Flash Carts Could Be Slowly Killing Your Retro Consoles

"We've made no secret of our affection for such carts in the past, despite the rather shady moral (not to mention legal) nature of ROM distribution"

Yeah, that's just sad. You should not be promoting rooms at all. Emulators are not technically illegal but there is no legal way I know of to own a ROM of a Nintendo game and they will tell you that as well.

Well, makes sense, but you have to wonder, is the breaking point in any relevant time span?
But dunno, SD2SNES would be the one to get anyway, since NES is dirty cheap to emulate in almost everywhere,

Still, interesting read, I'll keep this in mind when choosing what cart to get :>

This was a great read. I really should start saving up to get a fully loaded SD2SNES I guess...

@Kalmaro

Roms preserve these games though. if you look at rom dumping as a preservation act, they become a lot less sinister. I''m not a fan of flashcarts myself but the roms themselves are not evil, they're a preservation of the past.

That said, you may be right about Nintendolife being so forward with flashcarts.

@Kalmaro Well, Nintendo is the company that referred to the game rental business as a "grey market," so I wouldn't put any stock in what they say about ROMs. Owning a ROM is fine, under the right circumstances.

@Dr_Corndog Renting and making your own copy of a game are different things though.

@Onion But you run into a problem by using the preservation excuse. By who's authority are people preserving said games? It's like stealing someone's car in order to donate it to a museum.

@Shiryu Too bad they're so pricey though.

@Kalmaro Just because they show affection for the device that plays roms, doesn't mean they're promoting roms, the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Its not hard to see the benefits of such devices and even being impressed with them, while at the same time taking a stance that you don't condone the devices and wont personally be getting one either.

As an example, there have been some counterfeit paintings that are next to discernible to the real artist's paintings. You look at some counterfeits after its know, that they're not the real deal, and you can still see that someone talented reproduced the original, and they clearly do have skill and talent, and you can admire them for that. But all at the same time still not condoning the practice of counterfeit nor taking part in the actual trade of such counterfeits.

@Onion There are already game preservation organizations in many countries which preserve these legally. And they dump the games on their own.

@mikegamer It is indeed a hefty investment, but with the price of cartridges hiking up every year, pretty much we will no choice in the near future to play all those delicious Super Famicom exlusives.

@GoneFishin To be fair, the article is pretty clear that this is stuff that isn't confirmed at this point to kill the consoles, and that devices like Everdrive are too new to yet be affecting the consoles in such a way, it may still be a decade before Everdrives start wearing down systems (if they ever even do that is).

I still have my original cartridges for my retro consoles. Using tech that wasn't intended for the console sounds like a bad idea as it is. I'd never try it. I prefer to own legal copies of games. The virtual console service doesn't have all games but it has a lot to offer. Hopefully Nintendo can release some of gems that haven't been available yet. Terranigma on the SNES.

I wish there were greater strides to making old videogames available. Availability of NES and SNES minis would be nice, as would a Switch virtual console. Most gamers don't want to be "criminals", but big companies leave us little choice with limited production lines and scalper style secondary markets and yes, I have paid for legit versions of my games several times over and I'm fine to do it again. Having a complete set of NES, SNES, and Genesis roms on an old xbox is mere convenience.

@Kalmaro lol that is rich. Gonna play that ancient cave final fantasy 5 hack for great justice; badass blue mage once I open 1000 needles skill in a chest. Most developers find ways to screw their remakes/rereleases or simply choose not to translate it. Hell, some don't even release demos of games, like not even a test drive to put into car terms.

I own Everdrive flash carts for SNES (SD2SNES), NES (N8), Sega Genesis (Mega Everdrive), and GameBoy/Color (Everdrive GB), and they all work amazingly well. Highly recommended for retro gamers that don't want to spend $100 for Sunset Riders, etc on eBay.

Everdrives are also WAY easier to setup than a Raspberry Pi (Everdrives took me minutes to figure out, Raspberry Pi took me weeks).

I use my Everdrives with a Super Retro Trio, instead of the original consoles. I own the original consoles and they work great, but I don't want to put extra wear and tear on them, so I use the Super Retro Trio clones system instead, although I'm looking forward to the forthcoming HD version which supports HDMI.

@Onion
Well, as long as NL isn't outright linking to the ROM sites, they are fine.
The police can't stop some one just because they have an ''I LOVE MJ'' bumper sticker.

@Siskan @Kalmaro

Not exactly the same circumstances. ROMs are not the same as stealing and people have been doing this since video games existed. The act of making a digital dump of a game is an old practice and one people will continue to do.

Obviously, no one dumps a rom with the purpose of preserving it and that was never my argument to begin with. I'm simply saying that a more positive outlook is to view the roms as preservation. At no point did I ague that dumpers are saviors of the video game kingdom building an Ark of video game data. I simply said that the roms themselves are a digital preservation of video games. Anyone with the slightest tech saavy can access a rom and play it.
Also, roms are the ONLY way to play some games. Not everything had a physical release. This applies to Japanese games as well, which can be downloaded and patched by English speakers to enjoy in their own native tongue.

Put simply, there is nothing evil about roms, only the intent behind the downloader. Downloading new games that are still being counted as a profit towards the developer is bad, no one here is denying that. 20+ year old games are a different story. Arguing otherwise is simply white knighting and arguing for the sake of arguing.

@Kalmaro but what about when there is no legal way to buy that game anymore, other than to buy second hand for £100+ to some 'collector' on eBay, of which no money goes back to Nintendo or the original developer or publisher? I personally buy lots of VC games as a means to own retro games legally and give some money back to the owners, but I end up playing them on my Everdrives anyway because I prefer original hardware. I agree with your point about the preservation excuse. Emulators and ROMs are hardly ever true preservation as they end up bearing little resemblance to what they're supposedly preserving, having to be hacked to death just to work. Only the Higane emulator can use that excuse, as it's a work of genius.

I was worried when I first saw this, but by the end I realised most of my flashcarts fall into the low or zero risk category. Phew. I don't mind too much if the hardware wears out, as that's still pretty cheap to replace. Flashcarts aren't though, I wouldn't want to have to keep replacing those!

@Onion And my point is that there's no point in viewing it as preservation whether that's the intention or not, as they will be preserved anyway.

@Siskan

And playable by whom? The point of it all is being able to preserve and play. The act of preserving a game does no one any good if it's not easily accessible to the public.

Or you could try simply reading my above post on the merits of roms. There are MANY ups to ROMs and very few downs.

@GoneFishin I can assure you that René isn't interested in hits for the sake of hits. His site isn't monetized (no ads), and while he does sell some homebrew retro gaming products, none of them are competing with anything Krikzz does. He wrote the article because he had sent several suggestions for improvements in this regard to Krikzz over the years, and never got a response. He wanted to inform people and provoke a change, and since Krikzz has promised to solve the problems on all future products, I'd say the article was successful.

I'm glad I never used pirated games with illegally modded video games anymore.
I started to Clean Slate after my first experience bought the Original games and No Modded video game machines for the first time.

Flashcarts, Homebrew, Modding Communities, all of them started and continue with good intentions and without them NONE of the existing and past game companies would be where they are now, with saying that all communities have within them rotten apples and it only takes 1 to make them all look bad. This latest re-surgance of "classics" would NOT be at the fever pitch it is without these supposed "horrible" communities...

@TTgowings

This is also an excellent point. Just look at the Dreamcast, which owes itself to the homebrew community that started after Sega ceased production and support. This also happens with Xbox, Wii, and PSP just to name a few. Years after the original makers have discontinued support, homebrewers breathe new life into these systems. I myself enjoy a custom firmwared, softmodded PSP which I use to play Japanese roms patched into English. Before Fire Emblem was mainstream, the ONLY way to play the games in English was to download a rom and patch it. This is all done with no profit at all taken from Nintendo or Intelligent Systems. As an FE fan growing up in the early 2000's, I owe my fandom to emulation. I would have never got to experience HALF the games without it.

As a disclaimer though, I am very much against people using such things to download and play modern games so they can circumvent having to buy it. That's not cool, and that is the unfortunate dark side to emulation. One I'm not denying exists.

@Onion Well, I'm mostly familiar with the situation in Sweden as that's where I live. Right now it's researchers and students and it's carried out by the Royal Library, to which it has been mandatory to send a copy of every new game since 1995 (they are of course locating and preserving earlier games too). I believe their goal is to make it public to everyone however.
They are also one of the co-founders to the European Federation of Game Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects. So I assume the situation is similar elsewhere in Europe.

Also being able to play old games for free isn't a human right. And if you think game preservation is no good when that's not the case, I don't really think you understand the real importance of preservation.

Don't and never will own one,can't beat the real thing as they say.

All I was worried about was the GBA flashcarts. That was the one that I was worried about. I don't really have too many moral hang ups about using roms. To each their own

Oh man I have a whole bunch of everdrives

@Kalmaro The thing that I find interesting about preservation like this is that it's constant battle between someone's coherent and moral natures. If you can obtain the game with multiple legal accesses to obtain it, then there's no necessary need for a ROM of the game to be dumped for future preservation, since their is multiple ways of obtaining it. However there are still a large some of games that have yet to be given such a liberty, whether it's rarity, source code being unavailable, legal reasons, etc. And something like ROM dumping is beneficial for those types of games, since they have a slim chance of actually getting a true legal release and game preservation is needed to ensure future generation can be able enjoy or observe said games.

To put it in car terms, say there's this car, a very rare car, the only one of it's kind still in existence, but the old man that owns it refuses to sell it even though it's rotting in a field and will probably be dust in a decade or so. Would you steal the car and have it preserved for future generations to observe or accept the old man's wishes and have it rot to dust?

@AlwaysGreener did you just make an argument that it's okay to steal someone's car if it's rare? Once someone purchases something that's their belonging, and no court of law is going to side with stealing something like a car for ANY reason.

@ShadJV That's where the ideals of coherent and moral thought begin to conflict, my friend. Yes, it's a extreme moral question, but it is to test was is truly the right thing to do.

@Switch81tch agree 100% some games will never get an official release. But Nintendo & all the others could kill roms completely by releasing all their games at a cheap price.

@AlwaysGreener
The car should be in a museum, but the problem with that analogy is that the car disappears from one person's ownership, now if you had some sort of cloning machine which could make an exact copy of the car, then I think the moral issue disappears.

@Anguspuss
Doesn't quite work that easily, the reason why we won't see a legit VC goldeneye is because of all the different ownerships involved. Rare made the game, Nintendo own the system, the actors own their likeness, the bond franchise is owned by the studios. You wouldn't be able to get all those people to co-operate. Well, co-operate cheaply anyway.

If anyone is interested, Krikzz has responded to this in a thread on his own website: http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=6614.msg51195#msg51195

@Switch81tch It doesn't matter what I feel if a game is hard to obtain or no longer available. The simple matter is that it is not mine so I'd have no right to do what I please.

@AlwaysGreener yes but it's also not a comparable example, it's way more extreme. Do I believe piracy is okay? No, especially when the publisher offers a legal way to buy it from them. (If a game is not in print and the only way to purchase it is some overpriced used copy that the developer and publisher cannot even profit, well I wouldn't judge one for pirating then because at least no one is suffering a loss other than some person on eBay who shouldn't have such leverage on a product they didn't make.) But in the case of where you are literally taking something from another person, as in they paid for it and you deprived them of it, that shouldn't even be a grey area.

@Siskan

I'm fine with what Sweden is doing and I commend that, but you're still missing my point. As stated in my post, many games were never released, never released outside of a specific country, etc.. What Sweden is doing is well and good, and nowhere in my post did I argue that it's a human right to be able to play an old game. My point is that emulation and rom dumping preserves games and allows the current generation and future generations to play and enjoy games that are no longer drawing income for the developers. If your whole argument is "Well, Sweden is preserving these games so you shouldn't worry about it.", then not only is that flimsy, but completely ridiculous. Not everyone lives in Sweden. Not everyone lives in Europe. Roms and emulation allow people all over the world to enjoy games they may not have access to. Ask anyone living in Brazil for example. The ability to freely download and play a game from 1980, Japan, etc and play it, or enjoy it in your own native tongue is a beautiful thing, and many people owe their fandom to this simple ability.

You want to argue human rights? No one has a right to play any game, period. Gaming by nature is a luxury. You really have no argument, and if anything, it sounds like we're on the same side of this discussion anyway.

Put simply? You're saying because Sweden is preserving these games, no one else has to. That's an utterly ridiculous argument. That's like me saying because I'm a collector, no one else has to collect games. I'm doing it. No one else has to. There's more than one way to preserve games. There is no single best means. I'm not sure how long Sweden has been archiving these, but this has been going on in the cyberworld for about 20 years. I could just as easily argue that there's no need for Sweden to it when thousands of games already exist in rom form. It would be a ridiculous argument for me to make, and it's a ridiculous one for you to make.

@Onion unless the the people who own said game say they don't care about people making backups then there is still no way to make one without breaking the rules. You don't own the game, just the right to play it.

@GravyThief Even if a game is no longer available to be purchased normally that still does not give you the authority to do as you please. Rules are not made to only be followed so long as they are convienant.

@subpopz No, I don't like that some games get lost forever, but then, this isn't about what I like. This is about what is right or wrong when it comes to games. My personal feelings on the matter do not suddenly give me the power to do what I want, that is not how these things work. Why bother having rules if they only work when we like them?

@Kalmaro In the rare cases I have gone as far as to download a ROM because I absolutely could not purchase a copy of the game (I think Super Mario RPG is one example, wanted to replay it and it seemed unlikely for a VC release), when it actually got a release I purchased it on principle even though I didn't wanna play it at that moment. In my mind, I owe them the cost of the game because they actually chose to make it available. What I did resulted in the company making money off the game. Conversely, instead of downloading the ROM I could've bought it off eBay and payed way more money and Nintendo wouldn't have gotten a cent. Or are you saying you think the sale of used games should be illegal too? Because unless you are, you're saying that either I shouldn't have access to the game unless I'm willing to pay someone other than the developer for said game. I'm all for anti-piracy but it doesn't make sense if the game is no longer available, as then it's just supporting those trying to get rich off selling the hard to get cartridges.

@Damo Yeah I know you are physically capable of dumping your own ROM. That is not my point. My issue is that there is no legal way to do so.

@ShadJV That is making an argument from entitlement. No one says you have to have said game, and we are not talking about renting or borrowing a game. This is about making your own copy of a game.

@subpopz

Right on. Roms and Emulation are important parts of gaming culture, always have been.

@Kalmaro

At this point, you're just mindlessly white knighting and not bothering to respond to my points, so I'm not going to try and reason with you any further. You're far too cemented in your bubble and I'm not going to waste time trying to penetrate it when you can't bother to respond to a person's points. You literally glossed over everything I said and responded with what may as well be some kind of machine-processed response. Clearly you're well programmed. Multiple people have tried to get through to you and you're just repeating yourself. You respond to each point with "but it's still illegal!' which no one is even trying to deny.

