People defending owners of old gaming IP all day long. Look, I get it. And #emulation is often iffy. But imagine if other mediums were like gaming. 99% of music and film inaccessible unless you owned original hardware and original media, slowly degrading and liable to die at any moment. It’s insane that gaming is in the place it is. I’d long hoped for an ‘iTunes for MAME’ years ago, but no. The closest we’ve got to something remotely sensible is ‘Netflix for #retrogaming’ Antstream Arcade.
@flargh Indeed. A lot of TV and movies have been lost forever too. Primarily due to the same thoughtlessness that would have caused the exact same thing to happen to gaming if it wasn’t for the pirates and the emulators.
Note: I’m not condoning that stuff. But the industry could help itself. Rights owners could sell people ROMs or disk images to use as they wish. But they don’t want to.
@craiggrannell@flargh I agree with your desire to maintain and preserve the rich history here! But it feels like you are kind of condoning this by defending it. The intellectual property owners have been very clear that they do not want their games stolen. We can debate the wisdom of that or even the wisdom of IP laws themselves, but taking the stance that “piracy is OK in this case because games are so important” does not feel right.
@DavidAnson@flargh I’m an advocate of emulation, preservation and access. I’m not condoning piracy. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there have been multiple occasions where IP owners have used cracked versions of old games in commercial releases, which to my mind whiffs a bit of hypocrisy.
My main hope – which will never come to pass – is that IP owners would provide a similar level of freedom to old games that we enjoy with music or even films.
@DavidAnson@flargh The one place where I do diverge from that and towards something close to condoning rights infringement is in thinking there should be a legal avenue to format shifting via personal copies of commercially bought content. In the UK, we used to have that via a specific carve-out for games and software (but not for music – well, only for about a year), but I’m unsure if that’s still applicable now.
@DavidAnson@flargh So I have Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast version) in my office drawer. I also have two Dreamcasts that don’t work properly. I bought Crazy Taxi on iPhone and on Android. So do I feel bad about emulating Crazy Taxi on other mobile devices? No, not really. (Similarly, what Viticci has been writing about is a legally grey area in most countries. Just because you own a cart, that doesn’t mean you can dump the ROM…)
@craiggrannell it’s actually very impressive how successful emulation has been in preserving game history.
Today in 2024 it’s actually basically easier to play NES games from the 80s than it is to play some games from the mid 90s that have basically been abandoned by their original publishers.
@zei In terms of preservation, I do worry there will be a hole in history, given how many games now need severs, and also due to the lack of interest in preserving mobile titles and indies on PC. But it is amazing that we can directly experience the formative years of the medium, in a way that’s impossible for music or TV. And even compared to those mediums during the 1970s and 1980s, I’d say gaming comes second only to music in terms of access (although last in terms of legal access).
@craiggrannell what about the paramount+ of retro gaming, Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack for an extremely exclusive list of limited-feature emulation on a single platform?
@Wavebeam Indeed. And selling the same stuff again and again, in a manner that provides no permanence whatsoever. It would be different if you paid $10 per month for a sizeable chunk of gaming, or if Nintendo would sell you a NES ROM for Super Mario Bros that you could then forever use as you please.
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