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Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

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Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#61

Post by oculusthrift »

Karunamon wrote: post #52
oculusthrift wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. Nintendo is even hostile to Youtubers playing their games. Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? I know that they sued someone who created an emulator while they were still selling the NES.

Is it possible to copyright even the hardware somehow? A lay (IANAL, IANYL, TINLA) view of existing US case law would say no. Nintendo made and then withdrew a suit against the makers of UltraHLE, an early N64 emulator. Again, withdrawn, so nothing was decided. More interestingly, Sony tried something similar against Bleem!, a commercial Playstation emulator, in 1999. Sony lost, but the legal costs drove the company…

thanks for the informative post. i've been working on an in-browser NES emulator myself and planned to have the users use their own local rom instead of hosting them myself. good to hear that should theoretically be legal

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#62

Post by JCFalkenberg »

aplose wrote: post #21

Given the list of mirrors, it appears the author knows what they're doing is illegal. You don't have to agree with copyright law (and by all means, please try to change it!), but please don't take other people's work and build products out of it without their permission.

"You don't have to agree with copyright law (and by all means, please try to change it!), but..."

Do you apply this reasoning to all laws (eg sodomy laws before they were struck down), or just some subset of them?

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#63

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #49
UnfalseDesign wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading over your response, I think we are talking about two different things. You appear to be talking about copyright protection. Remember that when you purchase a game, you don't purchase the copyright. You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium. (That part of the game instruction manual we all skipped past as kids.) I don't have access to one of those licenses at the moment but if yo…

Copyright is the only reason the license exists at all. If we ignore copyright, then the license is completely meaningless, because Nintendo has no rights to the work. The point is that the EULA does not give Nintendo absolute power just because you played the game. They can't, for example, stick "You owe 30 years of indentured servitude to Nintendo" in the back of the Zelda manual and expect to get a bunch of free w…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#64

Post by acheron »

binarymax wrote: post #27
aplose wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I bought the game in 1989 I can still legally play it in digital form, yes? No, that's not how copyright works. That's a myth. In some cases you can make a backup of the game if you do it yourself. But you still can't download someone else's copy. > I'm not sure why copyright now means a company can charge me 100 times for the same product in different forms. Because copyright means the company that sold you the…

Your first point is not so clear cut. A ROM is a ROM is a ROM. Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright?

Do you have any citations where you own a physical copy and use an identical digital copy from a different physical source a breach of copyright?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#65

Post by blacksmith_tb »

aplose wrote: post #23
JauntTrooper wrote: post #20

Why doesn't Nintendo port old NES/SNES/GameBoy games to smartphones and sell them for $1-$2 each? They're so much more fun than all these compulsive microtransaction games.

Because it would reduce demand for them if they were to try to get them onto the Switch with a much higher markup.

It might, but they've only shipped about 1M Switch units, which is a rounding error compared to the ~2B smartphones in use. If Nintendo really doesn't want to port/emulate because they want to prop up their hardware sales (or because they dislike touchscreen-only controls), they're acting very much against their best interests.

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#66

Post by magpi3 »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #20

Why doesn't Nintendo port old NES/SNES/GameBoy games to smartphones and sell them for $1-$2 each? They're so much more fun than all these compulsive microtransaction games.

Nintendo likes to keep it's IP on it's own hardware, but Square Enix (for one) has released several of it's most famous RPGs on Android (most of the Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, etc.).

Updates do have to be made to support a touch interface, which is why I think you're request is not a trivial undertaking for most companies. RPGs work, but I can't imagine playing a game like Contra on a touch screen.

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#67

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #20

Why doesn't Nintendo port old NES/SNES/GameBoy games to smartphones and sell them for $1-$2 each? They're so much more fun than all these compulsive microtransaction games.

Why doesn't Nintendo write new games for smartphones? (Ignoring the odd exception.)

Same answer really. They make games consoles.

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#68

Post by exclusiv »

vlunkr wrote: post #51
JauntTrooper wrote: post #20

Why doesn't Nintendo port old NES/SNES/GameBoy games to smartphones and sell them for $1-$2 each? They're so much more fun than all these compulsive microtransaction games.

Cause without buttons they suck :)

They could design a classic bluetooth controller and sell it for cheap. I'm using the expensive, but awesome Switch Pro Controller on my Android's SNES emulator.

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#69

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #41
samuraijack wrote: post #7

People, you need to stop disconnecting the moment you realize you are player 2 in super mario bros 1985!

Why? Who would want to be a stranger's player 2 in Super Mario Bros.? It's alternating multiplayer — you may as well just play the game single-player.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Play multiplayer and singleplayer NES games online

#70

Post by wyldfire »

UnfalseDesign wrote: post #47
chc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say you are legally obligated to give me $100 if you read my comments, and link to the comment where I said it as proof that you're obligated, will you believe you're obligated to give me $100? I own the copyright on my writings, after all. Copyright holders are not gods. The idea that their word is gospel is patently false. And in the specific case of Nintendo, they are even less reliable then most in terms of…

Reading over your response, I think we are talking about two different things. You appear to be talking about copyright protection. Remember that when you purchase a game, you don't purchase the copyright. You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium. (That part of the game instruction manual we all skipped past as kids.) I don't have access to one of those licenses at the moment but if yo…

> You purchase a license to play a copyrighted game on a particular medium.

The default right is ours, to be permitted to retell stories, replay musical works we've heard, and even reproduce works of art like video games.

We -- from whom the power to govern comes -- cede this freedom for the sake of promoting arts and sciences. But we do so in a limited fashion. See Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:

> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Our representatives scribbled in "but 'limited Times' means a century or two lol" underneath this and called it "Title 17".

As chc states, the copyright gives its holder the ability to grant us licenses. But we could make the case that the limited-monopoly we granted them to begin with has expired or is no longer valid. The copyright holder has concluded that it's not worth their time to continue to offer this work to anyone. So, who then, can curate this work of art that is now an element of our culture? In the mid twentieth-century, if the materials to produce the yellow, green, blue pigments featured in "The Scream" were licensed to painting copiers by Munch's estate, would we be obligated to source those pigments from them? What if his estate no longer sold them?

The point I'm trying to hit upon is that you're drawing a distinction between copyright and the consumer's legal rights. But the copyright is merely the instrument by which our freedoms are limited to those specific terms. If we reject the copyright claim, then the license's terms are moot.

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