@AlwaysGreener That is pretty much my point, I actually made the same car analogy earlier. People are trying to say that this ROM dumping is suddenly okay if a game becomes rare. What that fail to show is a rule that says that all games must be preserved in the first place. There is none.

@Onion I really don't see you'd turn me taking Sweden as an example into some stupid argument that that's all that's needed. That's indeed ridiculous. Like I said I descibed the situation here because I know the details. If i was to describe the exact terms that the Japanese Game Preservation Society (for example) has stated I'd have to do some research. That's all there is to it. As I previously said, this is happening in many countries and not just European ones. And as far as I know none of these museums, libraries and organizations keep anything from foreigners.

And we don't need to download ROMs from the web in order to apply language patches unlike what you've stated. That was a long time ago.

@Onion You are entitled to your opinion and I respect that you have one. Opinions, however, can not change fact. If we don't own the games we purchase but just the right to play them, then we have no authority to make a copy of them. If stating the truth makes me a white knight then so be it, I've been called worse. I've already answered your point so I'm not sure what you are unsatisfied about. Rooms can preserve games, sure, but none of us have the authority to do that. That is up to the people who actually own the game.

The more you know...

@Kalmaro

That's cool, we can agree to disagree. I just wish you'd open your mind a bit. Roms are not evil, dude. Some of my favorite games were discovered through emulation. Not only does it preserve, but it allows us to discover things outside our worlds.

Case in point, Terranigma never came to the US. It was released as Tenchi Souzo in Japan and Terranigma in the PAL format. Despite being fully translated, US players cannot access it easily. Even pulling the prongs out of the system cannot allow a game in the PAL format to work on a North American SNES. I discovered this beautiful game through emulation and it became one of my all time favorites. Had I not accessed emulation, I'd probably still be ignorant to it. I'd say that's a shame, and more insulting the devs than the fact I downloaded it online. I imagine If I could speak with the devs, they wouldn't care one bit that I illegally downloaded a game they no longer make a profit from. They'd probably be happy to hear how much I enjoyed it.

This is true for many, many franchises and games locked in other countries. I'm sorry you can't see that through your tiny bubble and inability to look past legality. I wish you well.

@Onion Look, don't get me wrong. I have very strong views on rules and how they are supposed to be followed. I also have strong views on valuing the property of others, digital or not.

However, don't think this means I don't sympathize with yoir situation and the situation of others. Emulation opened me to a lot of games roo when I was younger. However, I just can't go against what I believe in now, I've come to a point in my life where I can see people bending and breaking rules all the time for their own personal reasons and I can't accept that. If I support it in one spot then I'd be a hypocrite, so I have to take a hard stance in all situations.

The best and easiest solution to all of this, regarding Nintendo, is for them to just open up their entire Virtual Console system. Sadly, they have been dragging their feet on this and because of that, this stuff happens.

@Siskan

I plainly explained why your argument is flimsy. Because one group is doing something, doesn't mean another group shouldn't. The archiving of video games in the form of rom dumping has been going on for a long, long time. As I said, I could just as easily argue Sweden and Europe don't have to do it because it's already done. I'm not making that argument because I think that's pretty great. You on the other hand plainly stated the following:

"There are already game preservation organizations in many countries which preserve these legally. And they dump the games on their own."

"And my point is that there's no point in viewing it as preservation whether that's the intention or not, as they will be preserved anyway."

That's completely ridiculous. I don't know how long Sweden has been doing this, but chances are rom dumping existed online long before Sweden and Europe started. If that wasn't the point you're trying to convey, then I guess I misunderstood.

Also, I highly doubt it's possible to play games like Seiken Densetsu 3, Seisen no Keifu, etc in English without patching a rom. If you have some other means of playing those games in English, then do please enlighten me. Even if it's somehow possible, it doesn't change the fact that at one point this was the ONLY way to play unreleased Japanese games in English. I'm 99.9% sure it still is. I'd be amazed to hear this other method you seem to have.

I would highly advise going to KRIKzz's website, and reading the various forum posts and tests that are currently ongoing. Short version, while his carts don't do level translation the preferred way, the concerns are overblown, with no real danger to the console itself, and perhaps some reduced longevity on flash carts that actually use flash memory.

Even kevtris weighed in, stating the following:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242970-fpga-based-videogame-system/page-127#entry3804683

In other words, it ain't perfect, but I don't think we're going to need to worry about our consoles blowing up.

Older consoles biggest issues are with old unstable power supplies, caps that need replacing, damaged edge connectors, faulty carts, dirty carts and previous modifications.

The same headline could be used "continued use of your games console may reduce the consoles lifespan"

@Kalmaro

That would be great in an ideal world, but we don't live in an ideal world. Not only would they have to open up their entire library (which would be amazing), but they would have to open up the library for every game made before 2005 pretty much, otherwise emulation and roms will continue to live strong.

@jimi

And here we have someone who clearly didn't take the time to read my posts at all, or he'd otherwise know why his response is total nonsense. We're not talking just Nintendo, and even if we are, you're completely ignoring the fact the two games I mentioned above (Seiken Densetsu 3 and Seisen no Keifu) are to this day, not released outside of Japan. Both games are translated (one fully, one partially) so not only can you download them, but enjoy them in English which is my native tongue. There also exists Chinese, Russian, etc patches of games that English speakers may take for granted.

More importantly, I'm talking in terms of about 10 years ago. 10 years ago, having to buy a PAL SNES and the game would not only have been expensive, but difficult to do. And for what purpose? To play a game I can take 10 seconds to download at NO COST TO THE ORIGINAL DEVS? Yeah, brilliant argument. Way to disregard my whole point.

Also who is it stealing from? The original team behind Terranigma isn't even around anymore. Your argument is by FAR the worst one presented here thus far. You fail. Utterly. Go learn what stealing means, then come back and make another attempt at arguing intelligently.

I use an old flash cart very rarely on my Ds to try before I buy. I don't own any older consoles like snes etc but if I did I would do the same. Why would I take a gamble on an expensive hard to find game end up buying it and not enjoy the game itself. I'm a gamer not a collector I like to play these old games but really not interested in padding out my collection with subpar games that I won't play.
I know that's not totally acceptable but I am a free thinking human who is doing this for myself and not for profit so all those nay sayers please go back to your corners, it's been a big day for you you should go back to have a rest now.

@jimi

Read my above post and learn how to post one time, rather than spam the feed with your nonsense. Your entire rant was already addressed and is completely irrelevant to anything I said. You're going off on a rant about paying for things when I already stated above that taking profit away from developers is wrong and shouldn't be encouraged. Learn reading comprehension.

EDIT: Because I'm a nice guy, I will even quote what I said directly to spare you the agony of having to do it yourself.

"As a disclaimer though, I am very much against people using such things to download and play modern games so they can circumvent having to buy it. That's not cool, and that is the unfortunate dark side to emulation. One I'm not denying exists."

You're welcome.

@jimi

As I said above, go look up what "Stealing" means and then come back to the conversation. You have 0 argument and quite frankly sound like a complete fool. I'm hoping that you're just a troll.

The company who made Terranigma lost 0 profit from me downloading a rom which I cannot legally buy in the first place. Assume for one moment I did buy an actual PAL SNES and the game... How does that benefit Enix, Quintet, or Nintendo? They wouldn't gain a cent from it. Terranigma at that point was no longer sold in stores, SNES was discontinued, and Quintet went dark and is presumed defunct.

You can't possibly be as dense as you're making yourself out to be.

@Kalmaro They overlook pretty much anything here if they're convinced it'll get clicks, even if it's not gaming or Nintendo related. Gotta make that money, son!

@Onion I'll prephrase it. It's being done by many organizations all over the world and legally so (sometimes even government funded).
You said that looking at (unauthorized) ROM dumping as preservation it'd be less sinister. So, considering that all those games are preserved anyway, that has no effect on me. The beneficial aspect of it is effectively a redundant one. You may argue that it's more accessible this way and you'd be right. But convenience is a pretty poor excuse for commiting a crime in my eyes.

You may also be right that it was slightly justified if internet was first which it probably was. But that was then.

Various clone sytems allow you to dump and patch your own games without downloading them from the web.

In the defense of Rom usage, it's not like there are no illegal ways to obtain Roms.
Sega and Atari straight up sell ROMs of their older games on Steam. What's stopping anyone from converting them into more accessible formats and using them in Flash Carts?

And we learned that Nintendo doesn't do much to change the roms they sell via virtual console, as long as nothing is being distributed is there anything illegal about changing the file to work on a PC/Flash Cart emulator?

@Kalmaro That's not true. You can certainly legally back up your own games and own the roms (Perhaps depending on location?). Sure, not many people do that. Morally, I couldn't care less - If I own the game, what difference does it make if I download the rom, or dump it myself? Legally, of course I understand there's a difference, but the end result is the same. I'll be the first to admit that I pirated games when I was younger - but I buy more gaems now at 30 than I ever have in my life, and many of those games I have purchased multiple times over, even after playing a rom version. Again, I don't want to sound like I am defending piracy in general - but for old games, video game preservation, and convenience to play/backup my own games - I have no issues with playing roms of games I own.

@Onion @jimi Regardless of where you fall on the legality/morality of pirating out of production games, you have to admit there is a clear difference between pirating a copy of something, and stealing a physical item. As Onion also said, it's not as if buying a used copy of the game/console in question would benefit the developer or Nintendo in any way.

On the topic of flashcarts, I think this depends on the exact console in question. Many have DC-DC converters to regulate the input voltage to a specific level. All handheld consoles have this to my knowledge (At least, every one I've ever modded or refurbished), so you there shouldn't be any real concern over supplying slightly high voltage than normal - as long as it is within the regulator's input voltage levels.

@roadrunner343 If you can show me a ruling that says we are legally allowed to back up the games we purchase, specifically Nintendo, I will drop my argument.

@Seacliff And not just on steam. Atari has the Atari flashback which can play ROMs from an SD card, and Sega also has multiple consoles/handhelds that can do the same thing. So yeah, ROMs as a whole are certainly not evil.

@Kalmaro ha... sorry - I follow the tech industry very closely (It's my passion, hobby, career, etc...) so I'm almost positive I saw it somewhere. But I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really have the time to find a specific ruling. I may spend a few minutes Googling later, and will share if I can find something, but I am fairly certain that there has been precedent for making backups of games that you legally own. Again, I'm not trying to blow you off... just being honest. Digging through legal docs isn't my idea of a fun time on a Friday night =)

EDIT: I do that it applies to most disc based content as well. Again, I'll briefly look to see if I can find something on cartridge ROMs. Most EULAs state not to make illegal copies of the disc - because you are typically permitted to make backup copies for your own use. Again, not 100% applicable here, but that's all that's coming to mind right now.

@RedMageLanakyn Certainly seems that way

@jimi

Do you not understand how economy works? The only person who would benefit from my buying those on the sites you just mentioned would be the SELLER and not the DEVELOPER or the one LICENSING the game. To make this easy for you to understand, I'm saying Nintendo, Enix, and Quintet would not earn a single cent from that purchase.

Also did you not read what I just said? I cannot legally buy the game here, it's not FOR SALE. It never was. The game was never ported to the US.

Also if I'm a thief, then what is this?

http://i.imgur.com/JFAuK2G.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ggqJo1s.jpg

Why, those are Japanese imports! Including Tenchi Souzo, which PAL folks know as Terrranigma. So how am I thief again exactly? I'm a collector, dude. I enjoyed the games I discovered through emulation so much, I went back and bought them off Amazon and Ebay from Japan.

So please, continue to troll harder and make baseless assumptions. I've already explained to you once how it's not stealing because the devs don't earn anything from it, but you were incapable of comprehending that. Even when I later bought the games, none of the profits went to any of the people behind the game. If I could have legally bought the game and supported the devs, I would have. That was impossible however, and even more impossible now.

"You are stealing from either Enix and/or Nintendo.
You steal the PAL English version, so you are effectively stealing from both of them. Nintendo did the translation and testing. And I think Nintendo is still around."

Enix isn't even around anymore... They were bought by Square. Quintet is defunct. Anyone who could have ever made a profit is gone. >_<

@Siskan

That sounds like a personal problem. As others have stated, it's not so black and white as people make it out to be, and as I stated, no one is really arguing the legality of it. Lots of things are illegal, but people choose to pursue it anyway.

Also the key word is clone system, which still requires the downloading of the patch to work. I will concede that though, I had actually forgotten about clone systems. However, that costs money, which doesn't go to the developer anyway, so there's absolutely no reason not to download the rom unless you are just 100% against doing so. Which in all honesty, is completely fair. At the same time however, you should respect the fact that some people choose to play on an emulator. I myself have emulated games I already own. Is it still illegal? Yes. As far as i know. Do I care? No. I'm not letting a small thing like that detract me from something that has been of benefit to countless gamers, including introducing them to games they may not have known about.

I still think we're basically on the same side of the argument though. We just don't agree on the legality aspect. I won't try to change your mind on it. When it comes to emulation, it often falls on the user, which is why I said roms are not evil. Its how people use them.

EDIT: On the subject of clone systems, I'm also fairly certain no clone system plays everything nor patches everything. For example, if I want to play a Japanese GBA game with an English patch, what clone system would I buy? I'm not even aware of a clone system for GBA that also supports patches. So the existence of clone hardware (which is often shoddy and unreliable) isn't a good solution.

An ideal solution would obviously be playing my original copies on original hardware with patches, but that's impossible right now.

@roadrunner343

Thanks, it's nice to have a voice of reason on the matter. Jimi seems to be under the impression I'm condoning the downloading of games still in production when I have made it quite clear I'm not. If I know a download takes away from a dev, I won't do it. Simple as that.

@roadrunner343 I agree, so even if you did find something I'd probably just check later xD

@Kalmaro Yeah, the only thing I can say with any certainty, is the general consensus is you are able to legally backup your own software. Quick google shows quite a few topics/discussions on it, but nothing concrete. I'll poke around later and see if I can find any sort of legal ruling, but I doubt I'll turn anything up.

@Onion I have a problem with people doing harmful things, even more so if it's against the law. You're right. And I'm happy that's the way it is.
Well I think legality is a pretty important thing to consider. If something is illegal the advantages rarely mater very much. I see that's not the case for you. Unfortunately whenever people take the law in their own hands it affects others negatively.

Downloading a patch is far better than downloading a ROM. It's much less likely to affect the creators unless in the rare case a company decides to translate an old game for a new release.
Who makes money on a clone system doesn't relate to the ROM issue. The point is that there's no need to download an illegal ROM from the web if you use this method.

@Siskan

"It affects others negatively".

