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Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

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Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#111
post #5

What a shame the article spreads some fud about roms and diminishes the community, making it seem like a futile individual effort: "In order to play a game on an emulator, you need a copy of the original title, commonly saved as a ROM (or read-only memory) file. Depending on how the title is copied, what the condition of the cartridge or game disc is in, or the geographic region the game is locked to, you can find yo…

> Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years And they have been successfully sued for it. So where is the FUD? People illegally share all kind of content, and sued for it, doesn't make it legal just because they do it. > and its not hard to be pointed in the right direction these days Maybe, if you need to get pointed somewhere, it might be because people are aware that they are doing something that i…

People get sued and the sites might be hard to find for some, but I don't think buggy ROMs are really a thing. Buggy emulators maybe, but even then not for Pokémon Crystal.

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One consideration is that some games implement checksums and other copy protection measures to detect if they've been copied, and then refuse to run - or appear to run normally at first but sneakily punish the player. Preserving these games in a playable format necessarily means you have to defeat the copy protection. I have to imagine that it looks bad to do this even when you have noble intentions.

I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small. The more prescient threat is DRM and server only experiences. So many games will never be experienced again after the servers are turned off. I think it’s the community’s job to lobby game publishers to release source code for games and severs if they are sunsetted forever. Convincing the corporate world to let go of IP before copyrigh…

> I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small.

I remember Game Dev Tycoon released a ‘hacked’ copy of their own game to torrent sites in which you’d always eventually lose due to ‘losing sales due to pirating’, but that’s the only instance I remember.

Did much older games do similar things?

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#113
post #91

It also kills the value of used machines --- I've always regretted not getting a Wii U, and actually have two games for it which have not yet been ported to the Switch: (Twilight Princess HD and Xenoblade Chronicles X). XCX has a datapack on the Wii U shop which when downloaded allows the game to play much faster, with much less time spent on loading screens --- there's no way I'm buying a Wii U now without the abili…

There is emulation of WiiU titles which might save you the cost. I can honestly say that the WiiU is worth it. It’s nice playing games that don’t have all the boring and time wasting tactics that modern games have. But that’s just me. I play my WiiU once a week at least!

I'm kicking myself twice over for not buying a Wii U --- could have bought one for short money when I was working part-time for Amazon but didn't, then couldn't bring myself to buy one of the XCX bundled units which were available in Japan and the UK.

At this point, I just want Nintendo to port it to the Switch (or more likely the switch's successor) --- I've also given up on getting Xenogears and Xenosaga chapters II and III.

Emulation is something I just don't have time for --- I've seen at least one report that it's possible to download the packs manually onto a Wii U --- maybe that's what I'll do.

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#114
post #43

Are every single games ever released for Wii, Wii U and 3DS available in those famous rompacks or are there some missing?

Archive.org has every single game (for years)

I remember checking a few years ago and not finding a wiiware game developed by a tiny company I used to work for but it is available now :)

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#115
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small. The more prescient threat is DRM and server only experiences. So many games will never be experienced again after the servers are turned off. I think it’s the community’s job to lobby game publishers to release source code for games and severs if they are sunsetted forever. Convincing the corporate world to let go of IP before copyrigh…

> I think the number of games that include player punishment is astonishingly small. I remember Game Dev Tycoon released a ‘hacked’ copy of their own game to torrent sites in which you’d always eventually lose due to ‘losing sales due to pirating’, but that’s the only instance I remember. Did much older games do similar things?

Some but it's pretty rare. Earthbound spawns more and more enemies when it detects a legit version isn't being played and will break on the final boss if you make it that far. It's a bit more common on home computer games I think because the barrier to copying a floppy or CD is much lower than a cart but it's still a lot of effort to add.

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your purchases are not being taken away. This shutdown only affects future purchases. https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

The ability to re-download purchases is being taken away and Nintendo doesn't provide a way to back them up.

Can you link to a statement from Nintendo saying that?

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to re-download purchases is being taken away and Nintendo doesn't provide a way to back them up.

Can you link to a statement from Nintendo saying that?

Ah, looks like I was mistaken about that. I had thought the eshop was being removed entirely, and it contained the interface for redownloading. Looking over the announcement it looks like they are keeping just that part alive for now.

Re: Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS stores closing means game over for digital archives

#118
post #51

Does anyone have any 3DS Eshop game recommendations I need to buy before the closure? Unique stuff that can't be obtained on other platforms?

There is a general masterlist https://old.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/su4w7k/with_the_e... There are also some free tools and games worth getting - Bravely Second Demo (story that's not avaialable in the full release + exclusives you can transfer over) - Pokémon Sun & Moon - Special Demo Version (Ash-Greninja pokémon that you can only get here and transfer over to the full game) - Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphi…

Thanks! Don't think I'll ever care that much about Pokemon but good to know, and I'll take a look at that list!
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