Bad news and good news for retro gamers
Jan. 1st, 2008 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedScott slept over two nights ago. He also gave Marie a stuffed whaleshark as a Christmas gift the next morning. Marie spent most of yesterday at his house for New Year's Eve. Brian also came home in the middle of last night.
I started refining Fuyuki's Hot Night yesterday morning. I also made up with Jake, and told him about my progress with the second draft of the fic.
Yesterday, I was going to download a Game Boy emulator and Super Mario Land... only to find out that ROM sites like ROMNation now comply with Cease & Desist orders issued by the ESA (Entertainment Software Association). That means that whatever you want to download had better not be in this list. This will come as a shock to a lot of gamers who relied on ROM sites instead of Ebay as their main source of old games. I've been distraught over this for a number of hours, but there's little anyone can do about it. Besides, let's understand that illegal ROM sites hurts video game companies by cheating them out of profits. In response to this sudden mass removal of games, I downloaded the following items for future use:
-FCE Ultra (an NES emulator)
-Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES)
-Silver Surfer (NES)
-Getter Love!! (Nintendo 64)
-Neon Genesis Evangelion (N64)
-Knuckles Chaotix (the only Sega 32X game worth downloading)
Downloading these games didn't make me any less distraught. On top of that, I even contacted Jake yesterday to alert him about the potential removal games not on the aforementioned list yet. His response: "Who cares?" I told him that there are people who like to play these old games, and he said that he's the last person anyone should talk to about illegal ROMs and emulators.
If there is any good news, it's that apparently, Nintendo is running a similar service as these illegal ROM sites by porting games for now-defunct consoles onto something called the Virtual Console. Right now though, unlike ROMNation, the Virtual Console doesn't have a complete library. I'm not sure how long it takes for any given ROM title to be archived in a ROM site, and I'll have to ask in the ROMNation forum, but that might explain why Nintendo is only porting the most successful games and consoles first.
The fact that the Virtual Console (like many other consoles) is region-locked kept me up until 10:30 last night. That's a coincidence since by tradition, many people stay up way past their normal bedtime on New Year's Eve. Console companies use regional lockout for four reasons listed in Wikipedia. Apparently though, Nintendo is aware that depriving gamers of region-exclusive games only deprives the companies that made the games in question of profits that they could be making otherwise. The availability of four games (three of them being Alien Soldier, Alien Storm, and Sin & Punishment) that weren't previously available is proof of that realization. Will other region exclusive games come out, such as Mon Colle Knights, Earthbound Zero, Mahou Poipoi Poitto, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Wonder Project J2, Getter Love!!, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Snowboard Kids Plus, Game Tengoku, the original Valis IV, the first three Valis games before IV, and Makeruna Makendou Z? Better yet, will we be able to get the original versions of U.S.-butchered games like Kendo Rage/Makeruna Makendou and Clash At Demonhead? We can only hope.
The Virtual Console is a good start at eliminating any reason for illegal ROM sites to continue existing. Even though you do have to pay a fee for each game and emulator you download, it's still a whole lot more convenient than Ebay. Even though it probably takes time for each title to be archived, there's really no reason not to ever add titles to the list. The only reason why a lot of foreign games don't get imported is because store shelves only have so much space, and store chains have to decide which games will be available. That's the same reason why, as games age, they become less and less available in stores. Webpages, however, have infinite space for ROM titles, and just one link is enough to provide infinite copies of any given game. That means that even the shittiest games in existence (such as Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) would reap a few extra bucks here and there. Having a ROM site that only company staff can access directly [gamers would have to request the ROMs and pay a fee for each ROM and emulator] would be a win-win situation: Game companies win by making profits off of ROMs, consumers win by being able to obtain the games legally and with much less of a hassle, the environment wins because of fewer Ebay delivery trips involving the games, and the games themselves win by continuing to exist. Better yet, any of these games that have 2-player or multi-player modes could even be played across the internet, something that couldn't be done before 6th-gen consoles (such as the Dreamcast, GameCube, Playstation 2, and the X-Box).
