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Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

videogameschronicle.com

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Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#71

Post by GuiA »

zelon88 wrote: post #69

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where…

This is a very cool story, and makes me want to learn more about Tamiya. But the situation does not seem the same to me. People are - for the most part - able to play the old Nintendo games they want through the virtual console, backwards compatibility, remakes, or NES/SNES mini.

Yes, some N64 carts are selling for thousands on eBay - but that’s not preventing kids from playing that game if they want to.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#72

Post by skuthus »

GuiA wrote: post #71
zelon88 wrote: post #69

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where…

This is a very cool story, and makes me want to learn more about Tamiya. But the situation does not seem the same to me. People are - for the most part - able to play the old Nintendo games they want through the virtual console, backwards compatibility, remakes, or NES/SNES mini. Yes, some N64 carts are selling for thousands on eBay - but that’s not preventing kids from playing that game if they want to.

To the OP's point, You can play some games with virtual console, but many games were released on only one or two newer consoles so you would effectively need to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands in order to actually play them all legally.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#73

Post by skuthus »

coldpie wrote: post #68
devit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code, which is a good thing for Wine, but does not imply that having Microsoft source code (or Nintendo's in this case) is useless. Also looking at source code and documentation does not mean that the code you write is derived work (although it makes it very slightly more risky that it is).

> That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code Absolutely not, we take it very seriously. If there's a hint of looking at Microsoft source code or REing Microsoft binaries, then contributions are banned. It's not a wink-wink kind of situation.

If you don't look at the source code, how do you know they are re-engineering the source code?

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#74

Post by devit »

coldpie wrote: post #68
devit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code, which is a good thing for Wine, but does not imply that having Microsoft source code (or Nintendo's in this case) is useless. Also looking at source code and documentation does not mean that the code you write is derived work (although it makes it very slightly more risky that it is).

> That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code Absolutely not, we take it very seriously. If there's a hint of looking at Microsoft source code or REing Microsoft binaries, then contributions are banned. It's not a wink-wink kind of situation.

I mean that almost surely there are people that do so and carefully make sure to not mention that and make sure that their contributions are not derived work and don't have such "hints".

The main technique to do so is "parallel construction": e.g. you reverse engineer a binary or look at source code, find out a special case not implemented in Wine, then construct a test case that tests the special case and behaves differently in Windows and Wine and claim that you found the test case experimentally, from a personal project that didn't work in Wine or from open source code you find that triggers it (rather than from RE or source code reading); you then implement a patch in the way you find most optimal without influence from how the code you reversed or read did it.

This is in fact good for Wine since it results in both having high quality contributions and having no additional liability.

So Wine's policy effect is not to stop such activity, but to make the Wine project not liable for it; thus, any leaks of Microsoft's source code are in fact good for the project since they enable this activity and the Nintendo situation here is similar.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#75

Post by coldpie »

skuthus wrote: post #73
coldpie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code Absolutely not, we take it very seriously. If there's a hint of looking at Microsoft source code or REing Microsoft binaries, then contributions are banned. It's not a wink-wink kind of situation.

If you don't look at the source code, how do you know they are re-engineering the source code?

It doesn't come up much, but there's lots of clues. Most often people won't understand the rule, so they will just come out and say that they reverse-engineered some binary. Other clues would be implementing it in some unintuitive way, or with some internal details that an application is not likely to depend on ("why did you do it this way?"), or without adding to our black-box test suite ("how do you know it should behave this way?").

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#76

Post by detritus »

zelon88 wrote: post #69

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where…

Wait - so I can finally buy the Monster Beetle I dearly wanted as a 14 year old?

I imagine the modern iterations are significantly better than those I drooled over as a child, with 30 odd years of improvements in electric motors and batteries?