I'd love to know how anyone was affected by someone downloading a 15-20 year old game no longer in production. How does someone discovering games they never saw in their native country "rarely matter much"? You almost had my respect, but now you've lost it again. How is that harmful?

Some of you people are so well programmed, I'm amazed you can even function. You're so brainwashed into thinking everything is so black and white that it's a little sad.

You're treating people downloading out of print, no longer produced games the same as someone downloading a copy of the latest Final Fantasy illegal, when the two have almost nothing in common beyond the fact they're committing a "crime". Being able to download a game not released in your native country, patch it, and play it in your language is not a bad thing. You're so close-minded that you're completely unable to see the MANY benefits of emulation I have outlined, despite the fact I've made them so easy to understand.

EDIT: You also didn't respond to my point about clone systems playing everything. You act as if there's clone systems that will patch PC Engine games, GBA games, Genesis games, etc. There's THOUSANDS of games out there. No clone system can play them all. Your point is moot, and you even disregarded the fact clone hardware is often shoddy. So you advocate playing on inferior hardware just because of the legality of downloading an ancient, out of print game? Good to know.

@Onion You may stick to that 100% and then the likelihood may be low. But there's always the chance they will want to release it again or even make a remaster or remake. Unless it's the case of a game that belonged to a defunct company and the rights were not transferred anywhere else.

I'm also speaking broadly and not about the specific cases you mention. You probably do way less harm than many others.
This may not be so much about piracy but law in general, but it's also dangerous when people decide for themselves what laws they should abide and which ones to break. Where do you draw the line? If everyone does that you can be sure they won't all act do it the exact same way. Anyway, this is a whole different topic and a deeper one at that, which I don't really want to get into.

@roadrunner343 Also a good point, surprised I didn't think that since I have a plug-and-play Master System and Genesis, which are really just chips loaded with a bunch of roms. Same goes for NES and SNES.

@Onion
There's one BBC Micro game from my childhood which I believe to be lost forever. If preserving games is wrong, I don't want to be right.

@Siskan

Way less harm as in no harm at all? I'm a collector. I own 20k worth in video games. So what if I want to emulate a game not released in my country? It hurts NO ONE. I've spent thousands on my collection. Some of the games I emulate (such as Seisen no Keifu) are games I already own anyway. I just emulate it to play in English because I get a headache from reading Japanese for too long. So what? Who are you to dictate what I do?

And if they release it again, then said person can go and buy the game legally. Simple as that. My point isn't about that, it's about the many games one cannot experience normally without emulation, importing, or spending a great deal of money. Emulation deals with ALL of these aspects of gaming. If Nintendo wants to make money on Seisen no Keifu, then translate it, put it up on VC, and let me buy it. As it stands, FE 1-6 are Japan only, as well as FE12. That's almost half the games missing from the franchise.

The simple fact is, emulation is not something that's enforced very often. The law doesn't care. Do you think anyone is going to be arrested or fined for playing a Japanese game on their PC? No. The reason users regulate it themselves is because very rarely is it even enforced to begin with. That's why people often decide for themselves if it's okay or not. Have you seen a single person in this feed say it's okay to download 3DS, Wii U, or Switch games? No, you haven't. Because at the end of the day, people often decide for themselves. It's this thing called free thinking. if you possessed it, you'd know about it.

That said, I think we should just agree to disagree. The important thing is we both agree that taking money from devs is wrong and video games should be preserved. I think that's a lot more important than arguing about legality. Neither of us is going to budge anyway, and I appreciate the fact you never once accused me of being a thief. At the very least, I think you DO recognize the difference between downloading an old NES game (such as Sweet Home) to play in English, and someone downloading Pokemon S&M. If we agree on that much, that's good enough.

@shaneoh

What game is that?

@Siskan I understand that it can be dangerous if everyone suddenly decides they will only obey laws they want, but let's not pretend that emulation is some slippery slope that will lead to anarchy.

The fact is, everyone already decides which laws they will or will not obey, and everyone breaks laws. Be it curfew, legal drinking age, emulation, speeding, buying illegal fireworks, etc... Everyone already makes that determination for themselves.

And don't get me wrong - all of those things I listed can be terrible. Rampant piracy can be too. But there is a clear difference between legality and morality, and while some more abuse emulation, others may not. Using myself and your re release scenario as an example - I have most of my favorite games on a flash carts, but I own the physical carts of basically every rom I would play, and I've purchased re releases, virtual console releases, etc... So yes, for me personally, I have no moral issue with playing roms of those games. I understand this is illegal, and I also understand most people don't behave that way, which is why it has to be illegal.

My best personal example is the legend of Zelda ALTTP. I own it for snes, 3ds, wii, and wii u. If it launches on switch, I will likely buy it again. And yet, I most recently played through the game on my original SNES on an SD2SNES flash cart, and I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt or regret.

@Kalmaro They're not talking about using emulators here, they're talking about backing up carts you own to roms and playing them on the original console. That's perfectly legal and prevents wear and tear on your original games if you're a collector... Unless of course your cart has the wrong voltage, as outlined in this article.

No mismatch on GBA? The ONLY flash cart I have is exclusively used for Mother 3, so I guess I'm good. Whew

@mr_me450 the underlying issue is the same. Even those who are against the use of roms/flashcarts typically acknowledge there is nothing wrong with emulation, which is legal in most countries. The issue is how you obtain roms.

You better keep following those rules buddy. Don't you ever break a rule. Ever! I mean rules are rules and must be obeyed. If someone makes a rule you better follow it man cause obedience is what a rule is all about.

@Onion I noticed your previous edit. The console you'd use for GBA is Retro Freak. I do see your point though. Still doesn't make it okay.

You can always import games. And you never know if they will be released in your country. Nintendo alone did this with Mother (and Earthbound for Europe) as well as many titles through VC in the Wii days.
I do confess that I have done the same thing with Seisen no Keifu, feel free to call me a hypocrite. Like you I also own the game physically as well however. The problem I do have with that is that we were still nurturing the pirating scene. People won't upload games if there's no demand and you can be sure the majority who downloaded the ROM beside us do not own a legal copy.
Dictating? I'm just arguing for my point of view. I only treat your personal case as an example as that's what you've described to me more than anything.

Yes, you will probably do that. But you're not everyone.

Oh okay, there came the insult. Nice finale.

Sure thing. Unfortunately I addressed one paragraph at a time, so I'll post what's above anyway.

Yes I do, but that doesn't mean the older ones are entirely unproblematic. And the more recent consoles are also subject to piracy, although not by you.

@Kalmaro Thanks dad.

@Siskan

As I pointed out to Jimi, I do import, but there's the issue of a language barrier, which your apparent solution is to play on clone hardware. This goes back to my original point of who are you tell people what to do? Who made you the fun police? I own the game, isn't that enough? More so, if people who download Seisen no Keifu don't have a copy, so what? They can't buy it, they can't support the devs.

The longer this goes on, the more pointless it gets. Like @roadrunner343, this is not going to lead us to some Planet of the Apes scenario. This is not an act of anarchy. It's a bunch of nerds playing old games while everyone else is playing Call of Duty.

"If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun."

This quote applies to you, buddy. I'm not going to call you a hypocrite though, because this proves what I knew all along: That most people regardless of how moral they pretend to be, have downloaded a rom at some point in their lives. It also proves that you know deep down that roms are not evil. You're just too busy being the fun police to take the time to realize that no one cares but you.

Keep following those rules pal. You'll keep missing out on all the fun in life.

@roadrunner343 As I stated I don't really wish to further debate law outside of piracy. But I did read your comment and I don't wish to ignore you.

I'm sure this thing about Zelda isn't the only example either, but as much as people debating this want to justify their own piracy (and do to a large degree) the real issue is that most people won't, especially when it comes to games outside of their favorite seriers.

@Onion Since you're still asking questions: I think everyone who sees injustice, criminality, lack of moral etc. has a right to point that out. The world would be a better place if everyone did that.
Then you may not agree with me in this particular case but that's fine. You can only do so much with this free thinking of yours if you're not allowed to vent it. If you prefer to observe, fine.

A physical copy has been paid for once and can be traded a thousand times, but isn't likely to be. It kind of limits how many people can play a game without money reaching the developer. There are only so many copies.

A copy which is dumped has probably also been paid for, but can multiply indefinitely. If a physical copy is then always tied to a download you would limit this effect. The fact you mentioned that you have one anyway tells me you can see it's less immoral that way.

Seisen no Keifu is available through Japanese VC by the way.

Okay, point number 1: Roms are not inherently evil. There are quite a few companies, such as Sega and Atari, that clearly could care less, and, in many cases, appear to give their tacit blessing of the practice.
Point number 2: It is indeed completely, 100% legal to download roms of games you already own. Seriously, this one is a complete non-issue legally. You own the game, you can dump as many roms of it as you like.
Point number 3: Sure, using roms may technically be considered stealing, but that is not always the case. You can legally download roms of games from defunct developers. If a copyright has expired, there is really no legal restriction. Of course, Nintendo is neither defunct, nor have their copyrights expired.

@Siskan

Being available through Japanese VC is completely irrelevant if you don't speak Japanese. >_< Once again, this goes back to my point about patching roms. You can't patch VC, and for god's sake, VC is literally a rom. The very thing you seem to be so violently against.

I swear arguing with you is like arguing with a well-programmed robot. Sometimes I think I'm getting through to you, and sometimes I'm convinced you're not paying attention at all. No matter how many rounds we go, you just turn around and go back to the same point about how "IT'S AGAINST THE RULES!". No one cares.

I feel like I'm arguing with some kind of cultist. At this point, I'm done. For real this time. Life is too short to waste arguing with a machine. I can spend all day explaining to you the many plus sides to emulation and you will simply dismiss all of them with "it's still illegal". It's a complete waste of time.

I mean, yeah, it's technically against the rules, but there's so many various reasons...

Let's have an example.
In the 1990's, Nintendo released an add-on for the Super Famicom in Japan called the Satellaview. It was awesome. It got several awesome games, many of which could only be played ONCE, and then never again.
The Satellaview was NEVER released in America. Furthermore, there is basically ZERO chance any of the Satellaview games will EVER be released on the Virtual Console.
Tell me, then, WHO CARES IF SOMEBODY IN AMERICA DOWNLOADS A ROM OF A SATELLAVIEW GAME?

@Leej07

Thank you. This is all I've been saying for the last 2 hours. BS Zelda is a fantastic example too. As I've been trying to say, not ALL games got released in the US. Some got locked in Japan, some didn't get physical releases at all, etc etc etc.

None of it matters when people will dismiss that with "it's still illegal". I'm not about to sit here and waste all night trying to explain this to people.

@Onion My bad, I didn't explain why I mentioned FE4 being on the Japanese VC. It's still a possible way to support the developers if you want to. Couple it with another ROM on your computer if you want.

I was never against the existence of ROMs, that's just silly. It's the piracy.

Basically, I consider it this way. If a game is accessible, be it VC, import, whatev... Heck, if you wanna be a real stickler, if a game CAN be acquired legally somehow, no matter how ridiculous, then sure, probably best to avoid roms.

HOWEVER, if there is literally NO WAY WHATSOEVER to acquire a game legally, such BS Zelda and other Satellaview games, then I really see no issue with resorting to a ROM. Nintendo is obviously NEVER gonna re-release those games on VC. So why should they have to be entirely inaccessible?

@Onion
I honestly couldn't tell you the name of the game, it was referred to as "Bike," among us kids, but I don't know if that was the actual name of the game or not. I've searched for it online, but no luck.

@shaneoh

It wouldn't be Crazee Rider would it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMp891Q6tY

This is the only BBC game I know of that would fit that description.

The only other one I can think of is BMX on the Moon but that's as far as I can recall. I'm an American so a lot of the UK games are a bit lost on me.

Also @Leej07, on the subject of BS games, I had a grand time playing BS Zelda on my CFW PSP. One of the many things you can't do without emulation. Also, do you recall the Sega Channel? The Wily Wars was basically preserved entirely through emulation and rom dumping, as I'm unaware of any way to obtain a physical copy of that game beyond maybe a rare reproduction cart. I had way too much fun playing Wily Wars on an emulator, and I'm doubtful I'd have got a chance to play it otherwise. (Edit: To clarify, Wily Wars was not released in the US physically, so it's not accessible to us now. The game would have died out around here. I hear it DOES have a physical release in the EU)

@Kalmaro Yes they are. That wasn't my point at all, though.

I get more and more angry with justifications of emulating games, and the attention big personalities draw to it.
There are so many clone-devices by now that only play ROMs.
It was already bad when it was just the PC, then your phone. But now, it's displayed as more and more legal. And when I hear people defending it like "But that big Internet Archive has Roms, so THAT'S making it legal!" or "The original copies are too expensive - just play the Rom" - It's driving me mad.
We are gamers. We love this entertainment and I doubt that anyone wants to see it gone. So stand up and support it.
"But no one earns from old games anymore" is a bullpoo argument as well - there are lots of peoples and companies that depend on it. The big ones release the old titles digitally (Nintendo Virtual Console, X-Box Arcade, Playstation Network, NES/SNES Mini, remakes of old classics are common now, as well as re-releases on current plattforms), and on the Retro-Market - do you think that shops, big and small, who sell retro-games do this just for fun? They need income as well or they have to close down! If everyone just downloads the games they wanna play, these shops will go out of business! And with more and more collectors appearing who do not intend to SELL the games they own, the market would empty out without the professional sellers.

Personally, I don't mind if you own a game and want to play it on PC for any given reason. Or make your own arcade machine with a Raspberry pie. But I grudge everyone who uses emulation as a term to profit. Everyone who creates and sells clone devices fueled by ROMs is promoting piracy. And the more people talk about these devices, promote them, report that they exist, the more games are getting pirated.
I highly prefer Clone Devices like the Retron 5, the Smart Boy, or the currently in devolpment Polymega, who do not support ROM import but only the original games! They actually support the market and the videogame entertainment. They don't hurt anyone, they only give us the opportunity to play the old classics on modern TV/devices in "modern" graphics!

@Damo

What is your stance on emulating NES games on a computer, with or without Virtual Console in the question?

@Onion
Nah, it was an edutainment game. It was split into three parts (if I remember correctly), the first part involved solving puzzles so you could get parts of your bike back (frame, wheels etc.). The second and/or third part involved a castle. This was 20 or so years ago, so it's all rather vague. But thanks for trying.

@Rutana
If I grow tomatoes in my garden am I cheating the grocery store out of profit? Is it better for you to know that someone made money off of my tomato eating?

@Priceless_Spork That's not really a comparison. You make your OWN tomatoes. That's like saying you make your OWN GAME.
But if you steal your tomatoes from the local farmer because he has so much anyway and birds might pick one or two away as well, so "why should it hurt them" - it's still theft.

Sad to see this comment section is just the unending debate over ROMs and piracy, when the point of the article is a genuinely interesting example of electronics design and cutting corners.

