
Did Nintendo download a Mario ROM and sell it back to us? - Jerry2
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-18-did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-and-sell-it-back-to-us
======
eridius
If they actually did what this video is suggesting, it's interesting, but
there's nothing actually wrong with it. Yes, Nintendo says that third-party
emulation is something they disagree with. But Nintendo isn't a third party.
They actually own the system and games in question. If they actually did
download a ROM (and I'm not convinced they did, they could have used the same
tools and produced an identical ROM), while they say it's illegal for the ROM
provider to provide said ROM, it's not illegal for Nintendo to use the ROM
since it's their intellectual property.

~~~
mistercow
I generally agree, but then there's the matter of lying about it. Why do that,
if they're in the right?

I think the answer is that there are some _subtle_ ways that doing this sends
a message they don't want to send. Like, for example, that the illegal
emulation community facilitated the existence of Virtual Console. That's a bad
message for their point of view, because it legitimizes the idea that ROM
sharing serves the archival purpose that some of its proponents claim it
serves.

And that's a legitimate point. So what's wrong with what they've done is
nuanced, but I think it's definitely there.

~~~
eridius
Maybe they're not lying.

Or, alternatively, maybe a contractor was responsible for this (even the video
suggests this explanation), and simply told Nintendo they didn't download the
ROM.

------
DaiPlusPlus
The ROM is their copyright, so this is the same thing as someone at Universal
records 'torrenting one of their artist's discographies and selling it on a
DVD instead of using their own archives (though this analogy holds true only
if Nintendo acquired an originally unauthorized ROM dump made by an
unaffiliated third-party and simply repackaged it in the Virtual Console - it
could also just be the case that Nintendo made their own ROM dump but used the
same tools as the scurvy pirates, that way it would still have the same ROM
file header).

I'm far more interested to learn if the Virtual Console itself uses any open-
source code to power the emulator - and if it means there's a potential GPL or
other copyleft license violation going on - because that would be deliciously
ironic for their very strong anti-(unauthorized)-emulation stance - what
better endorsement than to have your own open-source emulator repurposed by
Nintendo themselves?

~~~
sago
It's a little more than the torrenting analogy. The ROM is in a format that
was developed by and for emulators that they claim should not exist. They
relied on the work put in by emulator creators that they tried to fight into
nonexistence.

Your last paragraph is pertinent question. But even if not an infringement, it
is surely hypocrisy of the highest order.

~~~
gramstrong
How is it hypocritical? Hypocritical would be if Nintendo was caught illegally
writing emulators of someone else's software.

All they're doing is cutting their losses, they haven't done anything that
conflicts with their stance on emulators.

~~~
speeder
ROM dump people argue making a ROM is proper software archival, Nintendo
disagree with that.

The thing is, if Nintendo needed the ROM for whatever reason because it was an
archive, then Nintendo would be wrong in saying ROM is not archival.

------
minimaxir
See Reddit thread when the article was posted yesterday:
[https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nin...](https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5oxgd3/eurogamer_did_nintendo_download_a_mario_rom_and/)

Consensus is that this is OK since Nintendo technically has copyright still.

~~~
mod
The speculation I read in that thread was basically that if ripped properly
into the .NES format, you would wind up with identical versions (for that
game, and many--but not all--others).

~~~
coldpie
No. NES files as used today contain a few dozen bytes at the start which are
used to tell emulators a little bit about the type of hardware that needs to
be emulated. This header appears in the ROMs that Nintendo is selling.
Nintendo would not have invented precisely the same header as is used by
unofficial emulators by chance.

Note that no one is claiming that this is illegal on Nintendo's part.

~~~
eridius
Nobody's suggesting that they chanced upon the same header. That's ridiculous.
The suggestion is that they're using the same tools to rip the ROM, and/or
they're just re-using the format because it's a pre-existing format that does
the job.

------
bitwize
Midway downloaded a ROM of Spy Hunter to get access to the game's sound
effects for a pre-smartphone mobile port, and then had the ROM site shut down
for copyright infringement.

Happens all the time.

