Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

videogameschronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 220 posts

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#41

Post by Zenbit_UX »

zozbot234 wrote: post #21
boredgamer2 wrote: post #17

It would be amazing to see the Gameboy/N64 emulator hacker community expand, and NEW games begin to be developed based on these docs. Maybe Nintendo could double-down on this and turn it into good publicity

The article mentions that this would be unwise due to these documents being released illegally. Reverse engineering some existing system for the purpose of interoperability (as is common among homebrew enthusiasts) is legal; hacking into a Nintendo subcontractor's IT and leaking internal documentation obviously isn't.

A developer can use the leak as a reference without being the one responsible for the leak. It sounds like it would be hugely beneficial.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#42

Post by userbinator »

coldpie wrote: post #20
sickcodebruh wrote: post #13

> The PC emulation community could also theoretically use the data to improve their software so that it imitates the original systems perfectly. However, since the leaked documentation has been illegally obtained this would put them in murky territory. I'd love to hear opinions about this whole thing from folks who work on emulators.

I don't work on emulators, but I do work on Wine. We explicitly forbid any contributions from anyone who has seen any Microsoft source code. The risk of introducing work derived from code owned by Microsoft is too high. I don't know how strict emulator authors are about this--they're non-commercial and so have less at stake than we do--but if I were an emulator author, I would cut ties with anyone known to have looke…

The whole reason emulators are legal and ROMs aren't is because emulators are original work not owned by the console developer.

Except that people need ROMs to test emulators with.

Just like the old saying that it's impossible to actually start "from scratch", at some point everything is a derivative work of everything else; it just has to be far enough away to not attract legal attention.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#43

Post by coldpie »

echelon wrote: post #39
dubcanada wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I am gonna remove this google "download nintendo leak routefree" and you'll find what you need somewhere in the results.

The Pokemon source code link is still up, but the "mgnet.xyz" link that presumably contains the N64 source no longer works :( I'm a huge N64 enthusiast and wanted to see the Verilog source.

Be wary of doing this if you ever intend to contribute to projects related to Nintendo and the N64. Viewing this material will make you radioactive to projects that care about legal risk.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#44

Post by blaser-waffle »

dathinab wrote: post #26
zozbot234 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Dolphin is 100% open source and above board, they're going to avoid this stuff like the plague.

True I don't think they would take the risk, it's just not worth it. Through I'm wondering if Nintendo will try to use that as a excuse just claiming they used that material.

Nintendo is a conservative company with strong, well known brands (Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, etc.). I'd be surprised if they rolled over and let this slide.

I'd be doubly surprised if they ever open sourced anything.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#46

Post by saddlerustle »

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…

The N64 GPU Verilog has been circulating for like 10 years, that's not new in this leak.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#47

Post by cycloptic »

coldpie wrote: post #40
tinus_hn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances are Nintendo licensed these designs from a third party and isn’t in a position to give them away.

Yes. Silicon Graphics was heavily involved in the hardware design of the N64. Even if Nintendo wanted to allow everything in the leaks to be public, they don't have the rights to.

This is not an excuse. They can start with the parts they do have access to, while the community can work on (legally) getting the other information from the relevant rightsholders at SGI.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#48

Post by roywiggins »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #41
zozbot234 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that this would be unwise due to these documents being released illegally. Reverse engineering some existing system for the purpose of interoperability (as is common among homebrew enthusiasts) is legal; hacking into a Nintendo subcontractor's IT and leaking internal documentation obviously isn't.

A developer can use the leak as a reference without being the one responsible for the leak. It sounds like it would be hugely beneficial.

If Nintendo can prove they used it as a reference, that's evidence for a nasty lawsuit.

There's a reason why people go to these lengths:

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

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#49

Post by toyg »

Kye wrote: post #27
toyg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> emulator and hardware developers [...] now have to screen new contributors to ensure they have not been exposed to this material. You cannot prove a negative. The most a project can do is to have people signing waivers that state they have not been exposed and/or will not copy stuff, effectively discharging responsibility on the individual.

This isn't a hypothetical concern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS#Internal_audit >> "On 27 January 2006, the developers responsible for maintaining the ReactOS code repository disabled access after a meeting was held to discuss the allegations. When approached by NewsForge, Microsoft declined to comment on the incident. Since ReactOS is a free and open-source software development project, the claim triggered a…

And indeed there is little to do except discharging responsibility:

>> all developers were made to sign an agreement committing them to comply with the project's policies on reverse engineering. Contributors to its development were not affected by these events, and all access to the software development tools was restored

Also relevant:

>> the 2004 leaked Windows source code[38] was not seen as legal risk for ReactOS, as the trade secret was considered indefensible in court due to broad spread.[39]

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#50

Post by userbinator »

coldpie wrote: post #12
rathel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> From enthusiast perspective - it's a boon for preservation purposes. Sort of. It's obviously illegal to distribute, and arguably using it as a reference for re-implementation in emulators or in hardware would be a derivative work, and so also illegal. This could make things harder for emulator and hardware developers who now have to screen new contributors to ensure they have not been exposed to this material. It w…

The emulation community seems to have never cared all that much about legality, given their relationship to the warez/cracking scene. I know WINE has been quoted as an example a few times here, but that's a slightly different case --- that's the free software/GPL community, which is far more uptight about legal issues.
Post reply on HN