Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#101

Post by cycloptic » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #84

Timpy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bryan Cantrill gave a talk that included how difficult it was to take something that wasn't originally intended to be open source and then open source it. I think it was something at Sun before they were acquired by Oracle (iirc Cantrill laments how Oracle effectively un-open-sourced the project). I've watched hours of Cantrill on youtube, I'm having trouble finding which video it was. I can't explain it myself but I…

Not to mention that a company like Nintendo has absolutely nothing to gain from all this effort.

With many companies easing into open source recently, we have seen that just isn't true. If we're still trying to spread the idea that the community is dumb and is going to ruin everything and will remove value from the product if they get access to the code, that assumption is going to be tested now regardless of what they do, and it probably will keep happening because the incentive for leakers and illegal aftermarket sellers is not going to go away. Note that I don't include them as part of this community.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#102

Post by dehrmann » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority.

I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#103

Post by nefitty » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #88

tobylane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have one group document what the leaks describe, then another group implement from the documentation?

Isn’t that what clean room reverse engineering is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Very cool. I didn’t remember that this had been a plot point in Halt and Catch Fire.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#104

Post by VLM » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

rathel wrote: post #3

gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

Well, they'll always oversell the damage, but realistically, not much impact to their bottom line. They do release remasters and ports, but I'd be hard pressed to see it being a significant loss in the grand scheme of things for a company that doesn't need to subsidize hardware with software. Like: people would buy a hypothetical N64 mini regardless of 3rd party emulators available. Or buy old games on the Virtual Co…

Legal always claims losses in the billions, then accounting files the 10-K form and its de minimus and doesn't even show up in the financials.

This has happened in historical "hacking" cases. I remember one phone phreaking case from years ago against AT&T where the highly non-technical and non-accounting judge was convinced by the plaintiff that the defendant caused something like a billion dollars of lost revenue to AT&T and the defense argument against that damage claim revolved around securities fraud because AT&T didn't mention a billion dollar loss in their 10-K nor did they file an emergency 8-K

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#105

Post by dehrmann » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

It could be mildly bad if someone discovers Nintendo devs were like Disney animators and sneaked in "sex" (The Lion King), a drawn penis (The Little Mermaid), or a topless woman (The Rescuers).

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#106

Post by anamexis » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

DanTheManPR wrote: post #67

izzydata wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Nintendo offered N64 games to be purchased for the Switch people would still pay for them in droves. It's weird that they don't offer so much of their past works in any legitimate capacity.

It's genuinely weird that they still don't have a virtual console for anything other than a select few NES games. We're midway through the Switch's lifecyle already!

They also have SNES virtual console now. But yeah, I'd love to see N64!

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#107

Post by grawprog » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #90

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

The most shocking part of this story is still that Nintendo keeps all its code in CVS. CVS!!!

It wasn't Nintendo's CVS it was BroadOn's CVS. It was a third party Chinese company Nintendo allowed to produce Nintendo compatible hardware in China. They had access to a bunch of sdks and the source codes for the system to develop their hardware.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#108

Post by saagarjha » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #102

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #66

Modern Vintage Gamer just released a video [0] discussing this leak in greater detail along with its expected implications. Anyone who's curious can find the download links by backtracking through all the Pokemon Prototype General threads under the Pokemon board on 4chan. One of the leaks that caught my attention was the source for Pokemon Blue, partially because of nostalgia and partially out of curiosity to see wha…

I have zero experience in the video game industry, but I'd think that since video games get ~zero attention after they're shipped, writing maintainable code is less of a priority. I'd be really curious to see how the Pokemon Red/Blue split was done. Is it a C precompiler flag? Build config? Actual config? Cloned repo?

They’re touched much less often than most software, but even older games would occasionally share engines and stuff. Games these days often have DLC.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#109

Post by MaxBarraclough » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #88

tobylane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have one group document what the leaks describe, then another group implement from the documentation?

Isn’t that what clean room reverse engineering is?

No, that wouldn't be clean-room. Wikipedia's definition:

> Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design.

If one of your engineers has to download and study the leaked source code, they've infringed Nintendo's copyrights.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#110

Post by dehrmann » Tue, May 05, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

lidHanteyk wrote: post #16

gregjw wrote: post #2

Is this bad? Am I misunderstanding? What financial damage does this do when Nintendo no longer manufacturers this console or actively developers for it and hasn't for years, or a decade in the N64/GameCube's case?

You might be missing the concept of "face" [0]. This is only bad in that it causes Nintendo to lose face, and Nintendo hates losing face. For example, examine Wikipedia; Nintendo's page about legal disputes [1] is whitewashed to reword all of Nintendo's abuses towards Free Software and the public domain as "protection" of Nintendo's "property". Face allows Nintendo to take their holier-than-thou attitude. It is why t…

> It is why they feel that they are allowed to both destroy the community's own work [2][3][4] and steal it for themselves [5][6]

You oversold both examples.

2, 3, and 4: That's a hosted(?) emulator distributing, or at least referencing, Nintendo IP, and not in a fair-use context.

You're mildly right about 5 and 6. Nintendo stole the header of ROM files of content that was stolen from Nintendo. The author of the header would have a claim against Nintendo, but seeing how they'd have to explain how the ROM got distributed in the first place, and it's not clear there's enough information in the header for it to be eligible for copyright, I doubt they'd say anything.