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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

#31

Post by jonathankoren »

jterrys wrote: post #22
boomboomsubban wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise. Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.

We live in a world where the common notion of buying something and owning it has been completely violated. I don't "own" the movie, music, or digital media I buy, I am merely "temporarily renting it" through "licensing agreements". Yet every other physical good that I own, I perform a cash transaction of it and it is understood that it is mine. I can do with it what I want. I buy eggs at the store. I can cook and eat…

We've been burned by this repeatedly. Remember several years ago when people "bought" Disney movies on Amazon Video, and then Disney pulled their catalog, and everyone's "purchases" subsequently disappeared? Good times.

I thought that might be a catalyzing moment, but I've learned that literally nothing is a catalyzing in America. No matter the issue. No matter the act. Literally nothing changes.

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

#32

Post by la_oveja »

giobox wrote: post #30
bentley wrote: post #24

It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve been buying games on Steam for 15 years. Even my earliest purchases are still downloadable and playable, and have been on every PC I’ve owned, including most recently the Steam Deck. The same is true for my GOG library. Even more so, since I can (and do) save the DRM‐free installers of the games I buy. Don’t reward hostile media platforms with your money or your attention!

Steam has benefited from a long period of good quality stable leadership, but as Gabe gets older I get more and more concerned for Steam. I love the service, I've used it since launch alongside Half-Life 2 etc on PC, but I am extremely worried how it looks 15 years after Gabe Newell dies or sells. I would not be shocked to see Microsoft buy them in the end. There's no public plans for what Valve looks like in the pos…

Valve is full of good people, like minded with Gabes ideas. I dont fear for Valve.

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

#33

Post by CobrastanJorji »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #9
asdff wrote: 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 Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise. Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.

One of the most fun small moments of my career was when I was working for a company that had licensed a bunch of old games. I had to download quite a few from shady warez/abandonware sites that put up a little "disclaimer" that said something along the lines of "unless you have explicit written permission from the copyright holder, do not download this file." I'm quite possibly one of the only people in history who clicked through on good faith, explicit written permission in hand.

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

#34

Post by dfxm12 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #25
billjings wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation ( https://gamehistory.org/ ) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes. For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and acc…

Are the statements about the quality of the copy true as well? I had always assumed, it's digital, so it either works or it doesn't. I know there are problems emulating some games well, but I always thought that was because of shortcomings in the emulator or things like chips on the game cartridge that also need to be emulated.

I'm not sure exactly what statements you're referring to, but consider if you've ever seen a [b] in a rom filename, that means it's known to be a "bad dump". Compare this to roms with [!] in their filename, which signifies a "verified good dump".

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

#35

Post by giobox »

la_oveja wrote: post #32
giobox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam has benefited from a long period of good quality stable leadership, but as Gabe gets older I get more and more concerned for Steam. I love the service, I've used it since launch alongside Half-Life 2 etc on PC, but I am extremely worried how it looks 15 years after Gabe Newell dies or sells. I would not be shocked to see Microsoft buy them in the end. There's no public plans for what Valve looks like in the pos…

Valve is full of good people, like minded with Gabes ideas. I dont fear for Valve.

This simply won't matter if Gabe sells company to the "wrong" person/entity, which is a risk today.

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

#36

Post by bentley »

roywiggins wrote: post #27
bentley wrote: post #24

It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve been buying games on Steam for 15 years. Even my earliest purchases are still downloadable and playable, and have been on every PC I’ve owned, including most recently the Steam Deck. The same is true for my GOG library. Even more so, since I can (and do) save the DRM‐free installers of the games I buy. Don’t reward hostile media platforms with your money or your attention!

The whole idea of an archive is to archive stuff. "Just memory-hole the stuff that's hostile to archival" is not a solution.

You misrepresent my suggestion. By all means, archive. But Nintendo’s hostile practices succeed because ordinary people with no interest in archival are willing to buy the same game rereleased for console after console. Long‐term carrying over of purchases is perfectly doable, as evidenced by the fact that this is the norm in the PC market. It is possible that market pressure can cause Nintendo to budge in its practices.

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

#37

Post by actionablefiber »

billjings wrote: post #23
asdff wrote: 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…

For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation ( https://gamehistory.org/ ) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes. For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and acc…

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.

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

#38

Post by vorpalhex »

asdff wrote: 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…

Thank you for that gist. I had assumed that rom codes were just region codes and it never occurred to me to even look for a key.

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

#39

Post by actionablefiber »

asveikau wrote: post #11
boomboomsubban wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meanwhile, people have been distributing roms for 25 years Almost exclusively illegally, hence the "fraught with legal issues." Downloading a ROM for a game you own on a cartridge violates US law. You need to create your own copy, where you very likely will face the issues they raise. Or you technically violate the law, which NPR likely doesn't want to condone for a puff piece.

> You need to create your own copy, It's funny because custom electronics are way more cheap and accessible than they used to be. In the 90s, I wished I could dump my game carts and saves. I saw someone posted PCBs to do it over ISA bus but I didn't have the skills or ability to do it myself. Recently, I found this open project that can dump that era: https://github.com/sanni/cartreader

One issue with dumping, even if you have the equipment for it, is that in some cases you will still need to patch it to defeat the copy protection.

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

#40

Post by wk_end »

ajmurmann wrote: post #25
billjings wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For organizations like the Video Game History Foundation ( https://gamehistory.org/ ) that are trying to preserve video games in an above board way, things really are as dire as this article describes. For VGHF to fulfill its mission, it's just not enough that this work is done. "Nobody is prosecuting us" isn't a firm enough foundation for an above board, charity funded organization that makes this work legal and acc…

Are the statements about the quality of the copy true as well? I had always assumed, it's digital, so it either works or it doesn't. I know there are problems emulating some games well, but I always thought that was because of shortcomings in the emulator or things like chips on the game cartridge that also need to be emulated.

It's definitely overstating things. Bad dumps are possible and were somewhat common back in the day when people were spreading ROMs via GeoCities pages and Usenet, but these days databases like No-Intro and Redump have helped make sure that they're rare - you can easily verify your ROMs against known good ones.
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