Virtual console sales. Nintendo doesn't want you to play those titles on a tiny touch screen. I agree with them there; screen + tactile buttons are a much superior way to play.
The heart of it all is in the virtual console emulator though. If you want to play Super Mario World, Metroid, Earthbound, and other classic titles, they want you to go through their store on their systems where they have total control. The DS family and Switch are both portable systems, so to them, there isn't much incentive to make sure Android/iOS emulation are bug free.
There is also that stigma attached to paying for mobile games. I mean, Super Mario Run did really well, and it is a polished runner that (in my opinion) is worth the full price tag. But the prevailing logic is still that paid games are for consoles/Steam and free games are mobile fodder.
Nintendo likes to keep it's IP on it's own hardware, but Square Enix (for one) has released several of it's most famous RPGs on Android (most of the Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, etc.).
Updates do have to be made to support a touch interface, which is why I think you're request is not a trivial undertaking for most companies. RPGs work, but I can't imagine playing a game like Contra on a touch screen.
This is the real answer. Nintendo don't want to sell $1 games, because that would re-anchor Nintendo customers to lower price-point expectations, in contrast to the $5/$15/$30/$70 pricing tiers they have right now. But Nintendo just don't (or rather, didn't, until Super Mario Run) have the in-house experience working with mobile form-factors to produce even original games that would stand out enough from the dreck on the app store to be "worth" more than $1 to consumers. So they just didn't bother with mobile.
They could design a classic bluetooth controller and sell it for cheap. I'm using the expensive, but awesome Switch Pro Controller on my Android's SNES emulator.
People have their phones with them in a lot of cases where they just can't or won't bring any accessories: at a nightclub, in the toilet, etc. If this is the majority of time when you'd want to kill time on your phone, controller-requiring games would be pointless for you.
Mind you, if you can force people to bring the accessory wherever they bring the phone, the calculus shifts. The Switch essentially is a Pro Controller duct-taped to an Android tablet; and it's a lot easier to convince people to buy one. :)
Yeah accessories are a challenge. But your comment made me think - how about a phone case that doubles as a controller? Kind of like the Surface keyboard as a phone case or protector with tactile buttons? I found a hard case called Flitchio but not sure if it made it to market and I don't like the joystick design [1]. Here's one closer to what I was thinking [2].
Because Super Mario Bros would be an absolutely terrible experience on a touchscreen. The game is hard enough on the original console with a zero-latency CRT. Put it through an emulator and a bunch of layers of abstraction to a comparatively glacial LCD, then try to control it with non-tactile onscreen buttons? No, thank you.
It might, but they've only shipped about 1M Switch units, which is a rounding error compared to the ~2B smartphones in use. If Nintendo really doesn't want to port/emulate because they want to prop up their hardware sales (or because they dislike touchscreen-only controls), they're acting very much against their best interests.
Thanks. I've managed to get the sound working somewhat locally. Since this is based on JSNES (https://github.com/bfirsh/jsnes/), I'm gonna submit a pull request to that repo and push the latest commit to my repo.
I have an idea: make it so that you have to supply your own rom files that the site will only store locally, and you then can get matched with anyone else who has roms with the same md5s. No legal problem because nothing copyrighted will be on the server, and it'll support much more roms than the small selection supplied.
Neat idea, but I guarantee they would find a way to shut that down too, even if it's completely legitimate and completely non-harmful from a copyright stance.
Nintendo is incredibly hostile to even fair use, let alone something closer to the line like what you described.
yes. Nintendo is even hostile to Youtubers playing their games. Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? I know that they sued someone who created an emulator while they were still selling the NES.
Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow?
A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided.
More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company out of business anyways.
So really, if you want to develop an emulator for modern hardware without getting lawyerpwned, you have to do something like:
1) Figure out a way to dump the (copyrighted) ROM that makes the various bits of the system work. The code signing involved makes this process completely illicit per DMCA, but there's apparently no standing to sue as long as you aren't distributing the results. (And then there's that fair use exemption for discussion and education besides)
2) Either clean room reverse engineer it with help, or make the dumping process easy enough that you can instruct others how to do it. PS2 emulator devs take the second option - every PS2 emulator requires a copy of the PS2 bios to work.
3) Hardware design isn't copyrightable, so you're fine with reimplementing the CPU in code.
This means that if you want to make your hardware emulator-proof, it's just like all DRM. You are doomed to fail, it's just a matter of how long.
thanks for the informative post. i've been working on an in-browser NES emulator myself and planned to have the users use their own local rom instead of hosting them myself. good to hear that should theoretically be legal
BIOS ROMs can be copyrighted, without which a system won't work, though they can be reverse engineered in a legally defensible way. An interesting read on the history of computer cloning here:
What I'd be more worried about is patents, though I think they've all expired by now for anything that would have applied to the original NES hardware.