------
Scoundreller
I recall in the N64 emulation days (back when the best that anyone could
accomplish was emulate the loading intro sequence), emu writers would get
recruited by Nintendo, and then be forced to drop the project due to "conflict
of interest".

I'm curious if they were hired for their skills, or just to kill their side-
projects.

Probably started far earlier than the N64 days.

~~~
wodenokoto
The guys that made Starfox got hired based on their ability to circumvent the
copy protection on the gameboy [1].

So Nintendo, like many software companies do hire hackers based on things that
Nintendo don't condone.

 _Proud of his team 's sneaky subterfuge, San wasted no time getting the
results in front of Nintendo's key staff. "I turned up at Nintendo's booth at
that year's CES and tried to find the most senior person at Nintendo at that
time, which turned out to be Don James," he says. "I walked up to him and
showed him our game, and his jaw dropped - both for the demo itself and also
the way it defeated their protection. He roped in Wayne Shirk and Tony Harman
to see the demo and they were extremely impressed with what we could do, and
our enthusiasm. I told them we wanted to work with them and had a talented
team in London, and that we were good at 3D games."_

[1] [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-
the...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the-making-
of-star-fox)

~~~
manarth
Poacher-turned-gamekeeper is an age-old practice.

------
bobajeff
I want to know why wouldn't Nintendo put the effort into doing their own ROM
dumps?

~~~
ac29
Why bother? Who knows how much work it might be to get a physical copy of a
20+ year old game and the hardware to dump it.

It also might have been outsourced and the developer just took a lazy
shortcut.

~~~
bobajeff
I'd hope Nintendo has copy of Super Mario Bros. in their possession.

Since they made the system that read the cartridges in the first place.
Modding it to dump ROMs shouldn't be much trouble

------
milankragujevic
Why did the page redirect me to
[http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot](http://www.moddb.com/games/superhot/makeitsuperhot)
?!

------
hunter2_
This reminds me of when I used to do outdoor movie setups for a municipality's
parks/culture group. We would obtain the necessary license for public
performance of the film, and with that came a loaner DVD, but then I'd feed
the projector from a laptop using a torrented Bluray rip for the higher
quality. I'd then delete the file without playing it under any other
circumstance. Not piracy, amirite?

~~~
DKnoll
I hate those DVDs with a passion... the password protection is a bit much.

It wasn't so long ago that they still came on VHS, too.

~~~
hunter2_
I actually didn't know about the password... we were popping them into a
consumer DVD player and they just played. But between fiddling with remotes
and the audience seeing the OSD play/pause I just got sick of it and switched
over to the laptop... which has no optical drive, but does have a torrent
client :)

~~~
DKnoll
Ah, might just be certain distributors or studios then. I did a similar movies
in the park event many times and we tended to show Disney movies.

I miss wrangling giant inflatable screens sometimes but quickly come to my
senses.

------
gilgoomesh
[Edit: nevermind, I think I misread]

~~~
pdkl95
You've left out the context of that quote to invert what the sentence actually
said. Fayzullin's entire statement was:

    
    
        "[...] If you see that your .NES file DOES NOT match any
         of the ones found online, it is likely to be their own ROM dump.
         I have cut the ROM content out of the Wii file
         you sent me and it indeed matches the .NES file found online."
    

> it does not appear that they downloaded a Mario ROM

That is literally the opposite of what Fayzullin said.

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kayamon
Uh... of _course_ it's going to match a ROM found online -- because it's the
same ROM, from the same cartridge. It'd be weird if it didn't match.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Even in the cartridge days, game-devs still worked on patches and improvements
for later publishing runs, so there can be many different versions of a
cartridge game - and maybe the devs might have had even more recent builds of
games that never got published because the publisher ended the run - so it's
odd for Nintendo to go for the 'easy' route of repackaging an arbitrary
version found online, compared to going through their own archives for
something more recent, and presumably, of higher quality.

~~~
kayamon
Sure, Nintendo make several versions of each cartridge. But they've all been
dumped and put on the internet. Whichever version Nintendo chooses to release
in their new emulator, it'll already have been dumped by someone else years
before.

