Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

Post by abaga129 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #185

dehrmann wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the Pokemon Blue codebase they use 2 flag variables to distinguish between the different games, these are `pokemon_type` and `pokemon_type_blue`. The name of the second flag definitely hints that it was added later in development. These are the values for each game: Green: pokemon_type=0 pokemon_type_blue=0 Red: pokemon_type=1 pokemon_type_blue=0 Blue: pokemon_type=1 pokemon_type_blue=1 The general pattern for bra…

Post by rasz » Wed, May 06, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

wolfram74 wrote: post #34

roblabla wrote: post #28

To be clear, this doesn't just contain the source code of the software. It also contains the Verilog for the N64 GPU and other important hardware component, which is hugely important. From what I gather, it also contains full version history from their VCS. While it is very interesting, it's worth noting that anybody hoping to use this for anything "serious" risks getting the Nintendo lawyers on their ass. Emulators…

It's a bit of shame, too, because from what I gather, the N64 has a bit of an atypical architecture[1] that's made it hard to get the same quality of emulation that the game cube and wii have. It doesn't have a straight up and down GPU, it has what it calls a reality processing unit, that does graphics and sound. And it can be reconfigured with cartridge specific microcode? It's getting into the weeds on hardware des…

Post by rasz » Wed, May 06, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

elldoubleyew wrote: post #155

intopieces wrote: post #151

Does this mean I'll be able to pick up a good clone in Shenzhen next year? Serious question.

I doubt it. Refurbishing and selling original hardware is still likely to be much cheaper than the engineering effort required to build one from scratch. The Wii is old enough that modern commodity hardware can emulate it well enough that it almost indistinguishable from running games on the actual device. Wii clones already exist as emulator boxes and that will continue to be the most financially sound way of produc…

Post by ruytlm » Wed, May 06, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #163

coldpie wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really comparable. It is legal to rip ROMs for your own use. Distributing ROMs discreetly is illegal, but also basically impossible to prove. If reverse-engineered, the hardware ABI that the cartridge uses to converse with the system is not copyrightable[1] so you can distribute an emulator that you developed. Meanwhile it's pretty trivial to prove that some code is derived from some other code or some inter…

>It is legal to rip ROMs for your own use Incorrect. People say this all the time but no, it is not in fact legal. It's never been tested in court and Nintendo takes the explicit view that both it is illegal to rip your own roms and that said devices are illegal. Now you and I can disagree with Nintendo, but Nintendo could sue someone for ripping their own roms. They won't however, because it would be an incredibly d…

Post by thejsa » Wed, May 06, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

MPSimmons wrote: post #87

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?

The worst case scenario would be if they used some of the copy protection schemes from the consoles in this leak, ported to the Switch. It seems unlikely to me, but I think that's the only real potential for damage.