Nintendo games on a Mac | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo games on a Mac

mattgemmell.com

91 pointspzaich53 comments

    Downloading games that you don’t own is definitely 
    illegal, of course, and it hurts the content providers. 
    The only reason that we have games to play is because 
    people pay for them - so please don’t download ROMs of 
    games that you don’t actually own. It’s easy to buy huge 
    packs of second-hand console games on ebay, often with 
    the actual systems included, and it doesn’t cost a lot 
    of money.

This argument always seems a bit weak to me... I don't see how buying second-hand games and consoles is going to benefit the original gamemakers in any way.

Of course if you could buy the original games directly from their authors it would be a different story, but you can't! Is there something I'm missing here?

I'd say the economic harm of bootlegging 10+ year old games from large publishers on platforms that are no longer produced is close to zero.

Actually, Nintendo introduced "Virtual Console" on the Wii system to make money off of these old games you can't buy anymore.

Interesting (somewhat related) side note about the Virtual Console games: they are emulation shells around the original ROMs.

There are toolkits out there that will let you peel them apart and see / replace the resources inside. I used this to swap out one ROM for another so I could play the Nintendo NES version of Tetris on my Wii.

For me, the biggest value in emulation is playing the fan translations of games that were never originally made available in English. Some of my favourites:

Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki Dayo Zenin Shuugou! http://www.romhacking.net/translations/226/

Romancing SaGa 3 http://www.romhacking.net/translations/416/

Seiken Densetsu 3 http://www.romhacking.net/translations/440/

(Note: None of those links will point you at the ROMs themselves, just translation patches.)

I thought half the fun was in NOT understanding the Japanese text ?

Hell yes. Also check out Wonder Project J 1 and 2. And then there's Star Fox 2, which is an awesome game that was never released.

They should sell them on the app store and get it over with.

Namco is pretty tight about their IP, especially since they now have a tidy little business remaking their old arcade titles again using the original ROMs:

http://www.amazon.com/Namco-Arcade-Party-Cabaret-Cabinet/dp/...

The funny thing is that these titles aren't emulated, per se. They have re-implemented the original hardware (including Z80 core and various sound chips) and distilled it down to an FPGA, playing the code off of the ROMs stored in EEPROMs or Flash memory.

The target market for that cabinet is not the same as the majority of people that would download a ROM of one of those games.

True, but the problem is that if ROMs were copyable with no legal issue that other companies besides Namco would be able to serve that market.

That's only a problem if you feel Namco should be able to continue in the copyright for those works obviously, I'm just pointing out that a difference in intended market isn't sufficient for Namco to drop interest in copyright.

The question we're addressing here is if there is economic harm in bootlegging object code for a system that is no longer manufactured. Arcade hardware applies just as much as console hardware, even moreso since the arcade machines were produced in quantities much lower than the catridges for popular home consoles. The response being mentioned in the grandfather comment was if owning a copy of the original object code on chips satisfies the copyright concerns. If you own the original game, then you should be able to sleep soundly at night that you're not stealing from the author of the game.

Namco (& Midway in the USA) stopped making these arcade machines 30 years ago. One could easily argue that that is WAY out of production and there's no possible way Namco could be harmed by bootlegging Pac-Man ROMs into a MAME cabinet and placing it into a Chuck-E-Cheese.

But, lo and behold!, Namco is making arcade equipment and selling it again. There's definitely an economic impact now.

Now you're talking about commercials use of downloaded ROMs vs. personal use. I'd say that the majority of ROMs are downloaded for personal use, so the idea of "bootlegging Pac-Man ROMs into a MAME cabinet and placing it into a Chuck-E-Cheese," isn't really relevant.

Is it any less of a copyright violation?

Downloading ROMs has a clear slippery slope to downloading other games. If you get the games the way the comment describes then their is a built in mechanism to limit how much you can get for free, and with more recent games would leave you much more likely to purchase them.

Simple really your average unemployed 12 year old sells their old games to get new ones. Take that away and the market for new games will shrink.

I don't disagree with the economics of what you're saying, but it's interesting that the console makers seem to be against second-hand games:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/29/the-coming...

Every single DRM enforcement today is a statement against the second-hand market. As apps, videos and music are bought as DRM protected files from online stores, the notion of possession of the physical means (cartidge, disk, book, etc.) is being replaced by some weird notion of half-ownership attached to a user ID.

In the rare event of me buying some DRM protected content (rare ebooks, for example), I will usually do whatever is needed to strip it for my own archival purposes, and share with friends. When something is DRM-free (Humble bundles come to mind) I won't share it, but send my friends to the provider. That's just the little rebel in me.

How much would you be willing to pay for a car or a house if you knew you couldn't sell it later? I know I would be willing to pay less than I am now.

That's what I meant about the economics of it. Of course, that's only part of the picture. It's true that resale value must figure into the new value, but it also might depress demand for new sales.

Coming at it from another angle, Gamestop makes a lot of money from second-hand sales. That's money that the game and console makers don't get to make and they want it.

Or I could download the ROMs and buy some new games, too! And the 12 year old can mow my lawn for tenpence a day until he or she also has enough to buy a new game.

Especially given that I've given the original companies thousands of dollars and I'm sure they are buried in storage somewhere.

"Of course if you could buy the original games directly from their authors it would be a different story, but you can't! Is there something I'm missing here?"

If we decide that games lose all their value the moment the authors are no longer directly involved, then they're probably going to lose some value when the authors are directly invloved too?

I thought that "obsolete roms" were legal to own via a DCMA exemption.

http://www.zeldauniverse.net/forums/general-gaming/4727-obso...