The cartridge just plugs directly into the CPU, essentially every game provides its own BIOS. You can only get away with this with systems where software is provided on pluggable ROMs, Fairchild Channel F being the first video game example and similarly the better-known Atari VCS (aka 2600).
Technically the NES does have a ROM in the CIC lockout chip, which talks to another CIC on the cartridge to ensure it is a legitimate copy, but this is entirely irrelevant to gameplay and invisible to software (unlike similar chips on the N64 which the game could check at runtime). Indeed with the NES-101 (toploader) this was removed, arguably to improve reliability (if you ever saw the blinking LED on an NES, that's the CIC resetting the hardware).
There has to be enough nostalgia over Tecmo Super Bowl to warrant such a thing. People organize tournaments all over the country, a car company based a commercial on it, and stuff like the NES Classic shows a lot of interest in throwback gaming.
Whoever owns Tecmo's IP now put out a modern version of it, but it wasn't very good and was based on the the 16-bit version, not the 8-bit classic.
I'm sure there are issues still using the player's names, but those could be replaced with something generic, like QB Eagles :)
Typically a cease and desist letter (to both the actual author, the host, and the registrar) is enough to remove things like this. They will sue (and easily win) if the C+D is ignored though.
Given the list of mirrors, it appears the author knows what they're doing is illegal.
You don't have to agree with copyright law (and by all means, please try to change it!), but please don't take other people's work and build products out of it without their permission.
What if widespread non-compliance with corrupt, unfair, or antiquated laws is one of the natural means by which people apply pressure to "try to change" them?
What if the vast majority of copyright infringement and distribution has nothing at all to do with trying to change "corrupt, unfair or antiquated" laws, and everything to do with simply getting free access to content you would otherwise be required to pay for?
I mean, I'm all for copyright reform but let's not pretend there's a real civil disobedience movement at work wrt software piracy. It's a post-hoc justification at best.
If I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes? I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms. It didn't used to and I'm not sure how this changed mindset in any way helps creators or society.
> If I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes?
No, that's not how copyright works. That's a myth. In some cases you can make a backup of the game if you do it yourself. But you still can't download someone else's copy.
> I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms.
Because copyright means the company that sold you the product retains the right to copy it. That's not a right you bought when you paid for the game.
> It didn't used to and I'm not sure how this changed mindset in any way helps creators or society.
I'm not sure it's been a help either. Someone should change the laws to align them with modern society. But this isn't the way to do it.
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html
"Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an original computer program if:
the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only;
you are the legal owner of the copy; and
any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred."
Someone can do it for you. Also, this doesn't even have anything to do with copyright since it is actually like your friend letting you play a copy of his nintendo with a copy of his game. Totally different paradigm.
Someone else can do it with the legitimate copy you own, e.g. I take my cartridge to the copy shop and the tech copies it to a floppy for me. The fact that someone online could send me exactly the same data is irrelevant.
Legally I'm pretty sure that lending a physical copy and making a digital copy are incomparable. And to be sure, a copy is made when the server sends you the ROM.
"(a)Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful."
Where does it say that the copy must come from your original? If two people own the program, one may make a copy of his/her original for the other because the others original may have been destroyed. Remember, this law was written in the days of cds, records, etc.
It is clear that you can lend an original copy but not an archival copy. If you lend the original copy, you physically cannot be using it(needless to say, you cannot legally use your archival copy while you are lending you original copy).
>one may make a copy of his/her original for the other because the others original may have been destroyed
But then how would you prove you owned the original in the first place?
I could claim to have at one point owned every Sega Genesis game but unfortunately set the box down while moving and ran it over with a truck while backing out the driveway. I of course did not keep this box of now shattered carts and I also bought it with cash from a man on Craigslist so there really isn't a paper trail.
Is there a court case within the last 10 years we can reference that dealt with this kind of situation of once owning the original but it ended up destroyed?
> But then how would you prove you owned the original in the first place?
Are we arguing about how it ought to work now? I'm just telling you how it does work. Burden of proof is on the plaintiff, so no one has to prove that they owned a copy of anything unless for some reason the burden of proof changes at trial. You could make the claim in your example and get away with it. That's why few of these cases are substantiated.
Your first point is not so clear cut. A ROM is a ROM is a ROM. Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright?
You're permitted to make your own archival copy, or allow someone to make an archival copy for you, from your physical copy of the software. Apparently, "the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only". It sounds like you aren't permitted to run the backup copy, although I'd assume that if the original copy were destroyed, you'd be within your rights to write the backup to a blank cartridge, or something.
