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

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 118 posts

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

#51

Post by haunter »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #46

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 Sapphire Special Demo (Glalie pokémon that you can only get here and transfer over to the full game)

- Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter. Pokémon Bank will be free (currently $5/year) BUT the Poké Transporter app can be only downloaded from INSIDE the Bank app which only works if you have a sub... All NEW downloads will be impossible after the date so you better get the Transporter app now (pay the $5 for the remaining days) or else > doesn't bother and just pirate it. But honestly the writing is on the wall for the Pokémon Bank...

- Save Data Transfer Tool (permanently move, not copy, save data files from a physical cartridge to the 3DS

- 3DS F2P digital Pokémon games (Pokémon Picross, Pokémon Rumble World, Pokémon Shuffle)

- Flipnote Studio 3D and Picross Zelda (Nintendo My Rewards games but you can still get them)

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

#52

Post by mrguyorama »

rektide wrote: post #42

I'm shocked a company with as good of a track record as a reliable gaming company to have in your living room & backpack would make such an incredibly shortsighted & negative a frackas as this. This is such a huge unforced error. Nintendo has such a huge cash reserve, & can easily own this for another couple decades, at minimal cost. However they failed to materialize the internal will to do the obviously right & eas…

Nintendo's openly stated position, since like the 80s, is that current american law is wrong and you don't have a right to a backup copy of games you buy. If Nintendo could suck memories of super mario out of the brains of people who didn't pay a yearly licensing fee, none of us would remember the 90s and Nintendo fans would STILL preorder everything they touch.

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

#53

Post by ticviking »

bakugo wrote: post #18
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a flash cart. You can now play any game forever. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_cartridge

Good idea for older systems, but 3DS flashcarts are basically obsolete and pure software methods are better.

How is the ease of use Though?

If I can set up a flash cart and send it to him that’s much better than walking him through jailbreaks

I would rather spend money than time and the limited patience of a young man who is struggling :)

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

#54

Post by jonathankoren »

mrguyorama wrote: post #49
jonathankoren wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One half of politics makes "Nothing should ever change" basically their entire platform, and people LOVE it.

This isn’t the time to politicize this tragedy. And it’s certainly not time to talk about the identical tragedy that earlier this year, or the identical one that happened last year, or the identical one that happened a decade ago, or the identical one that happened…

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

#55

Post by Fnoord »

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

Longer. I had a Chinese friend on vacation who had like 64 Gameboy games on one cardridge. Meanwhile, I had only one. His method was more convenient, legality be damned.

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

#56

Post by mattl »

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…

I don't think that's strictly true though... if you bought a Beatles' LP in 1971 you can't do what you want with it. There are still rules about what you can and cannot do with the reproduction of it.

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

#57

Post by jamesgeck0 »

dbrueck wrote: post #50
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!

I don't know how Valve will behave in the long term, but so far this has been one of the best things about Steam (other great things include auto management of updates and making multiplayer Just Work). Our Steam games library goes back well over a decade and anything we ever want to play still works. Separately, during that same time period we bought 4-5 consoles, and currently exactly zero of those console games ar…

Older titles do occasionally have issues. Fortune Summoners has weird input lag, and Split/Second is incredibly picky about gamepads, for example. Fortunately the community guides usually have workarounds or fan patches.

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

#58

Post by yurishimo »

actionablefiber wrote: post #37
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…

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 copyright expires will be tough, but we’re naïeve to believe that these companies will still have intact source code in 50 years. Hard drives fail, cloud buckets get abandoned and then the bill doesn’t get paid, etc etc.

It’s not looking super optimistic for game archival, but there is _a path_ forward to improve the situation.

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

#59

Post by jamesgeck0 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #52
rektide wrote: post #42

I'm shocked a company with as good of a track record as a reliable gaming company to have in your living room & backpack would make such an incredibly shortsighted & negative a frackas as this. This is such a huge unforced error. Nintendo has such a huge cash reserve, & can easily own this for another couple decades, at minimal cost. However they failed to materialize the internal will to do the obviously right & eas…

Nintendo's openly stated position, since like the 80s, is that current american law is wrong and you don't have a right to a backup copy of games you buy. If Nintendo could suck memories of super mario out of the brains of people who didn't pay a yearly licensing fee, none of us would remember the 90s and Nintendo fans would STILL preorder everything they touch.

Do you have a reference for this?

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

#60

Post by bentley »

mattl wrote: post #56
jterrys wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's strictly true though... if you bought a Beatles' LP in 1971 you can't do what you want with it. There are still rules about what you can and cannot do with the reproduction of it.

There are basic, fundamental things you can do with a physical LP that you can’t with “licensed” bits.

For starters, you can resell an LP. Can you resell a music file?

Post reply on HN