DMCA doesn't change copyright. You might be thinking of exceptions to allow you to dump your own ROM, but it would only be legal if you already had a legal copy of the game in question (unless the game is out of copyright).

A secondhand copy is still a copy that the company got its money for.

Please note that the article currently links to the old Dolphin website. We have moved to http://dolphin-emu.org/

Sadly we do not control the old domain. A mistake made long ago. Google indexing is hard to beat! (I'm sorry these sentences do not flow well...)

Since openemu.org is now just an information-less "coming soon" page, the following links are probably more useful:

https://github.com/OpenEmu/OpenEmu

and

https://github.com/OpenEmu/OpenEmu/downloads

Excellent. Thank you for the links.

Also to note, the most accurate available SNES emulator is byuu's "bsnes", which is meant to be an archival-quality SNES emulator. Although it looks like now it's called "higan" since it supports more systems than just SNES.

http://www.byuu.org/

It doesn't run natively on OS X yet, unless you use one of the ports. Richard Bannister's BSNES, OpenEmu, Mednafen, RetroArch or BizHawk. lsnes might have a Mac port, not sure. I am currently looking for experts in Cocoa to lend a hand, have some tough API limitations I need to work around.

I clearly remember that day in 1999 when UltraHLE was released... It was just magic: it played Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time so smoothly I could barely believe my eyes. Graphics were higher-res on my SVGA monitor than they were on my TV, which was connected to a real Nintendo 64. Those games also blew away pretty much anything similar that was native to Windows back then, such magical times

This was also possible on Pentium 2 233 mhz 15 years ago. The newer games at the time ran badly but classic Nintendo was flawless even then.

Shilling hardware with affiliate links?

I'll be honest, that's exactly how I saw this article - and I usually keep an open mind to things.

This guy seems like a douche. If anyone dares to complain that their mail app is being discontinued (http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisitio...) they get criticised, but making copies and circumventing copy protection on Gamecube and Wii disks is fine.

I don't get your post. Are you saying the two positions are inconsistent? How?

But this is at least the way affiliate links should be done. A nice, clear, easy to understand article with some information.

Indicating that these were affiliate links might have been appropriate, nevertheless the article has provided useful content for me. I have a neglected Nintendo 64 collecting dust in my loft. Being able to play the games I own on an emulator using the original controllers would be well worth the cost of the recommended USB adapter. It didn't even occur to me that I might be able to do this before now.

I was a bit more annoyed that it seems to have been written and submitted just to drive traffic through the affiliate links.

I do agree, though, that the USB adapters are nice. I have a couple of PSX adapters and an SNES adapter. The Japanese console manufacturers seem to do a much better job with input devices than the PC-oriented crowd over here. (Although that could just be personal bias; I did almost all my gaming on consoles and in arcades before the first time I tried plugging something made by Gravis into my MIDI port.)

So, I wanted to play some snes9x on my mac mini. It's hooked up to a tv via hdmi; and every time I start/stop a game, it switches the hdmi output and overscans like crazy. I still can't figure out whats going on with it.

Anyone experience similar with hdmi output?

Since I got my Open Pandora (http://openpandora.org/) I've stopped playing video games on my workstations and laptops, and gotten a lot more productive!

Anyone who wants to revisit their old collections of games and other interesting software needs to investigate this wonderful underrated platform - its truly a neat device and a very rewarding user experience!

Yikes! $500 and $600 is a lot for an ARM in a little box. Hardware does appear pretty nice, but for that money...

I don't get this unending praise for Nintendo's d-pad. It's possibly the worst d-pad I've had the pleasure of using - it feels stiff, pressing it diagonally is completely impossible and the sharp edges leave marks on your fingers. Compare this to the playstation's solution - 4 independent easy to press buttons; or Sega and Microsoft's - a nice circle that can be comfortably pressed in all 8 directions.

I agree with regard to the original NES d-pad. It was an atrocity against thumbs and it could literally cut you. But the more recent d-pads feel much nicer. I never found the circle of the Sega-style d-pad to be much help — I still have always pushed diagonally with the up and right bars, not by pushing the empty space between them. And that was even as a 10-year-old with smallish thumbs.

Also, Nintendo's recent d-pads in particular are so small that your thumb would have to be unbelievably small not to be able to cover both directions comfortably.

I have a DS and a Wii. Both their D-pads are hard to press diagonally, not because of their size, but due to simple mechanical reasons - they're not made to go diagonally. The cross doesn't fit neatly in the groove when you try to press diagonally.

The PS* D-pad was pretty bad IMO, the separate buttons made it difficult to smoothly move from one direction to another. Sega's had the opposite problem; it was too easy which made it difficult to press in a given direction reliably without accidentally triggering diagonals.

The SNES was really the sweet spot IMO, every Nintendo D-Pad since (even on GBA) has been way too small.

If you buy that dual N64 input thing (and have two such controllers) you can play Goldeneye in the (apparently) little known dual-analogue configuration (holding one controller in each hand by the middle prong).

PSP. The best GameBoy, I've ever had.

Unfortunately Conker's Bad Fur Day is unplayable on sixtyforce. ;_;

I played through it about a year ago with mupen64plus/wxMupen64Plus (I wish Matt had linked it directly rather than only mentioning openemu.) Everything I've tried works brilliantly except Blast Corps which at least runs well enough with wine/pj64.

links:

http://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/

https://bitbucket.org/richard42/

https://bitbucket.org/auria/wxmupen64plus *

* two notable bugs: graphics screw up when other windows overlay the view, controller config tends to reset. OpenEmu is probably better in these respects.

Amazing... Thank you very much. I appreciate you posting the links.

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