Nintendo's interpretation is some real B.S. though. Basically, that copying devices are illegal, emulators are illegal, and so on.
> A ROM is a ROM is a ROM.
Legally, from my understanding, there's also metadata about the provenance of the data. Where did it come from? Did you read it from a memory chip yourself, or download it from the internet? The data could be identical, but is the data legal if it was acquired illegally?
Not sure about the legality of downloading it, but it's established that providing it (uploading it to someone else) is where you're usually in hot water.
That's not a very useful citation. Nintendo takes an extremely expansive view of copyright (for example, they try to prevent commentators from using clips from their games in YouTube videos), is not an authoritative source, and is not exactly an impartial commentator on this matter.
I didn't mean it as a source of commentary on the matter. I meant it as a statement on the legality of making copies from the company that sold the licenses for playing the games to the general public.
If I say you are legally obligated to give me $100 if you read my comments, and link to the comment where I said it as proof that you're obligated, will you believe you're obligated to give me $100? I own the copyright on my writings, after all.
Copyright holders are not gods. The idea that their word is gospel is patently false. And in the specific case of Nintendo, they are even less reliable then most in terms of accurately communicating your rights to you. Nintendo have very little respect for copyright law as it actually exists, and instead try to assert whatever rights they wish they had and hope nobody fights them on it.
Reading over your response, I think we are talking about two different things. You appear to be talking about copyright protection. Remember that when you purchase a game, you don't purchase the copyright. You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium. (That part of the game instruction manual we all skipped past as kids.)
I don't have access to one of those licenses at the moment but if you happen to have one of them from one of the old NES games, I would be very interested in knowing if it has a section that states that the consumer has a right to backup the game onto another medium and play it there.
Again, you seem to be talking about copyright. I'm talking about the legal rights of the consumer when they purchased the license (game) from Nintendo. This is a good discussion, though.
Copyright is the only reason the license exists at all. If we ignore copyright, then the license is completely meaningless, because Nintendo has no rights to the work.
The point is that the EULA does not give Nintendo absolute power just because you played the game. They can't, for example, stick "You owe 30 years of indentured servitude to Nintendo" in the back of the Zelda manual and expect to get a bunch of free work out of the deal.
Nintendo have a very aspirational view of how much control they get over people who buy their stuff, and the law may even bear them out in some cases, but you can't take their word as law just because they wrote a license.
The right to backup stems from copyright, and on theory cannot be denied by copyright holders. DMCA'S anti-circumvention unfortunately limits this - if circumventing "access controls" is part of the path to backing up media, you may only do it 100% yourself (or acquire "illegal" tools made by others to do so), but you may not legally tell others how to do it.
> You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium.
The default right is ours, to be permitted to retell stories, replay musical works we've heard, and even reproduce works of art like video games.
We -- from whom the power to govern comes -- cede this freedom for the sake of promoting arts and sciences. But we do so in a limited fashion. See Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Our representatives scribbled in "but 'limited Times' means a century or two lol" underneath this and called it "Title 17".
As chc states, the copyright gives its holder the ability to grant us licenses. But we could make the case that the limited-monopoly we granted them to begin with has expired or is no longer valid. The copyright holder has concluded that it's not worth their time to continue to offer this work to anyone. So, who then, can curate this work of art that is now an element of our culture? In the mid twentieth-century, if the materials to produce the yellow, green, blue pigments featured in "The Scream" were licensed to painting copiers by Munch's estate, would we be obligated to source those pigments from them? What if his estate no longer sold them?
The point I'm trying to hit upon is that you're drawing a distinction between copyright and the consumer's legal rights. But the copyright is merely the instrument by which our freedoms are limited to those specific terms. If we reject the copyright claim, then the license's terms are moot.
I see your point. However, these are the lawyers of the party that sold their consumers the license to play the game. Remember, you don't actually own the game. You own a license to play the game on the medium you purchased. If the company that sold you the license also says that copying the game to a different medium and playing it there is not part of the original license, they kind of are allowed to say that.
Note: I'm not saying I like it! I'm just saying it is the way it is.
This "you have no rights but what we decide you have" view of ownership is what Nintendo would like you to think, but it's untrue in varying degrees depending on jurisdiction.
However I cannot make a backup of a NES/SNES cartridge that I legally own so this is the only method open to most people to actually obtain a digital backup of software they legally own.
A more apt comparison is the kid that warns the other kids that someone will be coming by shortly to shut the whole thing down so not everyone gets in trouble.
While we're here, throwing around some ad hominem trash is a good way to show everyone else that you're the one who's angry.