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#77

Post by ballenf »

cycloptic wrote: post #53
zozbot234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now would be the time for Nintendo to seriously consider open sourcing some of this stuff Unfortunately, Nintendo has never done anything like this. Maybe some reputable organization like a computing museum could ask them to place this information in escrow in the Internet Archive, so that it can be released "properly" after copyrights expire and trade secrets have long become irrelevant. But there's no way they're…

A few years ago I would have believed this, but current Nintendo consoles include many open source components: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/ If this trend continues, it would be prudent of them to find bigger and better ways to contribute back.

I know what you mean and agree that companies using open source should contribute back to it.

But I also think that the contribution to society from Nintendo's products should also be valued. Just because we pay for those games, doesn't mean our lives aren't better than they would be if the company didn't exist and we spent the money on something else.

They also contribute by increasing the market competition for games. They make other games and games companies better. They encourage innovation in ways that other companies wouldn't think about or wouldn't prioritize otherwise.

I'm totally ok with companies utilizing open source to make my life better in this way. Contributing back code for others to use is also an important activity.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#78

Post by zelon88 »

detritus wrote: post #76
zelon88 wrote: post #69

I like drawing metaphors from Tamiya. Tamiya is a Japanese scale modelling and remote-controlled vehicle company with a loooong history of making quality products that the industry just eats up. Like Nintendo, Tamiya has always been in the back row when it comes to technological innovation, but lead the pack when it came to functionality, reliability, and quality. Just like Nintendo, there are Tamiya fan clubs where…

Wait - so I can finally buy the Monster Beetle I dearly wanted as a 14 year old? I imagine the modern iterations are significantly better than those I drooled over as a child, with 30 odd years of improvements in electric motors and batteries?

Yes and no. You can still buy a NiMH battery and a silver can brushed 540 motor if you want too. The price on that stuff has come down significantly. It's the LiPo batteries and brushless motors that cost all the money these days. Then again, they really are in a different league as far as performance and runtime. Back in the day of crystal radios if you wanted to go 50+ MPH you either had to have a nitro engine or you just had a 9T motor that killed your battery in 3 minutes.

Today's electric cars have aaaaalmost made nitro obsolete... not only from a reliability standpoint (like always) but from a performance standpoint as well. Obviously the market for nitro fun will always exist, but if you're just looking for performance these days there is no benefit nitro has over electric anymore.

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#79

Post by Hamuko »

skuthus wrote: post #72
GuiA wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very cool story, and makes me want to learn more about Tamiya. But the situation does not seem the same to me. People are - for the most part - able to play the old Nintendo games they want through the virtual console, backwards compatibility, remakes, or NES/SNES mini. Yes, some N64 carts are selling for thousands on eBay - but that’s not preventing kids from playing that game if they want to.

To the OP's point, You can play some games with virtual console, but many games were released on only one or two newer consoles so you would effectively need to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands in order to actually play them all legally.

The strategy for Nintendo Switch Online is apparently to dripfeed classic games onto it. So if you for example want to play Mother (NES) or Mother 2 (SNES), you either need to emulate it on a PC, buy the actual retro consoles and games (or the SNES Classic for Mother 2), or get a Wii U and play it on the Wii U Virtual Console.

(If you want to play Mother 3 in English, you're going to have to resort to PC emulators.)

Re: Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak

#80

Post by zozbot234 »

devit wrote: post #74
coldpie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That policy obviously just results in Wine contributors not disclosing seeing Microsoft source code Absolutely not, we take it very seriously. If there's a hint of looking at Microsoft source code or REing Microsoft binaries, then contributions are banned. It's not a wink-wink kind of situation.

I mean that almost surely there are people that do so and carefully make sure to not mention that and make sure that their contributions are not derived work and don't have such "hints". The main technique to do so is "parallel construction": e.g. you reverse engineer a binary or look at source code, find out a special case not implemented in Wine, then construct a test case that tests the special case and behaves di…

The legally safest route would be to not implement the patch, but merely to describe the difference in behavior that triggers the bug in general terms (yet sufficient to replicate a "correct" behavior). This may also enable you to RE Microsoft binaries that you want to support in Wine, e.g. web browsers, office-productivity applications or development tools, as opposed to OS components.
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