A proper electrical engineer is basically a defensive driver - you design your stuff to survive twice the abuse you spec it out for, because you can't control whether or not the schmuck who picks it up is going to plug it in right-side-up or upside-down. All the engineers working together to cover each other's butts makes it so that a lot of things will appear to "just work" if you toss 'em on a board and run some juice through 'em, but it's an amateur mistake of the worst kind to take that for granted.

You can't ever forget in electronics design that you're dealing with nature, not man, and nature doesn't do plug-and-play. Electricity doesn't care that all its little details are getting in the way of your pretty picture of plugging component A into slot B; it's gonna do what it's gonna do, and if you don't really understand that and design to accommodate it, your board might last for a day, it might last for a year, but sooner or later you're gonna let the magic smoke out.

Again I say, if there is literally no legal way whatsoever to obtain a game, then get the rom. Who cares?
Is it theft? Well yes.
However, like I said before, there are hundreds, or even thousands, of games out there that cannot be purchased or played in any legal way. Should we let those games be lost forever, just because it is not legal?

@Rutana
I Love your opinion about against the piracy.
Sadly but true, nowadays people has a Cheapskates Mindset.
That's a Parasite / Virus inside their brain.
Someone has to enlighten them, preach them to play Original games.
Me also play Original games. No more pirated games anymore.

@Rutana
No, you see Burpee makes money off of selling seeds. My friend bought the seeds and grew a tomato. He made a clone (exact copy of the original) and gave it to me. I will make clones forever and never have to buy another tomato from the store again. Burpee never saw my money. Grocery store never saw my money. Is that evil or immoral what I'm doing? Im guessing it's only bad if someone makes a rule saying I can't do it first right?

I'm not sure that's a good analogy, since growing tomatoes is not illegal.

@Leej07
But this logic says it should be.

At this point, I'm just trying to get them to concede that there is nothing inherently wrong with downloading the rom of a game you cannot otherwise obtain in any legal manner.

I dont condone it or not I just hate the argument that a thing is bad to do strictly because someone else made it illegal and that's why end of story. Always follow rules because rules.

@Leej07 It is wrong, there's no rule saying you have to have said game.

@mr_me450 if you can show me the ruling that says you can back up Nintendo games, I'll drop the matter.

@Priceless_Spork I'll do my best to follow them and all I can ask is that others do the same.

@duffmmann They have put making rooms in a positive light more than once, which I believe is wrong as developers like Nintendo do not approve of such actions... And this is a site dedicated to Nintendo.

@Baker1000 You're welcome squirt. Now go to bed, it's late.

@Dr_Corndog No, they really aren't. Nintendo specifically makes it clear that you do not own the game you purchase, just the right to play it. That means you don't have the authority to make a copy of it. Renting a game from a store is different.

@Kalmaro You are straight up a prick. Sorry to be rude, but you are. You won't listen to reason.
You clearly could care less about game preservation. Who cares if Nintendo will absolutely NEVER release the Satellaview games again, we're just gonna let them fade away and be forgotten.
Well poo on you, buster.
It's not about whether or not anyone has the right to play those games. It's all about saving those games for posterity.

The fact is, I completely agree that downloading a rom of a game that is readily available is unethical.
But if a game is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to acquire except via a rom absolutely falls into a grey area.
And to just say, "Wah, you don't have the RIGHT to play that game, because it was never released in America. Sux to be you."
No. Just no. Sure, playing games is a luxury, not a right, but games are made to be played. They deserve to be preserved and made available for EVERYONE to enjoy.

@Leej07 Like I was telling another guy, I've been called worse. You're entire argument hinges on the idea that "Games must be preserved". However, you don't have the authority to make that call now do you? There is no rule saying that anyone deserves to play any game, that's just entitlement talking.

I hate that I don't have access to every game I played as a kid but that's just life.

I also think you're completely misunderstanding ownership laws in the US. Regardless of what Nintendo says, according to US laws, when you buy something, you own it, completely. This in turn gives you the right to make as many back ups as you want. No exceptions.

@Leej07 That is false, there is no rule that says that any time you buy anything, it is yours.

Good god, ugh... Yeah, you're a moron. If you can't comprehend the concept and importance of video game preservation, then you are hopeless.
I mean, seriously, it is NO DIFFERENT than preserving classic films, famous books, or popular music. I suppose preserving "Citizen Kane" for posterity is just "entitlement talking," and is a waste of time.
Again, you are wrong. From the Entertainment Software Association:
: Is it legal to make or download backup copies of games as long as you own a legitimate copy? And if so, can you sell your backup copy or sell your original and keep your backup?
A1: U.S. copyright law permits the creation of a backup copy of computer programs for archival purposes, but the law only allows a consumer to make an archival copy of the actual copy that he or she legally possesses, not to make a copy of a file that someone else legally possesses (by downloading it from a website or via a peer-to-peer client, for example), nor to post an archival copy of his or her original copy in a location where it can be widely distributed.

Right there, black and white. YOU CAN MAKE A BACK UP OF A GAME YOU OWN. END OF STORY.
Nintendo cannot legally prevent this.

Also, I'll also mention again that downloading roms of games from defunct publishers, with expired copyrights, is not illegal. By that point they are classified abandonware.

@electrolite77 You got that right.
I mean, is there anything extreme at all about what I'm saying? It's not like I'm advocating for the wholesale theft of Nintendo's entire catalogue.
I also can't understand how wanting to play an obscure game that Nintendo will obviously NEVER release in America somehow translates to an overinflated sense of entitlement.
Nor how desiring to preserve the history of video games is again a sense of entitlement. Why is it wrong to preserve video games, but not classic movies? IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE.

The whole "preservation" argument for ROMs and emulators is used too casually and in most instances is complete nonsense. People using this argument so casually are not helping their cause.

Most ROMs on the internet were not created for preservation. They were created by Pirates illegally. They wouldn't even pass the requirements for true preservation because they do not bear any resemblance to the actual ROMs on the cartridges/discs (e.g. headers, devices not being up to the standard for true preservation, ROMs hacked so rubbish emulators can play them etc). True preservation is not a hobby. It's a real, complex and professional activity. It should not be used in such a flippant manner.

Also, emulators were not created for preservation (except one, see below). They were created by people who wanted to play these ROMs for free on a PC. None of them (except one) anywhere near represents the hardware they are supposed to be 'preserving'. If they were for preservation, then why would emulators like CEMU exist? You know, for a console that can still be purchased at the time of its inception? Most emulators exist as a hobby for the hacking community, and for people to play ROMs on them, regardless of how said ROMs were obtained. Preservation just seems to be the buzz word and excuse that people who use them shout in defence of themselves these days. It's nonsense.

If you really must insist you're using an emulator for preservation purposes, and as such are retro gaming's salvation, then use Higane with your own clean dumped ROMs. That's the only true emulator for preservation purposes that I'm aware of, as it was specifically created to perfectly emulate the SNES hardware. The guy even used special techniques to scan all the chips like the DSPs! But you won't use Higane will you? As it requires a powerful PC, and you're not really into game preservation, you just want to play retro games for free and you use that as your excuse, don't you? Which is fine. Just stop pretending.

I own most of the Everdrives and an SD2SNES because I want access to every retro consoles' game library on original hardware. Not because I'm some amazing champion of game preservation and deserve a pat on the back and am the salvation of retro gaming kind. I own many original cartridges because I love owning them and playing them that way. I own loads of VC games because I want to support the rereleases of retro games. But at the same time I know both of these methods will never get me anywhere near to full ownership of all the retro games I want to play. So I use Everdrives and download ROMs from the internet. It's illegal, even if I own the game (as it's not a ROM I dumped myself for backup purposes). That's a fact, plain and simple. I won't dress it up in 'preservation'. I'm happy to take that risk to allow me to play games I would not otherwise get a chance to. Some people use emulators to do this. Fine. Just please, for goodness sake, stop saying you're doing it because you're a 'preservationist'. You're not.

And those saying 'it's illegal'. Yes we know, but we're happy with that if it means we can enjoy the best and elusive games a system has to offer, or experience some of the best Japanese games with fan translations. Sounds a lot more fun than sticking 100% to the letter of the law to me. Yes, we sleep soundly at night with our morals intact. And no, anarchy has not ensued.

I'm done now, I'm going to 'preserve' my sanity and stop this wall of text there....

@Firelork where might I get this 'I Love MJ' bumper sticker...?

Let's be perfectly clear here, I've rarely ever downloaded any roms myself because I only have a subpar PC at best, and don't particularly enjoy playing console games with a keyboard. The few I have downloaded were for curiousity, more than anything.

Also, regardless whether or not preservation is used too flippantly, @Kalmaro apparently seems to think legitimate video game preservation is the 8th Deadly Sin and a sign of the Apocalypse. I'd hate to see how he reacts to the Internet Archive... Probably call the Copyright Cops on them.

@Switch81tch yes. They were uploaded to the internet.

EDIT: just to add as it's a fair argument. Even the most legally created ROM in the world (it's so legal you can call it a judge) becomes illegal the moment it appears on the internet. Regardless of the intentions of the creator and uploader.

Also SNES ROMs with the file extension '.smc'. Created from a device called the Super Magic Card. An illegal copying device from the 90's. Used during the time when the SNES was still active (certainly in Japan).

Let's not pretend ROMs don't exist because of pirates back in the day. I'm thankful. But let's not pretend.

@Leej07 I have no problem with preserving things, provided people have the authority to do so. You show me the rule that says that all games must be preserved no matter what and you will have made your point.

Here's another thing.
By God, if I were a game developer, I'd actually be rather flattered if some obscure game I made 30 years ago still had enough fans that they were resorting to roms in order to play it.
And I have indeed seen more than a few developers that said they are flattered.

Like I said, you're hopeless. Thank goodness we DO have groups like the Internet Archive and others, else this stuff would be lost forever. I don't really understand why somebody WOULDN'T want them all preserved in some form for the future, but you may be the first.

Then again, I see video games as art, and art should be saved for posterity.

@Switch81tch He'll say it's still illegal, but under US copyright law, if the company is defunct, and copyright is expired, you can do whatever you damn well please, because it's classified as abandonware.

@ShadJV @shaneoh After re-reading my analogy I realized that it was too extreme, since the analogy begins to erode when adding the previous ownership. And comparing cars to a piece of digital media is bit of a vague way of giving a point of similarity, since cars are physical property and digital media is intellectual property. Although both could be preserved, something like a car would be harder to preserve since it's physically there and giving the owner much more power on what he or she wants to do with it, but with something like a game ROM it could just be dumped into cyberspace no problem.

@Kalmaro You're correct that there is no official rule to preserve games, but it will not stop people from doing so. There are certain games that are inaccessible to most or had become lost over the years that do deserve to be released to a wider audience inadvertently preserving them, however the companies that own said games have either lost the rights release them or could just frankly care less about releasing it at all. I wouldn't say it's the best way for people play games, but for some games it's necessary for most people actually obtain said games.

Online emulation is definitely a double edge sword, on the one hand it's preserving games that are impossible to find for future generations, but in the other there's the likely possibility of someone playing a game illegally, even though he or she can easily obtain it. It's a distribution problem that's in no way of stopping and probably never will.

@AlwaysGreener If a company no longer has rights to a game then there shouldn't be a problem, it doesn't belong to anyone then.

@Switch81tch If the property still belongs to someone then theres nothing you can do. If no one owns it then there's no need to ask for permission.

@electrolite77 When did this become about all rules? I'm just talking about roms. Anything else is off topic. This is not as grey as you think

@Kalmaro Yep, if no one owns the rights to it or the company could careless about it, then anyone could do with the ROM of it as they very well please. Well, at least we can agree on something. Thanks for the response.

Nintendo is really the only major company that makes a big deal of roms and emulators.
More than a few of the other big developers don't appear to care one iota if a game they made 30 years ago is downloaded as a rom.
And I mean, it makes sense they wouldn't care. What is the bigger problem, someone pirating this year's hot new game, or somebody downloading a rom of a game made decades ago?

@electrolite77 I could say the same to you, you seem convinced that ROMs are a grey area but I see nothing to suggest that. I can garuntee you that if you try to take it to court against Nintendo you would lose every time.

@AlwaysGreener Yeah, that's a situation that isn't bad since the who issue is about dealing with someone's property. If no one owns the game then it doesn't really matter.

How exactly is this news? It's been known for years that Everdrive and the likes damage your console as RetroN and the likes damage your cartridges. But some people just want to have access to anything without paying for it, so this is what you get.
Buy original hardware and software and you're good.

@Kalmaro please take a step down from the moral high ground that you inhabit and listen to the very reasonable arguments that have been put to you by @Onion and others. This issue is far more nuanced that you are making it out to be. I absolutely abhor the piracy of currently available games but that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about downloading roms of sometimes decade old games that are no longer to available to purchase anywhere. My personal rule is simple. If it is available to purchase on a download service (such as Virtual Console/ Xbox Live) then I will buy it. If it is not available to purchase through any means then I see no issue with downloading it.

@electrolite77 All I'm hearing from you are various forms of entitlement. This all boils down to dealing with something that belongs to someone else. If the game you want belongs to the company still and the only thing you buy is the right to just play said game, then making copies of it is not on a grey area. You are not authorized to do so.

@Chozo85 I've already said earlier that if a game is not currently owned by anyone then there is no issue. This issue is about ROMS for games that are still owned by a company.

Gosh...
The debates are goes on.
Me, choose simple way.
Buy the original games.
It could be Brand New or Second Handed, as long still genuine copies.
Play and store it carefully.
Done.

Please Internet don't kill me. I have the Mario kart arcade gP games.

@jimi
Hahaha...
You are right about PC games.
Many peoples can spent more than $1000 for a Powerful PC ever but Refuse to buy an Original PC games, even just only $30.
How ironic and pathetic they are...

@UK-Nintendo
Aha.. !
Just now you have admitted that.

Stuff breaks.

@Anti-Matter really fun game. Have you played it

@Switch81tch I thought it was interesting too. Although just reading up on it a bit more, that file extension became a default (like .sfc) for SNES ROM files in general so it doesn't actually mean all .smc files you come across were originally copied from that device. But still interesting to know the history.

@Kalmaro you keep parroting words like 'entitlement' but are completely missing the point. Let's take an example, I have fond memories of playing Iridion II on the GBA and would like to play it again. It's not been released on Wii U Virtual Console or any other platform as far as I'm aware. I therefore have two options: (1) download it or (2) buy a second hand copy off ebay. In either case the developer will not get a penny from me and the only beneficiary would be whoever sells me the second hand copy. I don't really see how one option is worst than the other. By your reasoning I could of course take the third option which is simply refrain from playing it because I'm not 'entitled' to play it. But sorry, that is a ridiculous argument.