I started refining Fuyuki's Hot Night yesterday morning. I also made up with Jake, and told him about my progress with the second draft of the fic.
Yesterday, I was going to download a Game Boy emulator and Super Mario Land... only to find out that ROM sites like ROMNation now comply with Cease & Desist orders issued by the ESA (Entertainment Software Association). That means that whatever you want to download had better not be in this list. This will come as a shock to a lot of gamers who relied on ROM sites instead of Ebay as their main source of old games. I've been distraught over this for a number of hours, but there's little anyone can do about it. Besides, let's understand that illegal ROM sites hurts video game companies by cheating them out of profits. In response to this sudden mass removal of games, I downloaded the following items for future use:
-FCE Ultra (an NES emulator)
-Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES)
-Silver Surfer (NES)
-Getter Love!! (Nintendo 64)
-Neon Genesis Evangelion (N64)
-Knuckles Chaotix (the only Sega 32X game worth downloading)
Downloading these games didn't make me any less distraught. On top of that, I even contacted Jake yesterday to alert him about the potential removal games not on the aforementioned list yet. His response: "Who cares?" I told him that there are people who like to play these old games, and he said that he's the last person anyone should talk to about illegal ROMs and emulators.
If there is any good news, it's that apparently, Nintendo is running a similar service as these illegal ROM sites by porting games for now-defunct consoles onto something called the Virtual Console. Right now though, unlike ROMNation, the Virtual Console doesn't have a complete library. I'm not sure how long it takes for any given ROM title to be archived in a ROM site, and I'll have to ask in the ROMNation forum, but that might explain why Nintendo is only porting the most successful games and consoles first.
The fact that the Virtual Console (like many other consoles) is region-locked kept me up until 10:30 last night. That's a coincidence since by tradition, many people stay up way past their normal bedtime on New Year's Eve. Console companies use regional lockout for four reasons listed in Wikipedia. Apparently though, Nintendo is aware that depriving gamers of region-exclusive games only deprives the companies that made the games in question of profits that they could be making otherwise. The availability of four games (three of them being Alien Soldier, Alien Storm, and Sin & Punishment) that weren't previously available is proof of that realization. Will other region exclusive games come out, such as Mon Colle Knights, Earthbound Zero, Mahou Poipoi Poitto, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Wonder Project J2, Getter Love!!, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Snowboard Kids Plus, Game Tengoku, the original Valis IV, the first three Valis games before IV, and Makeruna Makendou Z? Better yet, will we be able to get the original versions of U.S.-butchered games like Kendo Rage/Makeruna Makendou and Clash At Demonhead? We can only hope.
The Virtual Console is a good start at eliminating any reason for illegal ROM sites to continue existing. Even though you do have to pay a fee for each game and emulator you download, it's still a whole lot more convenient than Ebay. Even though it probably takes time for each title to be archived, there's really no reason not to ever add titles to the list. The only reason why a lot of foreign games don't get imported is because store shelves only have so much space, and store chains have to decide which games will be available. That's the same reason why, as games age, they become less and less available in stores. Webpages, however, have infinite space for ROM titles, and just one link is enough to provide infinite copies of any given game. That means that even the shittiest games in existence (such as Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) would reap a few extra bucks here and there. Having a ROM site that only company staff can access directly [gamers would have to request the ROMs and pay a fee for each ROM and emulator] would be a win-win situation: Game companies win by making profits off of ROMs, consumers win by being able to obtain the games legally and with much less of a hassle, the environment wins because of fewer Ebay delivery trips involving the games, and the games themselves win by continuing to exist. Better yet, any of these games that have 2-player or multi-player modes could even be played across the internet, something that couldn't be done before 6th-gen consoles (such as the Dreamcast, GameCube, Playstation 2, and the X-Box).