Nintendo Makes It Clear That Piracy Is Only Way to Preserve Video Game History
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But our publishing company went under, and Nintendo took the games down several years ago. I still have them on my hard drive on my Wii, and I hunted down copies of the files so I could keep them in my collection, but there's no way for anyone else to get those games legally anymore. And they were pretty decent games, too (Evasive Space was probably too hard in retrospect, but still fun. NEVES was a solid puzzle game with lots of modes and a Patapon-ish character art).
It sucks. I wish I could tell friends and family to check the games out, but about the only thing I can do now is link to Youtube videos.
If I had the rights, plenty of cash, and the licenses, I would have ported these for other platforms, but instead they're just trapped in time (except for emulators), and I'm sure already pretty much forgotten. but at least there's emulators.
NEVES Plus Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQb19p09Y7Q Evasive Space Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpKxYtuuug
There's other games I worked on for companies that are no longer easy to get either, these are just the two that were on the Wii.
Likely, any principals or others with any interest about the game probably won't remember or won't care - heck, they might even be happy.
It has happened with a lot of 8-bit stuff from the 80s (mostly home computer software); with the exception of Nintendo of course. The Disney of games I guess.
Ultimately, you have to wait and hope such companies pass away - though as we both know, Nintendo is a very old company, so that might not be an option.
At that point, I'd just wrap up your archive, then figure out a way to put it on the internet with plausible deniability and/or anonymity (it can be done).
I still have a copy of the code for a game for another defunct startup, and every once in awhile I get the urge to try to contact someone and see if they don't mind me porting it (I don't see how they could, they barely cared about the game even back then). I have tons of other projects that are higher priority, though. Still pains me that that one isn't still available for people to play, though.
Honestly, I wish all of these things that I put so much of my life could still be playable. Basically my entire professional career in the game industry is a black hole, whereas the games I made and released on my own 6 years previous to that are still playable online, and I'm currently working porting and updating a game I made and released on the Xbox 360. Trying to get that out in time for its 10th year anniversary next year.
Part of the reason why I started getting into board game design is because once they're made, they're out there, and people can play them, they can't be taken down by a company or become obsolete due to dying platforms, and if I ever want to show them to new people, I can just bring them to a party. And I can always put a print and play copy up that people can mess about with.
The Internet Archive has an emulator to enable the playback of orphaned video games in browser.
As far as they're concerned people shouldn't be allowed access to these historic works, no matter the circumstances.
It's pretty sad behavior from a company beloved by so many.
By the way, I also find it really interesting that video games are software, a special kind of software that we assign a very particular type of value to that's not really monetary. We want to keep them alive and enjoy them so long after their time has passed. It's so much different than, say, a copy of Photoshop 2.11 or Winamp 3.
Video games may be software, but they're consumed in a way that's much more similar to music or video. Video games aren't a mean to an end like other kinds of software, but instead is an experience to be enjoyed simply through the consumption of it.
Creative works are valued longer because new creative works don't function as replacements. There's only one Canterbury Tales or Super Mario World.
An old photoshop copy is more like an old almanac, it is a tool.
Sometimes, though, the old tool is better than a new one.
For instance, if I have a choice between a Craftsman wrench from say, 1970, vs a brand new one from today - guess which one I'm going to choose?
Software can be like this as well; indeed, there are some DOS apps out there for which there isn't a good replacement available (though they can be niche - which is probably why).
Have to disagree on this one. Classic software I wish modern media players were as good. Nice thing is you can still get it! [0]
What I meant with that is, people will more likely to go and look for the old version of a Prince of Persia game than an older, specific version of an application.
I know that, yeah, but what I meant was just that Winamp 3 isn't a great example :-)
/well - maybe with wine
[1] https://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Winamp-for-Linux/97273...
I do not think that this is the case, many abandonware sites had (non-game) "software" sections ever since they first came up and today there are communities that are dedicated on preserving old applications in their original state often with manuals and photographs of the original disks. Games are way more popular, of course, but people do value old applications too.
Occasionally I love going back through my old CD-Rs (copied to hard drive, of course), finding old troves of files, projects, and games. That's why I always get the latest Factorio as direct download - I know someday in 20 years time I'll be hankering to bust that out again!
https://www.pcgamer.com/au/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-stea...
(songs removed from San Andreas due to time-limited music licenses, apparently at some point the renderer was replaced with the one used for iOS)
I think you can't downgrade to an old version of Stranger's Wrath either, but I could be wrong there. https://www.destructoid.com/oddworld-stranger-s-wrath-finall...
Then there are games like Diablo III where you need to be online to play single player, and therefore need a current patch, which means they can nerf or fuck with in any way they want a game you already liked and may no longer like after the changes.
Having to follow patches sucks, and piracy is often the only way to avoid it.
They even killed the official classic version not too long ago.
Short version: 1.0: Various bugs 1.01: Patch, fixed a whole bunch of issues 2.0: Only introduced a (easily defeated) tampering check after the Hot Coffee controversy 3.0: First steam release, is not based at all on 1.01 or 2.0 but on the Xbox version. Fixes from 1.01 are thus NOT IN THIS VERSION(!). Also contains many Xbox UI changes. newsteam r1: Removes the aforementioned songs, drops support for DirectInput controllers, blacklists 5:4 resolutions. Doesn't actually have a version number anymore (and is named by the community) newsteam r2: Unlocks 16:9 resolutions. Also doesn't contain an official version number.
Then there is the Microsoft Store version, which is based on a mobile version!