@electrolite77 I hear you. I can't really expand on the very valid points put forward by yourself and others. The level of intransigence really frustrates me though. Like you I'm old enough to realise that not everything is so black and white in society.

@Chozo85 You'd buy it off ebay, I'm not seeing what the confusion is. The game has been paid for and the person is transferring it to you so now you can play the game. I don't see how that is related to ROMS at all. This isn't about buying used games, it's about making copies.

This whole "I'm just old enough to... Etc" argument you are making does not hold water. Rules do not apply until they are inconvenient. That's not how these things work.

@Kalmaro I have a small collection of homebrew NES games ROMS and some are of decent quality. It would be nice to be able to play them on original hardware.

@Kalmaro Of course it's related. The argument that I'm making is that if the game is not commercially available to buy anymore then I don't see the problem with people choosing to download it. Nobody is loosing any money in that instance. Let's take another example. I recently wanted to play Metroid Zero Mission again so purchased it on the Wii U Virtual Console as opposed to downloading it. I was happy to do it because in my view that is the right thing to do. If the game is commercially available then I will always buy it. In the case of Iridion 2 the game is not commercially available to buy anywhere. You think I should buy it second hand off ebay (which I may well do) but ultimately whichever option I choose the developer/ publisher will not see a penny. So how is buying it second hand a preferable option to downloading it?

As for the age thing, it could be regarded as patronising and that was not my intention. I just don't think it's for you to lecture people on what's right and what's wrong. You don't have a monopoly on morality and shouldn't pretend otherwise.

@shaneoh that only counts for some games a massive amount of titles are no issues

@Damo dumping a ROM from your own cart is still illegal in the UK. Morally justifiable perhaps but technically illegal.

I would merely use a 3rd party console to play them on instead of an actual 1st party console.

Hahaha, 1st world problems!

Hurrah for Raspberry Pi!

@Kalmaro Even Nintendo download the ROMS they resell lol. Now whose shady??? Lol. But all joking aside, if you own a physical copy of the game you have the right to own a backup of that game.

Of course you have people who don't have the originals...But at the same time there is ALOT of downloading for the sake of it - I'm sure many have games that they will never play lol.

But if Nintendo offered an online service, even subscription with their back catalogue available at a low price they could easily end piracy. Seriously, if NES games were 99p, SNES £1.49, N64 £1.99, GCN £2.49 the majority of pirates would purchase!!

@UK-Nintendo
Of course.
There are some of my local Game Arcade still have Mario Kart GP Arcade.
Almost ALL Theatre XXI in my place have Mario Kart GP DX.

@Anti-Matter exactly. We don't have it here so download the game. I know I'm a bad bad man 😉

@UK-Nintendo
Let me guess...
MAME ?

@Anguspuss
There are also games who nobody knows who the rights actually belong to due to the original company being sold off or taken over. There are others who will have gone bankrupt and nobody has bought the rights to the games that the studio made. Devs who only made one or two games for a system before disbanding and moving on to another line of work. There are many reason why a lot of old games wouldn't be able to be sold commercially anymore.

@Anti-Matter nah. Wii. Nintendont

@GravyThief I honestly do believe in the emulation scene and ROMs from a preservation aspect. I agree with the majority of your post, but let's not overlook that there is a huge difference in supporting emulation/digital preservation in general, and hiding behind "I emulate because I support preservation efforts." So in that sense, yes, I agree with you - those people are lying to help make themselves feel better.

On another topic, we've got countless people saying things like ROMs/Emulation is always bad no matter what, but then they still somehow support clone hardware - what exactly do you think is going on inside that close hardware? I'll give you a hint (Ok, the full answer) - it's emulating the original hardware.

There's also very lively homebrew communities that rely heavily on emulators for the creation and testing of their games. So there are many morally justifiable ways that ROMs and emulation can be used. You can even use real discs to play games on your PC emulator - I did this is PSX back in the day when my PSX broke. Of course there are plenty of people who abuse ROMs/Emulation, but let's not pretend it's a black and white issue.

Bottom line, there's a pretty clear different between legality and morality. If there were some magic button I could press that would end all piracy, even the kind I find morally justifiable, I would press it. But since pirates do exist, and people do steal things, and the ROMs are already out there, I will continue to use them to replay games I own, games that would be impossible to play otherwise, and I am very happy that preservation efforts do exist.

EDIT: And I've seen a few people stating it's legal to play games from defunct publishers, or games out of copyright. That's non-sense. Copyright law for software/video games is 120 years. And just because a publisher/developer is defunct, does not mean the work suddenly becomes public domain. While this may have happened in a few cases, it is absolutely not the norm. So again - yes, it's illegal. Perhaps you can justify it to yourself morally (I likely could, if there was no legal way to obtain the game, I couldn't support the dev in anyway, etc...) but that goes back to the difference between my personal morals and law.

@electrolite77

Pretty much spot on on, but don't waste time on @Jimi. As you can see by scrolling up, he's only here to insult people and call them thieves with absolutely no argument.I told him the exact same thing and even proved I bought the game later on. He's not worth wasting time on. His "arguements" consist of irrelevant, incoherent rants and accusations, and as you can see, he made no attempt to continue once his pathetic argument was torn down. By his logic anyone who downloads a rom regardless of circumstance is a thief. Even when the person he's accusing of being a thief actually owns said game, and hundreds of others. His entire argument consists of throwing up strawmen. It's a waste of time.

@Chozo85

Thanks, but I eventually gave up. @Kalmaro and his ilk are a bit of a lost cause. No point in conversing with people who will simply fall back on the legality argument when they're pushed. Not many people are arguing that, we know it's illegal. It's a pointless debate because one side will go around a track like a go kart, regardless of what the other side is saying. If people like that want to turn down the many pluses to emulation because of a single negative, that's up to them.

Basically, we have two extremes. One being the blind following of rules and laws, the other being a blanket statement of everyone being a thief. Neither are sound arguments and both are easily torn down. At the end of the day, roms are not evil, it's the intent of the downloader.

@Onion I think what is more funny, is that most of the people on here that are 100% die-hard emulation is always evil types, have recommended you go out and buy clone hardware. So as long as you are giving your money to another profit seeking corporation, I guess emulation is okay? It doesn't stop there - the morality police that say the law should never be broken, almost certainly break the law regularly when convenient if they deem minuscule enough...

As you mentioned, it's hard to dispute the fact that it is illegal. It's also hard to dispute the fact that piracy can and does harm developers. But that certainly does not mean that all uses of such technology is wrong. If I could end all piracy (Even the perks I enjoy today) I would probably do so, if I knew that the games were somehow being preserved somewhere. But as history has shown, that's not the case - Take the Atari 2600 for example. No preservation efforts back then, and to this day, there is no complete list/collection of Atari 2600 games. Who knows how many other games were lost.

The best argument against roms and emulators, even against someone like me who collects games, buys them multiple times over, etc... would be that playing a ROM means you may not buy the game when it is officially released. Take Mother 3 and Starfox 2 for an example. There was no legal way to play either of those. I was never a fan of the SNES Starfox games, and I would never buy it, but I played Starfox 2 for a little simply because it was this crazy piece of history. I played mother 3 to completion because there is no way for me to legally play it otherwise. If Mother 3 is released, I will absolutely buy it again (And again, and again, most likely) and if I can get my hands on a SNES classic, I will own Starfox 2, but I admit I would not have purchased Starfox 2 otherwise. Either way, in both of these cases, I have justified it to myself, because the Devs/Publisher will in no way be losing any money, no harm was caused. But I admit that it is possible for other people to be in the same situation, and would then skip Mother 3/Starfox 2 when they are legally released because they have played them before.

@roadrunner343

Good point about clone hardware. I mostly focused on the fact clone hardware is shoddy, but you're right about it being a form of emulation. Most clone machines also allow you to use roms on them, so the argument in favor of clone hardware is pretty ridiculous, especially when clone hardware developers are technically making a profit off of emulation. Not ALL hardware uses roms but most clone machines I've seen do.

Also, as pointed out, Starfox 2 didn't see the light of day until emulation. I know the SNES Mini has it now, and many people may buy it JUST for that.

@crackafreeze

Exactly. For me, this is the main reason I use emulation. I can download a rom, patch it for my language, and play it. As I stated waaaay above all this, this is great for people who don't speak English too, as many Russian translations and so on exist for games Americans and Europeans take for granted. Being an FE fan in 2002 and such, I owe my fandom to emulation, which was the only way to play ANY of the games in English at the time.

There's too many Japanese games to count... Sweet Home, SD3, Tenchi Souzo, Live-A-Live, etc... These games got a 2nd lease on life via emulation long after they were made. Same with the Dreamcast which lived on as a curious machine you could run homebrew and freeware on. It's not ALL evil.

The BS games are also a strong point in favor of emulation, and for us Americans we would have lost Wily Wars on Genesis/Mega Drive a long time ago without emulation, as no physical copies were made here. It was a free download on Sega Channel.

@Onion Ha, yeah, clone hardware is terrible. I'll stick to my originals + flashcarts =) But I do find it humorous that those against emulation in general are recommending clone hardware.

On the topic of emulation, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous and close minded I find the viewpoint of emulation always being bad. And I thought it was pretty ridiculous before. But as I thought about it more (I'm a network engineer) the entire IT industry was revolutionized due to hardware emulation. Companies like VMWare have built their entire business model around emulating the underlying hardware in order to to create a virtual environment capable of running server operating systems. At it's core, that is the exact same topic of video game emulation - there is just no good argument against it. If you want to talk about roms and illegally distributing them, sure, you'll hear no argument from me - that's all kinds of illegal. But it's impossible to argue the emulation at it's core is a bad thing.

EDIT: I assumed it goes with out saying, but obviously VMWare is a multi-billion dollar, law abiding corporation (Well, at least as much as any other multi-billion dollar corporation) so it's not like they're peddling illegal emulation software. It's their core business.

Nothing new. They are illegal cartridges, and they are always to be used at your own risk.

@Kalmaro To report on something is not the same thing as to promote something.
Newspapers reporting about "Elysium" are not promoting pedophilia.

I know this is obvious and silly but ... apparently it's not quite that obvious and silly. To be fair though, this article is certainly pushing it as far as 'reporting' goes. It's still not a guide, or any kind of promotion or advertisement as far as I can tell.

I'm no lawyer, but even I know that emulators itself are indeed not illegal as long as they do not use proprietary code, owned by someone else - nothing about this is technial, it just is the way is.

Whether or not a rom is legal depends - to my knowledge - on your national laws. I think in some countries private copies can be legal under certain conditions, like you yourself making a private copy of a game you legally own for your own personal non-commercial use - possibly under further conditions like the non-circumvention of any potential protection mechanisms.

TL;DR: This is not a promotion and yes, "technically" there could be a legal Nintendo rom - admittedly, I'm not well versed enough in the national copyright laws of the almost 200 countries, we've got, so it's hard to make a definitive statement, but it still bears keeping in mind.

@Henmii the cartridges are unlicensed, but that does not make them illegal, even if they are frequently used for illegal purposes.

@jimi fact a pal console would require a pal TV. unlike in EU dual format TVs arent the norm

That really is the major issue, here. Not everyone can afford to import both a PAL console and a PAL tv and PAL games.

@Leej07 @Anguspuss

This was part of why I said "difficult to do" yesterday. PAL consoles sometimes won't work on NTSC TVs. The reason I didn't use that in my argument was I didn't see the need when dealing with someone that unreasonable. The cost of importing a console and the game alone is fairly high, the TV would inflate the price even more. All that just to get a game from the 90s to work. Clearly, that was what I should have done, despite the fact I was pretty much a child at the time.

The fact I now own the game is also probably irrelevant. We'll never know because he had no response. Must have been too much for him to handle all at once.

Once a thief, always a thief! Spend hundreds to play a game never released in your country! Make ebay sellers rich! That's the bottom line here. /sarcasm

Another fact I didn't bring up was that given the hurdles to get the game to run, I'd have never done it. I'm not sure where I learned about the game, but I'm assuming I read about it online somewhere. With such a high entry barrier, I'd have passed on it. I think that would be a much bigger shame considering how underrated it is.

Just to counter my own argument, it's also possible to run PAL games on a specific game genie, but that's rare and expensive. Hardly as simple as sanding out the prongs in an SNES.

All of this overkill and beating a long-dead horse though.

It basically boils down this: is it theft? Yes. But when original copies of a particular game are selling for $100 bucks or more, and it hasn't been re-released on something like the Virtual Console, is it any wonder people would resort to downloading a rom rather than spend $500 bucks for that highly acclaimed RPG from 30 years ago?

@Ralek85 I've mentioned this in another comment but my point was that they often cast roms in a positive light when ROMs themselves have never been proven as legal. Evidence suggest that they are illegal in almost all cases as the games themselves do not belong to the consumer.

@Onion let me get this straight. When it comes to ROMs you say both:
"we know it's illegal." and
" At the end of the day, roms are not evil"

This is kinda why we can't agree on anything. If something is illegal then it is wrong but then you say it is not wrong.

@liveswired If you can show me where there is a ruling stating that owning a physical copy of a game that is the property of another company, I will drop all of my arguments.

@chardir Dang, because that is completely legal in America.

@Chozo85 I don't own morality and I don't claim to. All I've down is use common sense. It does not matter if a game is not being sold or not. If it is still the property of the company or group that made it and there is no ruling saying you cannot make copies of a game then I do not see what ground you have to stand on.

My personal opinions have nothing to do with any of this. If I had it my way then games would be free since I can't afford all of them. That's not how things work though. Everyone seems intent on making this about my opinions when I have made a point of leaving them out of this.

@Darknyht Do you? That actually sounds pretty cool. It is a shame that you can't play them normally. If they are fan made can't you just play them on an emulator?

Not all roms are evil. Downloading roms of games you already own is completely legal in America, so long as you aren't distributing them to other people.

@Leej07 Once again, where is that proven anywhere that you can make a backup of a game you purchased?

People keep getting on my case about being a "broken record" and never stop to consider that, maybe I keep repeating myself because they themselves have not refuted what I have said :/

Until someone can prove that we can make copies of games we purchase then I kinda have to keep repeating myself. I'm not saying anything else on the matter either. You cm guys are free to have your opinions and I won't argue with them. I only have issues if those opinions are presented as fact and you have nothing to back them up.

Until someone finally answers my point, have a good day everyone.

@Kalmaro I should have clarified. You are indeed correct apparently that downloading roms of games you already own is not completely legal, though a lawyer asked about it stated it COULD conceivably be a valid legal defense if it ever became a legal case. As of now, no legal precedent has been set, so downloading roms of games you already own may not be illegal.
But, and this is a big BUT, I am likewise correct that DUMPING a rom of a game you already own is 100% completely legal in the United States, falling under the Fair Use exception.
This here is some good info on the matter:
https://www.howtogeek.com/262758/is-downloading-retro-video-game-roms-ever-legal/

@Kalmaro

"This is kinda why we can't agree on anything. If something is illegal then it is wrong but then you say it is not wrong."

