for the Genesis), it would be OK. But no. They did an extraordinarily lazy port and gouged customers for it. I sincerely hope it didn't sell very well. Again, maybe if Capcom took a step back and realized "Hey, customers can get this exact same game for FREE! So let's give them a reason to pay for it!", then perhaps they would've ended up with a better product and, hopefully, more sales. I'm hoping this was the logic behind Square's decision to retranslate Final Fantasy IV for its Chronicles release, which is infinitely superior to not only its old SNES version but its fan translated one as well.
Personally, I think the "Pay a small fee, get a bunch of old games" would be a great idea. Unfortunately, people on the Internet apparently don't believe in paying for things, especially when a little workarounds will get you them for free. I think it's almost too late to implement something like that. The record industry is backed into the same corned with MP3s.
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Hey Kurt, Another great topic, let's hope that there are a lot of responses for this one. Ah, Emulation. The pirates haven of loveliness, or so we are to believe. In my opinion, the most current titles should not be emulated, but the older titles should be. What is the difference, you might ask? Well, I will tell you. The older games (at least on stateside) were all carts, not CD's. Say what you will about the debate between the cart and the CD (My opinion is that the cart is much like the VHS Tape, an obsolete mode of programming that has it's positives but will not last much longer), but the problem is that CD's last a lot longer that the cart would. Everyone who has been playing Castlevania... heck, playing any old games at all, know that the average shelf life for a cart battery is 10 years, give or take a year. Why does that matter? Well, it matters because the ability to save becomes a problem. What about Castlevania, didn't they take precautions by making it code based instead of save slot based? Yes, Konami did that. But let us look at what happens to a battery period once it has lost it's life. Ever leave a battery in a CD player or a walkman for a while and come back later? How about in a few days of 100 degree + weather? Yeah, you are now starting to see where I am going with this. Don't get me wrong, I have all the American released Castlevania games and I have them in a cool place where the temp. rarely changes, but then most people aren't as anal about it as I am. Heck, I can still go to our local flea market and see poor Nintendo 8 bit carts roasting in the sun with no protection. Makes me want to either break down and cry or slap someone silly. Yes, I went off on a tangent, but this ties in. What is the easiest way to have the game that is pretty much outdated and a majority of people don't have the systems for anymore? Emulation! I can have a copy of Castlevania III on my computer as well as the cart version, but with the emulator there are no chords nor gaudy plug boxes that take up at least 3 slots on my strip. It is more convenient (or maybe I am just too lazy) to have it in a system that hat I already use probably far too much already, my computer. I am not worried about the battery life on my computer exploding one day (at least now that I have a newer computer), nor do I have to fiddle too much with settings with these emulators. However, I have my PS2 and I can still play my Castlevanias on that, as well as owning a GBA (Looking around, waiting for Kurt's shoe to come flying at my head), so those titles, in my opinion, should be off limits. No emulation on current titles that can be played on a system that is already in circulation. As far as Konami being uber anal about the Dracula X ISO, they know that they screwed up and they are trying to cover up the fact that they made an error. Let's look at the American Version of Drac X compared to the Rondo of Blood game. That game, to what I have seen from rare screen shots, was far better and deeper that the weak Dracula X for the SNES (Need I remind everyone here that it is still highway robbery for that damned game! $50+ !). Bottom line: Emulate for heavens sake! Don't make me go out and buy 15 outdated systems just to play one game from each. OR Re-release the titles in a chronicles version much like what Square did with FFIV, V, and VI. Gasp! You mean throw principles out the window? No! Do you realize how much money Square made from those games?! Ok Matty boy, take a breath.... stop the heart-attack.... Ok, I am gonna have a stroke now, I look forward to the next topic! -Matt "Hey, stop that! I did that legally!"
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While none of the cartridge Castlevania games have batteries in them, it brings up another point - have you ever looked at pins on the bottom on an NES cart that's been around for awhile? They're absolutely vile looking, usually having turned some strange color of green, and occasionally mysterious bits of crud (I don't even want to know what the hell is residing in my Kid Icarus cartridge.) The NES was a poorly built system, and now we're getting to the stage where even the Genesis and SNES games are getting a little bit touchy.
I love Square. Their ports of the SNES games may have been a little bit off (especially FF6) but they realized that there was a demand for old titles that were hard to obtain, and provided. In the end, everyone benefits from this: customers are happy because they get to play old games (legally, I might add), and Square gets even more cash.
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I've heard all the arguments up and down that rave about how much revenue
is lost each year to video game piracy, and the principle that by
emulating software you're stealing away a game designer's ability to make
their living by creating the games you enjoy. (Although I'm certain that
these numbers, which come from the game companies themselves, are
exaggerated and that the number of dollars lost from emulation and
CD-burning is negligible--the real profits are lost from large-scale
piracy rings in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, not copies made for
personal use.) This is all well and good, and I agree that if you like
games, you need to reward their makers by paying for them. However, game
companies cracking down on emulation for systems that are no longer
manufactured makes absolutely no sense to me. Consider this scenario. I go into a video game store. I'm having a brain hemorrhage that day, and decide to pick up a copy of AD&D: Heroes of the Lance for the NES. Does anyone think that the poor shmucks who made HotL are going to get one red cent from that transaction? So how is buying the cart any different from downloading a ROM if it's just for my personal enjoyment? In computer software, it's a given that after a time, things become old enough that no one cares anymore. Nobody's going to buy a copy of the original Warcraft, so it's conceded that if anybody wants to play it, they may as well go right ahead and help themselves. No money is lost when nobody's buying. Now what's different about the console market is that the old games are still quite salable. They're still in demand. But it doesn't particularly matter because it's not the game companies that are selling them. It's all third parties. So what difference does it make whether the money goes to Gamez R Us, or whether is stays in my pocket? Why do all the people at Nintendo and Konami and Sony make such a fuss? I feel that in the electronic world, in this age of Information, if you're not going to continue distributing your intellectual property for profit any longer, then you have no right to force someone to pay a third party for it. After a certain time things become, shall we say "public domain." If you want people to pay you for your product, you need to have a product to be paid for. If Konami wants me to buy Rondo of Blood, then they should put it back on the market. Otherwise I see no reason that they should be able to prohibit others from sharing it. Why should they even care whether I send 120 bucks to Richter_Fan2000 from New Zealand or just download it for free? I don't get it. Christopher Lundgren
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Don't you know that 74% of statistics are made up?