A lot of games are multi-player. Even if the software existed, once the community dies it's not the same game. It's fine, nothing lasts forever. We use it, we enjoy it, and we move on to the next thing that's enjoyable. You can't go home again, but you can always find a new home.
And in any case, there’s still dozens of communities around old arena shooters and the like. If those had an arbitrary lifespan applied to them based on when some company or other shut down, that’d be impossible.
And every so often, it'll popup and ask, "What is the icon on page 37 of the manual?" It's a cute throwback to what copy protection used to be.
But it's a bit obscene that they didn't run the crack to take out the copy protection checks once they ported it over to Steam. Once the window pops up, the game is unplayable until you type in the right code.
I was furious my first time through. I spent all night reliving nostalgic fantasies, only to get pretty far in and hit that wall. And, because I left the game on when I went to bed on Friday, it looked like I had played it for like 48 hours, so by the time I got around to filing a complaint with Steam to get a refund, they were like, "You've clearly been playing the game for 48+ hours..." Frustrating. The person on the other end of the phone thought I was a babbling idiot when I said the game had copy protection and asked for a copy of the manual. It was one of the funniest moments of tech support I've ever been on.
Luckily, I found a a PDF of the user manual with all the symbols.
Looks like there's also an engine reimplementation: https://openxcom.org/
It's no longer in the Apple Store (along with Chaos Rings II) even though I paid $15 for each. Not cool.
Sadly, they have their own package-manager/launcher too. Same goes for blizzard, twitch, EA, epic games... Sometimes I wonder ifvthe world wiuldn't better with sone kibd of centralized digital-content-managment platform, and all those stores and launchers just tap into it.
"The Walt Disney Company itself states that this process is done to both control their market and to allow Disney films to be fresh for new generations of young children. A side-effect of the moratorium process is the fact that videos and DVDs of Disney films placed on moratorium become collectibles, sold in stores and at auction websites such as eBay for sums in excess of their original suggested retail price. The practice also has made the Disney films a prime target for counterfeit DVD manufacturers."
By making the movies hard to buy, they create an incentive for counterfeiters to sell bootleg versions. Not only does this take revenue away from Disney they could otherwise earn, it also floods the market with fake versions that are most likely lower quality, actually causing a bad experience for new generations instead of the intended effect.
I don't think it would work for the 'public performance' part of copyright - composers, playwrights, movie directors.
For example, a lot of contemporary music is not published at all. If you get a score from the composer, you still have to pay royalties when you perform the music publicly.
My head is spinning...
With games that are online only, one also expects that wen the service is shut off you won’t have access. This is pretty accepted (but would be nice if there were some way to preserve the server code)
But games that are inherently offline and perform online checks are the worst. If I get something on steam that checks in with steam every 10 minutes, then steam goes away, then I’m pretty miffed.
With games with DRM stored on SD, who knows? If you copy the files then you'll probably be able to play it on the console... Provided it's the one you bought it on? I wouldn't even bet on it.
Check out http://freeinfantry.com/ Some awesome guys set up a custom from-scratch reverse engineered server for my favorite game of all time. You can play this game in pretty much the exact same way I did 20 years ago.
Seems understandable. At some point you'll hit end of life with software and support will end. I'm sure they'll give plenty of notice, and I'd imagine it's 5-10 years out. I'm sure if you called support and told them that your NES cartridges didn't work any more they'd probably just tell you to blow on it.
* Myth debunked: Blowing in your Nintendo games never actually fixed anything – GeekWire || https://www.geekwire.com/2014/blow-nintendo-games/
All but the most severely dusty NES carts should work just as well as a clean cart. NES carts failed mainly because of a fault in the NES front loader mechanism.
Me, I had a TI-99/4A before owning a NES. Random hangs and glitches were normal to me. (The TI-99/4A was prone to overheating.)
Though in digging up a source for this, I discovered my new favorite thing, which is that Tengen (infamously) made a (mostly) cleanroom duplicate of the 10NES and got sued over it, and when a company recently wanted to make NES cartridges, they reverse engineered Tengen's chip in turn. [2]
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/frpyh/you_m...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)#Nintendo_Entert...
The incentives of commercial online publishers were clear from their very beginning. The pattern of retroactively pulling content began quite some time ago.
I'm sympathetic if someone really doesn't know any better, succumbs to all that advertising pushing them towards $proprietary_service and thinks thats the cool path, only to get ripped off later on.
But anyone familiar with the idea of personal computing has no excuse! Stop investing your mindshare into this proprietary app-poverty. It's mildly easier in the beginning, but you're paying incrementally every time the business invents a new way to fuck.
Meanwhile if you do a slight bit of self-actualization to adopt a personal computing based setup, it's not just going to shift out from under you. Your ROM collection won't just disappear out of the blue one day, nor will your emulator stop working because eg the developer went out of business or insists on pushing a new one with "improved" advertising/surveillance/control and it's incompatible with your usage.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/a97diy/my_79yo_fath...
One would likely have to use Dolphin to emulate the Wii emulating the game.[3]
[1] https://gbatemp.net/threads/sin-and- punishment.183066/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Software_Technology
[3] https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Sin_%26_Punishm...
That's like killing a fly with a suitcase nuke.
Information wants to be free!
Also in the context of ROMs (and other pre-internet games) I do contest the general thesis that piracy is the only road for preservation. You don't need to distribute ROMs to the public to preserve them. Put them in a museum if you want and they could be preserved perfectly fine without needing to resort to piratism.