Morality and legality are not mutually exclusive. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it inherently evil. The fact you fail to realize that is why this argument never goes anywhere. I'm not going into the legality on it because I'm not a lawyer. It's also not a crime that's enforced. So if the law doesn't care, why should you? It's literally a non-issue.

Again, many roms exist that are IMPOSSIBLE to buy, such as BS Zelda. I'm fairly certain that's illegal, but no one can make a profit off it and it's physically impossible to play otherwise. No one cares. That's why BS Zelda is commonly found being streamed. No one is going to enforce it, not even Nintendo.

You are a broken record because you repeat the same tired argument that I'm not refuting. It's illegal. I didn't deny it. I choose not to follow it. That's called free thinking. Deal with it.

Predicted machine-generated response: "It's illegal so it's wrong".

@Damo You guys have some good content, I won't deny that. There is some cringe and controversy, but I do understand that it's a necessary evil in order to survive in the cutthroat world of gaming sites. Unfortunately, every site I used to frequent that kept things relatively quiet and safe without riling up the community has gone under because no one visits a place that doesn't have entertaining comments sections

Never even used one of those.

@Leej07
When it comes to fair use I read, from the article:
"might be"
" fuzzy standard"
"potential legal argument."

And they admit that "Nintendo could argue that by emulating the game on your phone, instead of buying their official port of a game, they’re losing money."

Now that covers games still being sold.

When it comes to games you own he still stays vague and when it comes to making a case they says things like:

They "could imagine" this being the same as fair use though admits that "optics are different." they also point out the the person asked "doesn’t think the two situations are all that distinct, legally speaking."

That it is "probably not" any different from downloading a ROM

They then end it by saying "If we assume, for a moment, that if I did that it would be fair use, then it shouldn’t be different.” but earlier point out that they are not exactly sure if this falls under fair use.

Now, when it comes to games no longer on the market they make a point that I myself have considered from time to time. If we want to buy a game that no longer is sold then i can understand someone trying to make the argument that they should be able to get said game. However, that argument will fail if the game is still owned by the company. Not to mention if a company is like Disney and does something like what the person interviewed says

"Disney’s strategy is to put classic movies “in the vault” for extended periods. Instead of leaving films constantly on the market, they periodically re-release them, which builds up demand and increases sales when that release actually comes.

Video game companies could argue they’re doing the same thing with currently unreleased games, and that ROMs are driving down the potential market value. “It’s a close case,” says Bambauer, “and hasn’t been tested a lot.” But they could make that argument."

I think that is a fair point. If a company has long term goals for a game and people are actively making copies and taking away potential capital from said company, a case can most likely be made there.

In the end they admit that this is all hypothetical. Nintendo has made a stance on how they feel on ROMs but so far, no one seems to have challenged them on it and video games in general. That's what I got from this site and no where does it say it is fair use to make a copy of a game you own. Just that hypothetically you could but no one has challenged it and thus, we have a case of Nintendo saying no and gamers saying yes. At the end of the day though, Nintendo owns the game you are purchasing.

@Onion
If something is illegal it does make it wrong, in the absence of some higher ruling that says otherwise. Especially if you live in the area that has such a ruling. Just because Nintendo and their lawyers are not knocking down doors and scanning everyone's computers and checking for ROM devices does not mean it is okay. That sounds like that argument you hear people say sometimes "it's only illegal if you get caught!"

The reason I care is because I have to, I support laws that protect developers, especially as I want to be one eventually. Even more, I also believe that laws can not just be bent when they become inconvenient.

My argument for the longest now has been that if someone does not have the authority to make a copy of a game, then making one is breaking rules. I have yet to have anyone refute that. Now, if it could be proven that when we purchase a game we actually own 'the game' and not just the right to play it then I'll drop my case. If we do own the game then I can't see a problem with doing whatever you really want with it. It's yours. I've yet to see anything to say this is true though.

But hey, we ultimately are going back and forth because we have differing standards. I see laws as something to be followed unless a higher ruling says otherwise, you see laws as something to be followed unless you don't like them. That is why we can't come to an agreement.

It does fall under fair use, though. The DMCA has been changed recently to allow preservationists like the Internet Archive to preserve games. Granted, yes, this is an extremely limited and technical exception, but it is an example of Fair Use.
The fact is, this IS a gray area. If video games are classified legally no different than music or movies, then Fair Use should apply. Perhaps the Supreme Court should finally weigh in on the matter and settle it once and for all.

As I understand it, though, it is blatantly illegal in the UK and Australia, but there are no laws on the books in America outright banning a person from copying something for their private, personal use. This is why people can rip their music CDs as much as they want here.

@Leej07 "should" apply you say but it doesn't does it?

I agree, I wish the Supreme Court would make a decision about this.

I feel like articles like this pop up when sites either need ad revenue or they just want to see the comments section melt down.

Well, see, that's where it gets weird, because there are plenty of games out there that a person can, explicitly, copy as much as they want. GOG sells games DRM free, and you can do whatever you please with them.
Now, with other companies, Nintendo most specifically, yeah, it does get much shadier. They aren't helping their own cause by downloading roms and then selling those to everyone via the VC, as they have been known to do in the past. I mean, come on, Nintendo... That's not helping their argument.

@Kalmaro

Predicted response was predicted. Slavery was also condoned by the law, that doesn't make it right. You choose to be a braindead slave and I choose to think for myself. We certainly are different.

Better obey those rules everyone! They're meant to be followed, not broken! Beep boop.

Someone downloaded a game no longer in production! Call the police! They're breaking the law! Give me a break dude. I can't even take you seriously anymore. Dr. Light couldn't have programmed a better robot. The fact you CONTINUE to ignore the fact individual users have the ability to decide for themselves whether they're right or wrong shows my efforts are completely being wasted. I'd have more luck with an actual robot.

Predicted response: "It's against the law and therefore wrong."

Also, I guess it's more accurate to say that, in the US, if I buy a game, I own that particular copy of that game, whether it's a disk, cartridge, digital download, whatever, that one, singular, particular copy of the game is mine, full stop. I suppose the real debate is whether or not I own the DATA on that media. I think, legally speaking, a convincing argument can be made that yes, I do own that one particular copy of game code by virtue of owning that disk, cart, whatever.
Nintendo obviously disagrees, and it may be that's how Japanese copyright law works, I don't know.
In the US, owning a CD means I own that particular copy of the song encoded on it, so I'm not sure why video games would be legally any different. This needs to be clearly defined at some point, or a whole host of problems will eventually crop up.

That said, piracy has been around since, well, forever. In many former Soviet Republics, piracy was the ONLY way to get games. Are going to villefy them?

@Leej07

The Soviet bit is why I specifically mentioned a while ago that Russian translations are a thing. Russian patches for roms exist because of restrictions like that. Gamers in Brazil also had (and still have) a hard time.

While the argument has been made that downloaders of roms are "entitled", it's actually the other way around entirely. People in such staunch offense about roms are themselves coming from a position of entitlement. Chances are they don't know what it's like to live in a country where obtaining games is difficult and expensive.

Of course, anyone downloading a rom for such reasons needn't apply because IT'S AGAINST DA LAW HERP DERP DERP HERPADERPDERPDERP. Common sense also need not apply.

I pity some of these people for their inability to grasp something as simple as free thinking. They live in a world where everything is black and white with no in between. Live in a country where restrictions apply? TOO BAD! Lack the finances to spend 500 dollars to import rare, expensive, out of print games? CRIMINAL! FILTHY PIRATE! Want to play a game in a language you actually understand? SCUMBAG!

This way of thinking is both pathetic and sad, as well as unrealistic and immature. This kind of thinking is why slavery existed for so long. People go along with laws and rules because they're too programmed to go against them, no matter how stupid the law may be. In this case we have a set of laws that say you can't download a digital dump of a game despite the fact said game is otherwise impossible or not practical to obtain. Clearly they should be hung.

@Kalmaro and his ilk are simply sitting atop their high horses trying to pretend to be morally sound when I'm willing to stake my life on the fact they'v broken the law many times out of convenience. It's human nature. Life is not governed by laws. Laws are man-made concepts. Laws themselves often aren't made with morality in mind. Hence why I said the two are not mutually exclusive. Downloading a 20 year old game is not the same as downloading a game that recently came out and is still being charted for sales. Arguing otherwise is moronic.

If we're going to let some laws that may or may not apply stop millions of people around the world from enjoying games no longer in the lime light, then that's pathetic. Games were meant to be enjoyed, not left to waste away because people are afraid of law. Some of the things we enjoy today came to us because someone said "hey this is stupid, let's find a better way".

There's something fundamentally wrong with the thinking being displayed by some of the people here.

EDIT: Forgot to mention (but I keep pointing out anyway) that people are white knighting about the law when the LAW ITSELF DOES NOT ENFORCE IT! The FBI does not give a crap if someone in America downloads a PAL game from 1994. It's simply not enforced. Even publishers rarely enforce it. Nintendo is one of the few who still do and even then they only seem to enforce it if it's something they're planning to make money on. I have never, ever, heard of anyone being arrested or fined for downloading a rom. Dumping? Maybe. The law doesn't care until you start trying to make money off it.

It's ridiculous how far people go to blindly follow the law when even the law doesn't care. If the law doesn't enforce it, why do you care? Seriously I want to know why people care so much that they will stick their heads in the sand and go "lalalalalala!". Because you fancy yourself such a law-abiding person? BS. At this point, I'm starting to think the people so violently against roms in any form (regardless of how stupid it is) just want an excuse to argue/troll/white knight.

EDIT 2: I also want to point out the hypocrisy involved here. Nintendo themselves are selling roms. Suddenly, it's okay to download a rom! You paid for it. These people act like roms are the devil when Nintendo themselves sell roms for a profit. Then we have these geniuses who advocate clone hardware when most of the companies making the things are directly profiting off of emulator and rom technology.

Completely ridiculous.

So when I buy a game it's not mine. I don't own it. All my games I have ain't mine. Why buy the game if it wont be mine. I rather play it free if it will never be mine.

S

What really gets me are emulators are completely, 100% legal, yet getting roms is not.
It's the EXACT SAME as Prohibition in the 1920s. Drinking alcohol was completely, 100% legal. Making and selling it was not.

Did that stop anybody? NO.

The last 3 comments are awesome.
Why are these people even reading an article about flashcarts if they are so against it?

I think the main guideline should be this: If you can get the game legally, either via Virtual Console, Ebay, importing, the local game shop, whatever, then fine, don't download a rom of it.
If the game is completely impossible to acquire by any legitimate means, or means that are not god-awful expensive, get a rom. As has been mentioned, while it is not exactly legal, the law, and more than a few game companies (not including Nintendo), couldn't care less anymore. They have way more important stuff to deal with besides hunting a few people downloading roms of their old games. If you live in China, pirate as much as you can, mate. I know how restrictive video game laws they have there.

@Kalmaro I haven't read all your comments, so ... I woulnd't have picked up on that. Speaking of which though, I do think that there is positive element to roms, and that is conservation and availability.

Without roms many games would have never have experienced - by now - by a whole generation of gamers.
The games are either not available anymore at all, or only at pretty insane prices, not to mention that you'd have to get the hardware, and in many cases have a TV to hook it up to (yeah, I know people who don't own no TV anymore at all just those damn smartdevices and laptops ...).

I mean graffiti/ street art is illegal in most cities as well, but I wouldn't dream of going so far as to say, that I never saw a good piece of street art or that there is NOTHING positive about it.

That would just be silly - legality issues or not. Some pretty cool pieces of art came out of it, in a way that would not have materialized without street art at all, because it only really works in that specific framework

For the most part, the fact of the matter is roms are indeed a victimless crime as far as "retro" roms are concerend (not talking about the 3DS here or anything like that).

Most devs either don't care about the material anymore at all, or they cannot be bothered to monetize the material themselves. It's not an excuse for an illegal act obviously, but it is a reasonable explantion of what makes it so damn popular.

Just look at the Switch ... no VC what so ever. Is it illegal to then run roms on your 'normal' tablet? Sure, but frankly, Nintendo doesn't care beyond putting a legal disclaimer about it on their page, and keep a couple of attornies busy for appearances.

The music industry tried to kill mp3s for years, before they finally realized that it wasn't just about "free" music, it was about convenience. Nintendo (pars pro toto) has yet to realize that people want easy (and yeah also cheap, up to a point) access to classic games - when ever, where ever. A flatrate on the Switch (given a big enough library) could provide that, but alas, we're still waiting on anything of the kind to rear it's head on the system.

I dunno ... there is such a thing as legitimacy as well, and I think most of what's done with retro roms is pretty darn legitimate given the circumstances. Copyright laws should protect artists/ creators, they should not strangle a piece of art in terms of making and keeping it available to people who want to admire it. Just my two cents though ....

Gosh...
The debates still goes on...
Okay, my suggestion. (Once again)
Buy the genuine copies, play & store it carefully, DON'T too obsessed with things too much !
Nothing is eternal.
Remember, you can't bring your games to Underworld when you die.
So, don't waste your time by being obsessed too much with video games.
There is a time we just let the specific games go due to almost impossible to get. We don't have to buy or play All the games in the world. Not many people have a chance to play Masterpiece games such as Final Fantasy series, Super Mario Galaxy, The Sims series, etc.
It's okay if we can't play certain games, just let it go. Control your desire so you can feel happy by owning certain games that you already get and take care of them.
Video games is a Tertiary Needs, not a Primary Needs, so if we don't have a chance to play it (anymore), just stay strong. We can watch the gameplay of certain games from Youtube. Fulfill your satisfaction it could so many ways, by owning the real copies or just watch what is people playing.

So, be happy with what you get. If you got the pirated, don't be too excited considering it still pirated. If you can get original copies, be happy, treat your things nicely and carefully. If you don't have a chance to get into Video games world, choose something else that can entertain you (Music / Movies / Books / Drawing / Chatting with someone / etc).
Life is Not just a video games matter.

Great read, thanks for sharing!

Lol this is why I have original carts.people that steal games are losers. Besides stealing is stealing and downloading ROMs are stealing lol just facts,unless you buy from psn,Xbox store or the eshop.lol just facts

@Kalmaro Don't take this the wrong way, but you keep stating you are repeating yourself, and you are asking other people to go and find a ruling/legal precedent for you that shows it is legal to make backup copies of your own games. We're under no obligation to prove our actions are legal - they need to prove the action is illegal. I'm doing some research on the topic simply because I am interested in it, but if the law does to prohibit something, it is permitted (In the US and I believe Great Britain as well).

