General Emulation Discussions

[Colin]

Well, having been working on an emulation Pi for a while I can only give my current personal outlook on it. Years ago I was staunchly against emulation (As I was and still am against music piracy etc) but I don't see things in the same way now as far as dead systems are concerned. Although I would never consider pirating current gaming platforms, for legacy systems I now look at it as the opposite, even though that may admittedly be a huge double standard.

I refuse to pay some scrote on eBay an astronomical sum for a game that I've bought on release back in the day for the sake of replay, and that in no way benefits the original publisher, many of which who no longer even exist. As far as games that can be bought on current platforms like say for example Metal Slug, I think I've reached my breaking point there too. Taking that example I've bought it multiple times on say AES/PSP/PS2/PS4 so I'm buggered if they're getting money out of me for it again for the exact same game just because I've changed the box under my TV. Despite the fact I have the ACA version on my PS4, I'm happier playing it on the Pi. At that point is it acceptable because I've paid for it and currently own it on a system in my home? Probably not for anyone who believes I'm hurting the publisher.

Then you have a game like PS1 Harmful Park, that we've never officially had here. I bought it on import, legally grey area of course, but now my option is again the eBay mark up king if I want to play it, and that's not happening.

So in conclusion, I'm fine with emulating retro even though it may make me a scumbag in other peoples eyes. No to current gen.

[Brad]

That's about where I am. Regarding Amiga games, there's no guarantee to disks will even work, or continue to work much longer.

[Colin]

I gave [MENTION=2415]Sketcz[/MENTION] a hard time for his ROM outlook years ago, but as it turns out he was right and I was wrong, so I apologise for that. Without emulation/ROM curation a lot of games are going to be lost to the sands of time. I notice a lot of the go to databases in recent times have been shut down due to lawsuits from the likes of Nintendo, so in some ways the history of gaming is in danger.

I'm not using that to justify my own personal usage, it's just something that needs thinking about.

[Neon Ignition]

The lack of a proper preservation remains stupid, especially given so many would be willing to do. All it'd take is companies providing some support rather than have to do it all themselves too.

[QualityChimp]

[Dogg Thang]

The lack of a proper preservation remains stupid, especially given so many would be willing to do. All it'd take is companies providing some support rather than have to do it all themselves too.

Yeah, this is something that is really important and I feel like it could get even more difficult from here because games aren't just what came on a disk or cart any more. You might rip the game and it will exist in 40 years but will all the patches and the DLC or whatever? I know already there is difficulty with that using legit means - you can download your copy of Wipeout Pulse on to Vita, for example, but not all the DLC packs are downloadable on it even though technically they all seem to work. Similarly, they pulled the Wipeout Pure DLC from the servers so you can still get WO Pure but you can't get the DLC from official sources any more.

And we know that things get even more difficult once games companies go under - sorting out ownership of some games from several decades ago is next to impossible if they haven't been transferred to a larger publisher which survived the era. Even if a company technically own the rights to the game, if they haven't got a full paper trail on all the legal, they would be leaving themselves too exposed to do anything with it. It's messy and there need to be some allowances made for these instances or some industry-wide body put in place to do it.

[_SD_]

I’m hoping that there’ll be a GPD XD 2 in the next couple of years that can properly handle Saturn, N64, Gamecube... basically everything the current one can’t do or struggles with.

[Sketcz]

I gave [MENTION=2415]Sketcz[/MENTION] a hard time for his ROM outlook years ago, but as it turns out he was right and I was wrong, so I apologise for that.

Did you? I don't recall. And I always recall my enemies. Did you change avatars or username? You escaped my wrath, [MENTION=9865]Colin[/MENTION], but no longer! Or something like that...

Personally I've given up fighting the tide. Current copyright laws make it impossible to do proper real preservation. In Japan the Game Preservation Society has to do everything under the table. They're literally scanning thousands of game boxes and manuals the floppy disks, so that in 70+ years they can reveal to everone that they meticulously documented everything while they had the chance.

True fact: right now, there are genuinely games which are lost forever. No one made a pirated copy, and the large floppies they were originally produced on in the early 1980s are pretty much absolutely guaranteed to have biodegraded. Even if you found a copy, chances are you'll have a box and dead disk. Case in point being some obscure adventure game Yuji Hori made between making Love Match Tennis and Dragon Quest, for some obscure computer.

Glad you've seen the light Colin. Now we just need to persuade governments and actually produce a proper global archive of software.

[Brad]

Nintendo have previously charged users for a cracked ROM they got off the internet.

[QualityChimp]

We need something like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that's actually a hyper secret arcade!

I'd let you visit every leap year.

[dvdx2]

I remember you would have been burnt at the stake, for openly talking about piracy / roms etc, on this forum; (and I have been here for 14 years)...hard to believe it was a £30 circuit board from China, that suddenly made hoisting the Jolly Roger acceptable... ;-)

[QualityChimp]

I remember you would have been burnt at the stake, for openly talking about piracy / roms etc, on this forum; (and I have been here for 14 years)...hard to believe it was a £30 circuit board from China, that suddenly made hoisting the Jolly Roger acceptable... ;-)

It's also something I've considered, but I checked the rules and they say:

- Do not provide links to Iso's, Roms or any other such "warez" . Do not advertise iso's,roms or any other such "warez" for sale in the trade forum. Failure to follow these simple rules will result in a ban.

- Do not actively seek sources for Roms, Isos or any other such "warez" via other members of the forum or Bordersdown itself, we will neither accept nor tolerate any attempts to ask for or provide information which results in the theft of someone else's intellectual property, and such actions will result in an immediate ban.

- Similarly, any members found providing information which could be used in any illegal capacity are subject to an immediate ban. If you are unsure, please ask a mod before you post.

[Leon Retro]

And yet you didn’t answer the question

Well, if the question is about a correlation between piracy and emulation, I wouldn't agree. I have been talking about playing old games on an emulator. It doesn't matter if a game was published by Nintendo, Sega, Psygnosis, Codemasters etc... if it's an old game that had its time in the spotlight many moons ago, I see no problem in embracing emulation as an easy way to enjoy retro gaming.

As much as I can agree that piracy was an issue for many years, I think the way the industry has gone from strength to strength over the decades, proves that it didn't have as much of an impact on sales as some people say it did. Of course, you can take a particular Amiga game that didn't sell well and blame piracy, but on the other hand some Amiga games managed to sell quite well. Not all games sell well when you take piracy out of the equation.

Maybe companies like RARE were sensible to move from tapes & disks to the NES that used cartridges which weren't copied at the time. When media wasn't easily copyable, you still had millions of people across the world buying Famicom/NES games. So maybe using tapes & discs simply made it too easy/tempting for people to make copies. Looking back - it would have certainly been better if all systems used cartridges for games.

Anyway, piracy isn't really the issue. Emulation of old games has nothing to do with damaging publishers and developers by copying games that are relevant in a modern context. No one should care if I play Rise of the Robots on an emulator.

[dvdx2]

Anyway, piracy isn't really the issue. Emulation of old games has nothing to do with damaging publishers and developers by copying games that are relevant in a modern context.

It’s a theft of intellectual property Leon; you wouldn’t steal a car, would you?

[_SD_]

A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

Thing is, these laws were made far too long ago. It’s now possible to make a copy of something without depriving the original user of their original. Stealing and copywrite infringement are two very different things.