....
Obvious jokes aside, I really have to wonder where the IDSA gets their figure of "3.0 billion dollars" lost on software piracy. No one really knows the percentage of people who pirate games, except that they do exists.
But here's my theory - shutting down operations in places like Hong Kong takes a lot more money and effort than trying to enforce laws on the homefront, so they'd rather focus on recouping at least some money there, even if their major losses are really in other countries. I could be wrong, but it makes sense.
The computer game industry is markedly different from the video game industry, in that companies really do pimp out their titles more often. How many re-releases or compilations do you find at the bargain bins in your local software store? Video games do the same thing, but to a lesser extent. For some reason, old PC games just aren't in demand.
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Emulation's a touchy topic. While they allow us the opportunity to see and
experience games that we wouldn't normally be able to, there's that whole
legality thing. ROMs and Emulators can be compared to the struggle about
MP3s, Kazaa, etc. On one hand, you have the factor of experincing something new. There are a number of NES and SNES games that I now own that first experienced in Emulator form, including Bionic Commado and Super Punch-Out. There's not much that around now that will suddenly grab your attention about these games, nor is there any way of renting them, searching for and testing ROMs is an excellent way of trying out a game before you buy it. Sometimes you can't even find certain games. Excellent examples are SNES RPGs such as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3. I've seen these games being sold rarely, and when I do find them, their cost is often more than most current games. While you may enjoy these games, and want to buy them so badly, you can taste, you just can't find them. Emulation is a possible solution, at least untill you can find a copy to buy. However, I don't like seeing games that are easily found or bought, like recent games, being downloaded, burned, etc. Two of my friends own Dreamcasts. Both of them have game libraries that total at least 30 games each. out of those 60 games, only 4 are non-burned. People were burning these games for a system they loved instead of supporting it and buying games, then wondered why the hell the system wasn't making enough money. Older games, when sold in stores are 99% of the time, used and isn't going to make the creators any money, and are discontinued anyway, so no major amount of money is being lost. Also, there are occasions where the ROMs are 100% legal. On any site that offers ROMs, it states that if you own he cartridge, you can have the ROM. My brother is in college and took the NES with him, and so I am left without my favorite system. Even before that, there was a period where I had no NES because my old one was broken. However, I downloaded an Emulator and rebuilt my library and am now able to play CV, contra, lifeforce, or any of my old games whenever I want, and they won't break or be taken somewhere else. So emulation has its use, but the power can be abused, and can have horrible consequences if abused on currently produced material. But it's a great way to relive old classics and learn about some new ones. -Moonen " I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then I could keep both Dracula AND Superman away."
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Once again, check out Nintendo's FAQ. These are some great reasons to legalizing emulation, but Nintendo's still against it. The more I learn about them, the more they seem like an evil super villain corporation, who puts on the front of appealing characters and family friendliness, but deep within the bowels of their underground mega lair, lies a board of twisted humans with hearts so black, they exist solely to feed off the souls of others, and have enslaved their colorful cast of mascots to do hard labor in the acid mines located beneath its fortress.
OK, that's going a bit far, but you've got my point, right? Nintendo = jerks.
I only bash Nintendo because they're the ones that're so anal about it. Sony didn't care until Bleem! started selling its emulator (notice how Sony was annoyed with Bleemcast, but Sega was not?) Similarly, Sega seems to silently condone emulation, as long as it doesn't hurt them - heck, they even hired an emulator author (the guy who wrote KGEN and the new emulator KEGA) to write them a commercial emulator for their Smash Packs they released for the PC a few years ago.
As a closing message - if you're one of the people who insists on still playing the X68000 game on the emulator and not buying the PSX Chronicles version - you should be sent to Australia and booted repeatedly. I'm relatively certain that a good number of people have, but in this particular case, it's a true example of how emulation can harm a perfectly good product.
More than a few letters mentioned how the high prices of old games on the marketplace drive people to emulation. This is, of course, very true, especially in the case of Dracula X (both the PC Engine and SNES versions - the latter less so, but still fetches prices of $50 and over.) But...why? What is it about the marketplace that leads to such high prices for these games, especially when sometimes, they aren't really even that good (again, SNES Dracula X.) Are you willing to pay such high prices for video games, and their accessories as well? (The Dracula New Classic CD album has, at one point, fetched around $1500 on auction.) Are video games a good method of investment and collecting, or is asking high prices for old games just missing the point of the hobby?
-Kurt, who feels that Homsar is his favorite Homestar Runner character.