So no, we have no obligation to you, or to the law, to prove that we are allowed to backup our own games. For one, a quick Google will show you countless articles, many from reputable tech sites, stating you are allowed to make backups of your own games. Two, you will find absolutely no legal precedent for anyone ever making a backup of a game they legally own being prosecuted. Three, you will find no law prohibiting any such backups. And finally, it does not matter what Nintendo says they want you to do. If they come out and say you cannot make a backup of your own games, it makes absolutely no legal difference. As it stands right now, there is absolutely no reason to think that making a backup of your own game is illegal in anyway. If it isn't explicitly forbidden, it is permitted. That's inherent to the US law and there's plenty of precedent to back that one up.

@Leej07 They are not the same thing. Emulation is 100% completely legal, and has plenty of legal uses. You can also legally obtain roms (From your own devices). I think I get the point you're trying to make, but it's not the same as the prohibition.

@Slim1999 lol just facts I think you should look up some more facts lol and learn the difference between piracy and stealing lol. Not saying either are right, lol, but they are clearly different. lol just facts.

@Kalmaro I forgot to include this in my last reply... for the most part, I feel you and I have had civil, and mostly intelligent back and forth conversation. However, if you cannot wrap your head around how someone, specifically @Onion that you addressed in your post, can simultaneously believe that something is not evil, while also acknowledging the fact that it is illegal - there really is no point in you continuing this conversation.

Now go finish your prunes and plain toast.

@Kalmaro It really isn't. You forget that hundreds of carts were created, and the people who dumped those ROMs did so by dumping them from the carts and disks they themselves owned. So technically, your analogy doesn't hold at all or make any sense.

A more solid analogy would be that dumping roms is actually like, you bought the car, then you stripped it's guts out and put them out for public use.

Difference here is that stripping out said guts is done in the act of preserving the past, rather than selling the parts to be used by people who may need them.

@Kalmaro Owners of older hardware including cartridges for 8 and 16-bit systems have every legal right to read and interpret the data contained on those cartridges and store it elsewhere for backup or personal use purposes. It only enters illegal territory when they share the data dump in the form of a ROM file and then distribute those online to people who may not own legal cartridges. Flash carts can allow legal owners to store many of their cartridges in one location, while keeping the original cartridges free of wear and tear.

There's no reason NL shouldn't share their approval of such devices even while acknowledging that they can be used in an illegal manner. After all, pretty much any product you can obtain legally can be used to commit illegal acts.

@GoneFishin

( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)

@Priceless_Spork I'm laughing so hard at your comment LOL

@GravyThief I have a question then, ignoring the argument of "preservation", if you are a supporter of emulating consoles exactly, how do you feel about the Dolphin devs allowing you to buy games directly from Nintendo using the Wii Shop Channel? This uses a Wii's original address (I think MAC address), so you would have to own a Wii, or at least know someone that owns one, to buy software on Dolphin. This way, you can continue to support the devs.

Then you could hack/graphically improve/mess with the game however you would like. Yes, this isn't using the software in its original sense and may not be completely legal (regarding the use of the Wii Shop Channel), but morally this still is paying devs for games.

I love getting roms for games I own and then improving them graphically, such as using the fan-made graphical mods to Xenoblade Chronicles Wii. If I could buy all my games on Dolphin, or an emulator like CEMU, I likely would do so.

Would you like to see more emulators that allow you to buy games from the devs, or do you think that this still running around Nintendo in a shady way?

@FlameRunnerFast I'm not really against emulators or the ROM scene (whatever you want to call it). In fact it's because of that scene I have access to some of the best, most obscure retro games that were ever released. What I am against are people using the preservation arguement so casually, to justify them using emulators to play ROMs they don't own legally. I don't really have a problem with people doing that if they want to (for non-current retro systems of course), I just don't like people trying to excuse it in such a way. I prefer flash carts to emulators myself (as I much prefer playing on original hardware to PCs), but ultimately I'm playing illegal ROMs on them. I don't pretend otherwise. The law is pretty black and white in such matters, regardless of whether you can buy said game legally today, or the original publishers/developers still exist. Having a ROM for a game you don't own is illegal.

What you describe about the link to the official Wii eShop to buy the games legally, before the unofficial 'enhancement' is done is a great idea. Obviously that still limits the games to what you can buy digitally today (a drop in the ocean really) but it should certainly be encouraged where possible.

@Kalmaro There is. You can always rip them yourself using something like this:
https://www.dragonbox.de/en/313-retrode2-with-all-plugins-retrode-4260416651043.html

The only thing you need is a way to read out your cartridges, much like making security backups of optical discs.

Like many others said, its not only a piracy tool, but a preservation method. Since copyright insanity often even prevents rights holders of re-releasing their own content (My favorite example: MegaMan Legends 2 couldn't be re-released for the longest time due to a single voice actor contract), its often the only way to preserve these libraries.

And the most ironic thing about all this ?
There are quite a few VC games that Nintendo themselves got off of illegal ROM sites, identified by a custom file header that made older ROMs compatible with certain emulators.

And since i had such a discussion many times:
Yes, Flash Cards are a gray area because they circumvent a systems security checks and often use(d) reverse-engineered code, which is illegal.
Dumping your own ROMs / ISOs for safekeeping and preservation however is something completely different.
Which is why "commercial redistribution" is highlighted in every copyright disclaimer.

Bottom Line: Don't make money off of other peoples work and don't share content bought with a "single owner license" (a.e. entertainment media).
Heck, if you'd want to get nitpicky, you'd need a license to show a BluRay movie on a party exceeding a certain number of attendees here in germany...
Or we even had kindergartens being fined for singing songs they didn't had the license to reproduce for !

We have a saying here that if you take these rulings too seriously, you might as well never leave your room again, because somewhere, there is a law against you leaving the house and treading on state owned ground.

@Einherjar Unless we're talking about two different things, reverse engineering is certainly not illegal, and is common practice in the technology world. Sigma & Tamron reverse engineer Canon/Nikon camera tech for compatible lenses and accessories, Cyrix reverse engineered Intel's x86 platform back in the 90's to avoid licensing costs. Of course there's countless other examples, those two just came to mind. In Cyrix case, they were sued by Intel, but ultimately won the suit, so the court agreed they were within their legal rights. Otherwise, great post.

I do understand why some people feel it is necessary to preserve older games regardless of wither it is legal or not. Personally I’m more excited by new games 

Again I'll point out there are some games that cannot be obtained in any legal way EXCEPT by downloading a rom. There are also certain other games that are not translated to English, Mother 3 being a prime example. Despite the huge popularity of EarthBound in America, Nintendo consistantly REFUSES to release Mother 3 over here, despite the fact that an American release of Mother 3 would practically print money like the DS.
I see nothing especially evil about somebody downloading a rom and fan-made English patch of Mother 3.
Nintendo clearly could care less that Americans want to play it.
That said, if Nintendo ever did finally get off their a**es and release Mother 3 in the US, then I'll be the first to say you shouldn't keep downloading that rom.

I can confirm @Einherjar is at least something I've heard as well, though I can't prove it. I've heard Nintendo literally uses SNES9X (or something similar) and a rom off the net. How true it is, I don't know. I can confirm that I have heard about it though. As for legality, I'll leave that up to people more knowledgeable than myself, but I feel like the "never leave your room again" analogy is fantastic.

For what it's worth, I also agree with @GravyThief. I'm not delusional enough to believe every (if any) was dumped for preservation... I just think that's a better way of looking at roms as opposed to some of the views shared here that roms are just inherently bad because of how some people choose to use them.

I personally hate the "only idiots buy games today" argument so I can fully understand why people would have a strong hate for piracy and any form of it, but piracy like many things has a bright side. The thriving homebrew community has given the gaming world a lot over the years.

@Ralek85 also has a good point about MP3s, which are now legally sold. Roms are convenient, that's really the bottom line for a lot of downloaders. Nintendo's VC is a nice step on capitalizing on that convenience, but it's not enough.

Another thing I wanted to point out to go along with a previous point i was trying to make about emulation breathing new life into games, is that sometimes they actually FIX games. The best example I have off the top of my head is Breath of Fire II which got a retranslation that fixed one of the biggest problems of the original game.

I'm beating a dead horse at this point though. So that's enough for now. I think the argument made in favor of roms and emulation has been made, so if the ones on the offense still don't understand, then I've done all I can. The main problem I have with the opposing view is that the only argument they really have is that it's illegal (supposedly). Ultimately that's what they continue to fall back on too. I actually wasn't going to post again but Einherjar's comment reminded me that I have heard the same claim before, so I wanted to confirm that he's not pulling it out of nowhere.

EDIT: Actually found bit on eurogamer about this:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-18-did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us

This is just one of several sources I've seen basically suggest Nintendo is using illegally dumped roms on VC. Since emulators are also readily available, free, and legal, I'm willing to bet they're also using an emu downloaded off the net too.

Food for thought for the anti-piracy crowd. For something deemed "Wrong" and "illegal", Nintendo benefits from it and could benefit from it even more.

@Kalmaro
Whatever helps you sleep better at night I guess.

Nintendo can say it's illegal to copy your own game all it wants. That does not circumvent the very real Fair Use exemption that exists in America.

@Onion It has never been proven that Nintendo downloaded a ROM file from the Internet. It's a fact that Nintendo uses the iNES file format, though. Using the same file format results in identical ROM files. If you want to prove that Nintendo downloads a ROM file from the Internet, you have to modify the ROM file like changing some bits to mark it and then upload it and hope that Nintendo will download it. There have never been evidence that Nintendo uses an intentionally modified ROM file, though.

By the way, even if Nintendo downloaded a ROM file from the Internet, you can't prove that the ROM file Nintendo downloaded was illegally dumped if it's a clean ROM file. Also, Nintendo can legally download ROM files of its games from any sources because Nintendo is the copyright owner. Others can't because they aren't the copyright owners.

As for emulators, I have never heard that Nintendo uses a third-party emulator. I heard that someone suggested Nintendo to use one, but Nintendo didn't approve of that.

@Leej07 Nintendo never said that it's illegal to make a copy of your game.

I know that, but Syrek up there claims Nintendo called it illegal.

I'm not saying it's illegal for Nintendo to download a rom of a game they own the copyright of, but, if they paid for said rom, that is a bit shady, as they are giving profit to someone they claim is infringing their copyright.

@Syrek24 I can't take your ridiculously long post seriously, when your first paragraph contains something so absurd as "illegal emulators that are not from the parent company"... have you done any research on the matter? If so, you would know emulation is not illegal.

Second, you mention "You are not above the law." Of course not. No one is arguing it is legal. But don't pretend you haven't, and don't frequently, break laws when convenient to you. Never mind the fact that just because something is illegal, doesn't necessarily make it immoral. Your whole argument hinges on "But it's illegal" which 99% of everyone posting in support of emulation acknowledges. Nobody has said it is a gray area legally - they've said it's a gray area morally.

Just a couple years ago same sex marriage wasn't legal in the US - guess that was totally immoral back then, but thank God that now that a group of politicians somewhere said it is okay, same sex couples can continue their love with a clear conscience. Conversely, before slavery was abolished, I guess we should have just all accepted that it was okay? After all, it was legal. Let's not use our own brains for anything. We must always, 100% follow the law in all circumstances. Don't be so naive.

@roadrunner343 Really, that's what makes this matter rather gray, as opposed to black and white. By ruling emulators are completely legal, the courts have to know that emulators REQUIRE roms to work. It's little more than suddenly legalizing one side of a black market.
Like Prohibition: You better not be buying any booze! But drink whatever you want.

@Leej07 Heh, I think it's been clear I am mainly on your side of the argument (I have no issues with ROMs of games I own/have no legal way of obtaining) but I still disagree with that analogy. The issue is, even if ROMs of commercially released games were somehow compeltely removed from the internet, emulation still has a place. Emulation is awesome for the homebrew scene, or even playing games with enhanced features off of the original media. If you want to use the prohibition analogy, it would be more accurate to say you are allowed to have and play ROMs, but you're not allowed to download, sell, or dump your own.

EDIT: And I've already made this point earlier, and don't feel like re-typing it, but emulation as a whole has many uses outside of simply emulating video games consoles - it revolutionized the IT industry. So emulation, be it video games or otherwise, is not going anywhere.

That does fit better.
The Supreme Court ruled that Emulation is legal, knowing full well a big chunk of emulating involves something that is illegal to obtain. I mean, I suppose someone could argue the court just never took that into consideration, but all the lawyers and judges involved had to have realized this particular implication. Then of course the matter is clouded further by the whole Fair Use exception and it's just a whole heap of yes it's illegal, but we aren't going to cross that bridge yet.

I think, in this burgeoning era of Digital Everything, that it's about time Copyright law gets an overhaul. In many ways, Copyright law is still very much bound to a paper and ink era of books. Some of it is just really awkward with regards to stuff like video games.

For one thing, I think the copyright expiration period of 120 years should be drastically shortened for video games.
If a company goes defunct, there's an AWFUL LOT of their digital media that would be completely lost forever by the time 120 years has passed.

Or you could just be an adult and emulate and have the best play experience, avoid making more unnecessary e-waste, all without having to spend a cent.

@Kalmaro Get over yourself. There's plenty of good reasons to own a flashcart that don't involve piracy. Playing backups of your own cartridges, playing unreleased games, translation patched versions of imports you may on, etc.

And ROMS also help games stay alive and relevant when the cartridges/discs eventually rot away and die.

@KawlunDram when you can show me a ruling that says we have the authority to make backups of games that belong to someone else, play backups of games that we don't own, or any other excuse that you can think of breaking the rules, let me know.

And while you're at it, feel free to find some ruling that gives anyone the right to chose over the developer's head who still own the games, which games should be preserved.

@WaxxyOne Would you mind proving that owners of older software have the right to back up and make copies of any older game they choose?

@anti-matter "yessa massa ima jes be glad jes to play whats i already gots!"

Are you the most boring person in the world?

Know what's fun? Having every game. Ever. On one system.

@roadrunner343 What you are basically saying is that people have no obligation for justifying why they can take the property of someone else and make copies of it for their own use.

I wasn't aware that I would have to show why this is wrong, especially considering that we do not own the games we buy, just the right to play them. Unless we are talking about abandonware.

@Kalmaro Noone cares.

@Kalmaro What are you talking about? Of course we have no obligation to justify why we make copies of our own software/games/music/DVDs for personal use if we are not distributing them. Again, that's how the law works - if it isn't prohibited, it's permitted.

Additionally, you are incorrect in stating that you are only purchasing the right to play a game. You are purchasing that specific copy of the game. Yes, your rights are limited as to what you can do with the game, but you are not merely licensing the right to play the game, as you do some modern pieces of software. EULA's differ from software to software, some spell out that you are only licensing the software, and the company reserves the right to terminate you ability to use the product at any time - this is not the case with physical games/media, especially not 20-30 years ago.

So yes, absolutely - if you somehow want to prove that it is illegal for someone to make backups of their own legally purchased software - the responsibility is entirely on you, the lawyer, prosecutor, etc... that wants to prove it is illegal. The problem is, as I've stated, it's not prohibited by law, and there is absolutely no precedent set for charging someone for making copies of their own software. Again, a 10 second Google search will show you as much.

EDIT: And you keep telling everyone to "Show me a ruling"... again, I'm not a lawyer and don't pretend to be an expert - but take 30 seconds to think about how the law works. Things do not need to be spelled out to be permitted - it's the exact opposite. If there isn't a ruling outlawing something, it is lawful.

@roadrunner343 I don't know about other game companies but Nintendo makes it very clear that you are not purchasing their games, just a license to play them.

http://simpleeulas.weebly.com/nintendo-eula.html

Hence me saying they people can not make roms legally. No one has that authority, except Nintendo.

@Kalmaro First, it doesn't matter what Nintendo makes clear. Their word isn't law. The most they can do it put it in the EULA. Guess what revision of their EULA Nintendo added the comment of "Licensed not Sold" to? I'll help you - it was the Wii U. And rather than linking to some un-reputable third party site that doesn't even specify what system or software the EULA applies do, let me help you out: http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/info/en_na/docs.jsp?menu=wii&submenu=rvl-doc-eula

You're welcome. So the Switch and Wii U software is licensed. Big deal. Even that may or may not prevent you from being able to make legal copies, as again, local laws may trump that. Regardless, it is completely irrelevant, as the Wii U and Switch EULA have absolutely nothing to do with the consoles we are talking about.

@roadrunner343 That was just an example, they have that on all of their stuff. EULAs have been shown to hold up in court. So yes, my argument stands. These games people are dumping do not belong to anyone but the developer.

@Kalmaro Your argument is not even remotely close to standing - you've cited a EULA that did not exist until 20+ years later. It has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this conversation. They do not "Have that on all of their stuff" as you would have seen if you followed my link and read for yourself. It first showed up in the Wii U EULA. If we were talking about taking dumps of Nintendo Switch carts, maybe you would have a leg to stand on, but you don't. Go ahead and show me a single example of a SNES game that contained a EULA, let alone prohibited archival copies. Or N64. Heck, Gamecube even. I'll wait.

Even if a EULA did not exist for an older game there is still the copyright to consider, as the owner of it is the only one who has the right to copy and distribute their material. There's no way to get around it, no one legally can copy a Nintendo game still owned by Nintendo. I've talked with Nintendo's legal team before but it was about an emulation site. I'll send an email about this and hopefully get this cleared up.

@Kalmaro What do you expect Nintendo to say? Of course they are going to tell you that you can't do it, that don't want you to make any copy of their software. Again, it doesn't matter what they want. Again, do some research on your own - there is nothing in copyright law that prohibits backup copies for personal use. Your argument falls apart unless you are referring specifically to the Wii U/Switch.

We've had good conversation at first, but now you're just being lazy, incompetent, and stubborn. I've provided you with links to Nintendo's EULA's. Other's have provided you with links to Copyright law section 117, which explicitly permits archival copies.

Heck, I'll do you one better - Here's the legal case between Nintendo and Galoob (Game Genie Maker) over whether or not the game genie modification/adaptation was legal. The Legal case was ruled in Galoob's favor, with section 117 being the ruling used to justify Galoob's action - the exact same section that permits archival backups. What more do you want? Again, stop being lazy, do your own research, and quit spouting nonsense. I have no problems if you disagree with me, but at least use sound logic and reasoning, rather than making outrageous assumptions and trying to use documents out of context.

http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1545&context=ggulrev

@roadrunner343 I'm not an idiot, I know what they will say if I ask if copying a game is bad. Give me some credit.

If it sounds like I'm lazy it's probably due to it being the weekend and being kinda tired of talking about this. I need to make dinner and pizza is more interesting then reading through legal documents on a Sunday.

I do appreciate your willingness to provide me with material to go through though.

@Kalmaro ROFLMAO Nintendo legal department? Now THERE'S an unbiased source! Also ask what their opinions on CEMU and Dolphin are, that should be good for a laugh!

@ClampedDownHard For someone who doesn't care you sure seem to care a lot.

The basic fact is this: The US Supreme Court has never once made a ruling stating you cannot back up your own copy of a game. Nintendo doesn't like this, but Nintendo does not run the US Supreme Court, last time I checked.

Do you measure the audible level at the party? Do you make sure nobody shooting pool at the bar makes an illegal wager? Do you report when an elevator has exceeded the occupancy level? Do you have a fit when the neighbor shoots off a firework? This rom stuff is just about on the same level. It isnt worth making a big deal about.

@Kalmaro You should look at the back of a DVD or game next time you get off your high horse. When you buy something, you're free to do whatever you want with it. Including backups. It's sharing them that becomes the illegal bit.

As for preservation, you do realize that when something is out of print for an extended period of time it's public domain right? So while sharing ROMs is certainly in a moral and legal grey area now, in about 50 years no one will care and you'll be able to download Friday the 13th for NES and Spider Kong for Atari 2600 without giving a two poops and a canary. Hell, old DOS and arcade games that have since been abandoned by their devs and publishers are already hitting that state.

@KawlunDram I'd imagine you'd have a point, in 50 years then.

@Kalmaro That's not a comeback. That's ignoring most of my statement because you literally do not have an argument.

Hell, certain groups, such as the Internet Archive, have managed to get themselves exempted and allowed to store, preserve, and even share (in an extremely limited way, IE, they can't offer the roms for download, but they can let them run on an emulator than anyone with a computer can access) all on the premise of historical preservation.
So hey, if someone can make a compelling, legal case for themself being a conservator, theoretically anyone could get themselves exempted.
(It's a lot more technical and involved than this, of course, and the hoops you have to jump through to get around it are by no means something that can be done easily.)

@KawlunDram Just going with what you said. I already mentioned above that I'm done with this for the moment. Got work in the morning anyway. It's too late to be getting into legal debates.

This here must be Nintendo's worst Nightmare: https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom&tab=about

Sadly, I notice there are no Nintendo consoles to be seen there, but notice Sega was obviously kind enough to not pitch a fit about it.

@ClampedDownHard
Excuse me ?
We love to play video games.
It would be nice if we can play all titles from all machines.
But, if we don't have any chance, be strong. Just let them go.
Nothing is eternal.
Once again, life is not just about video games matter.
There are some more important things than video gaming.

Btw, I play my games legally, with original copies, genuine machines (no modded).

@Leej07 Nintendo never said that it doesn't want people to make backups of copies of games they own.

@NinNin Actually, yes they have, apparently, multiple times. Hell, both the WiiU and Switch apparently have EULA's that specifically prohibit copying one's own games, which is of questionable legality regarding the American Fair Use exception.

@Kalmaro If you own the game thats how.

@roadrunner343,

Okay, but unlicensed is bad in my opinion. Or at least it is risky.

@Henmii Sorry, I'm not entirely certain what you are referring to? We were talking about Nintendo licensing their games for use by end users, but it sounds like you may be referring to unlicensed software/peripherals? If so, regardless of how we feel about unlicensed products, that doesn't really change anything as far as ROMs, emulation, and archival backups go.

I created an account just for this article. I love that you guys cover this type of stuff and I hope you continue to do so. The anti-ROM anti-piracy anti-hacker circle jerk in the comments of every article that mentions ROMs isn't indicative of all our view points. This was a very informative article. To choose not to publish something like this because of the notion that it may promote piracy is ridiculous and I'm glad I see these pieces pop up.

So thank you! And keep up the great work!

@roadrunner343,

I'll clear it up: I didn't really want to delve into "rom territory" since that's a gray area.
But unlicensed products, they are always a risk to your consoles. Your consoles are always meant to play licensed game-cartridges/discs. The ones you buy from dedicated shops or dedicated online-shops.

Hopefully that clears things up.

I didn't even know these existed.
If you don't want to use your original cartridges, why not just use VC or emulators?

NONSENSE. Retro consoles are more likely to die from bad capacitors than flash-carts. Good job there fearmongering the uneducated plebs.

@ShadJV It's nowhere near the same. If you steal someone's car THEY no longer have the car, they cannot drive or enjoy it. Copying is not theft as much as companies would like you to believe that. It IS however illegal in many cases. That said In the US copyright originally only lasted 7 years (14 if the creator re-upped). This is so that our society could both foster innovation by protecting the creator AND allow all of us to benefit in the long term. It also was created that way to prevent exactly what is happening now: The hoarding of these assets by a few to allow them to gain financially indefinitely for assets they never created. At the point where we are now with (c) being over 100 years it is a joke and hard to take seriously. The fact that companies have paid millions to school systems to sucker the next generation into believing the whole "copying is theft" crapola is more reason to seriously question that line of thought. I buy a heck of alot more games than average... I'm just not a sucker for a slick slogan.

@Kalmaro I don't understand what you are talking about? "there is no legal way I know of to own a ROM of a Nintendo game and they will tell you that as well". First of all, nintendo is a joke of a company who short supplies and discontinues everything, so no one really cares what they say. They want people to buy ridiculously marked up [removed] 8 bit games in 2017, good luck. How are people supposed to know if you dumped the rom yourself? A video game file is a file like anything else, and is allowed to be backed up. What do you call moving music files from a cd to an mp3 player? Not the same thing? I guess you aren't copying the file for more convenient use right? And for the comfort of knowing that file is safe from the cd getting destroyed. Im sure you have never done that though

I used to when I was younger but can't say I copy CDs anymore. Haven't done that in years. Regardless, if something is illegal it doesn't matter if either of us do it, just means we're both in the wrong.

This topic is kinda old so I'm going to just let it go, but I do appreciate you're willingness to still discuss it.

@Kalmaro Dude are you stupid? It's not illegal to take your own music files and move them on to a music delivery device. Do portable cd players even exist anymore? Weird because cds still do. Windows infact has built in software that rips cds on to windows media player, and you can transfer them wherever you want. I guess you're saying mp3 players and windows is illegal? The problem is Nintendo is a bunch of idiots and don't know the laws. They get salty when people copy their stuff, well make better stuff.

@goombastomper85 I think you may want to take some time to slow down, take a breath, and read what I said.

I said I'm done talking about this for now. While you're wait, perhaps you can look for where I said anything about copying music being legal or not.

@Kalmaro LOL "while you're wait"? No wonder no one knows what the hell you are talking about. You're the moron who claims owning a rom is illegal.. because Nintendo said it was illegal. My point, you broken english speaking moron, copying something you own is not illegal. What you think they are going to go door to door asking people if they copied their own stuff? If you sell the roms, or post them on a website and use them commercially, its illegal. End of story. You are a [removed].

@goombastomper85 No one is taking you seriously with an attitude like that. Why do you keep responding? I've already said I'm done with this topic, and you're basically just harassing me by this point. If that's all you plan to do to people they will ignore you.

Harassment? You said you're done with it more than once, yet you keep responding to people. You are stupid. You started an argument and can't finish it. Some lawyer you are. Nintendo doesn't want you downloading roms clearly, but they have no control what you do in the comfort of your own home with merchandise that's bought and paid for, as long as you don't distribute it publicly for profit. Nintendo doesn't even have a moral compass, they create false scarcity and favor scalpers.

@goombastomper85 Look, I'm fine with people having a debate, but there's no need to throw insults around. Keep it civil, profanity is not allowed. Consider this a warning.

@Octane Good, do what you want. You an administrator? Or u just a bored stalker? How is someone supposed to know they're stupid if no one tells them?

@goombastomper85 I'm a moderator, and I'm giving you one last chance to behave and act decently.

who are you again?

@Kalmaro No. It's not. If you steal someone's car they no longer can have it or use it. If you copy code the original can still be used.

Not sure what you're referring to. You're a bit late the conversation.

If its out of print and has been for at least a decade, unlikely to get a VC release, i own the original, it has never come out with an official US translation, Is not currently being offered for sale by the publisher or creator, or the only way to play it is to buy it second hand (which until the wii/wii u Nintendo's stance was against used game sales The EULA in some of my old game manuals even state selling the game to a 3rd party is breaking the EULA same as making a backup) I will use a rom to play the game (most likely in a flash cart) because if it is not currently available for purchase directly from the publisher or it's distributors or i already own the game ( i will dump it or already have dumped it) the company is not making money on the software in question

@Kalmaro You're absolutely right. Rules should not be broken just for convenience, nor should laws. From now on, I'm only gonna cross at the lights when walking around town, even if it's 4:00 in the morning and there is not a car for a hundred miles. Jaywalking is just like emulation, is WRONG. I'll also raise my hand before going potty and finish all my meat before having any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

@beautifulstrong Well, one of those is an actual law, the others are more of a tradition. I'm sure you can see the difference.

@Kalmaro except the car owner gets to keep his car.
copying is not stealing, especially so for software that hasn't been sold for ages

@deABREU It is stealing of its not yours to begin with. You don't own the car, you don't own the game you're copying.

Nor are you entitled to the game or car.

@Kalmaro There are plenty of legal ways to have ROMs and ISOs. I personally ripped my entire N64 collection using a GameShark and an old PC a while back. You can also pull apart virtual console stuff to extract the ROM if I remember correctly(this may be a bit of a legal gray area) and that also applies to the ROMs in a lot of the virtual console predisesors(like the GameCube release of orcarina of time). While most people don't obtain ROMs legaly, it's rather ignorant to say that there isn't a legal way to obtain ROMs at all.

@montiedragon Your comment is noted. Not much else to say, this topic is pretty old and I don't have the same stance anymore.

These have been around now long enough that very few problems have been discovered. I still would think twice about using one in an original SNES but an original NES should be no problem, they don't produce as much heat as SNES games. I have bought tons of full price cartridges in my day and since many of these games with the battery are now dying on us, it is an awesome way to get hard to find cartridges that are often dead if you can find them. I have no qualms what so ever with using them. I can't afford to pay 30 to 40 bucks each on a bunch of 30 year old cartridges like you have to for some of these. I do still buy originals once in a great while just to have an original copy of a game I once owned long ago. It is totally amazing how far technology has advanced.

I'm having to use Google translator, in case you don't understand what I mean.
Before I bought an ed64 plus, my console crashed in some games, what was sure to crash was the Star Fox 64, original cartridge, right there in the intro of the first mission. But the same problem persists in some games through this flashcart, such as Diddy Kong Racing. I didn't get an answer as to why, but I noticed that his cic chipset is different from the others, being CIC-NUS 6103 and I don't know if that would be the problem considering that games like Banjo-Tooie and Jet Force Gemini also didn't work in previous versions from the same cartridge (I haven't tested those yet). Now as to the validity of the console and flashcart, I can't even say anything. I have 3 N64 consoles, with 3 power supplies and only one AV cable and they all have the same problem. I recently opened 2 of these and found that there was no problem with the capacitors, just dirt.