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Emulation Community doesn't know to MAKE roms.

Title: Emulation Community doesn't know how to MAKE roms.

The reason why Emulation can be a touchy topic on threads is because it's ALWAYS associated with pirating which this thread is not or has no underlying agenda to promote it.

In fact, I'm here to play devil's advocate to say that there's a big lack of education on legitimately preserving and backing up ones bought games to potentially emulate within that community.

From emulation software on PC, portable Gaming PC that can emulate , the rise in Retro consoles, to even modding and hacking rom. That community has skirted around any information on actually making ROMs unlike everything else.

Answer, making ROMs is complex. But I bring all this up to bring awareness that this big part within Emulation would have probably* help in keep that community legal in some way.

*It's too late. The damage is done.

Today, everyone is playing the same file of those retro game and eve modern games today.

The social ramifications in all this is rather personal where my brother, a casual and younger generation of gamers, sees a game like Pokemon Yellow as he does a game like Angry Birds, or any free app game due to the fact Roms in his eyes are free(illegally).

Finally, the lack of education on preserving games to simply pirate has created a justification on continuing to do so.

Justifing emulation in the way of pirating, on the bases that companies like Nintendo or SEGA do not make those games accessible, is because of pirating.

During the same time pirating was beginning on the internet, Disney and Pixar made sure to act quickly so that their films were not prirated. They went to every Internet provider in the early 2000s to hinder user who downloaded their movie illegally. That move very early on paid off today where Disney + is more accessible than it would be to pirate.

Nintendo on the other hand has just enough(not enough) lawyers to remove fan made games off a website. In their defense, had no way to combat or slow down pirated ROMs.


I believe it's pirating from the very beginning that has hinder companies from producing curated services to access those game. A service such as that would not cater to a hardcore and a even smaller casual audience when the Emulation community has justified and made easy to bypass. Nintendo specifically has tried, however, based on what I mentioned above, the social and legal ramifications have hinder the value of any service to come.

Maybe if the education of one preserving their games, emphasing it's complexity, and the value these games hold would have made the Emulation community less of a stigma. Maybe the community as a whole could of helped companies like Nintendo, SEGA, Sony and Atari by curating and distributing their retro or legacy games library rather than being a nuisance..
 
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Mowcno

Member
What? Making roms is not complex if you have the capable hardware. Anyone with a CFW switch can create a switch rom with a couple of button presses.
 

Kenpachii

Member
Title: Emulation Community doesn't know how to MAKE roms.

The reason why Emulation can be a touchy topic on threads is because it's ALWAYS associated with pirating which this thread is not or has no underlying agenda to promote it.

In fact, I'm here to play devil's advocate to say that there's a big lack of education on legitimately preserving and backing up ones bought games to potentially emulate within that community.

From emulation software on PC, portable Gaming PC that can emulate , the rise in Retro consoles, to even modding and hacking rom. That community has skirted around any information on actually making ROMs unlike everything else.

Answer, making ROMs is complex. But I bring all this up to bring awareness that this big part within Emulation would have probably* help in keep that community legal in some way.

*It's too late. The damage is done.

Today, everyone is playing the same file of those retro game and eve modern games today.

The social ramifications in all this is rather personal where my brother, a casual and younger generation of gamers, sees a game like Pokemon Yellow as he does a game like Angry Birds, or any free app game due to the fact Roms in his eyes are free(illegally).

Finally, the lack of education on preserving games to simply pirate has created a justification on continuing to do so.

Justifing emulation in the way of pirating, on the bases that companies like Nintendo or SEGA do not make those games accessible, is because of pirating.

During the same time pirating was beginning on the internet, Disney and Pixar made sure to act quickly so that their films were not prirated. They went to every Internet provider in the early 2000s to hinder user who downloaded their movie illegally. That move very early on paid off today where Disney + is more accessible than it would be to pirate.

Nintendo on the other hand has just enough(not enough) lawyers to remove fan made games off a website. In their defense, had no way to combat or slow down pirated ROMs.


I believe it's pirating from the very beginning that has hinder companies from producing curated services to access those game. A service such as that would not cater to a hardcore and a even smaller casual audience when the Emulation community has justified and made easy to bypass. Nintendo specifically has tried, however, based on what I mentioned above, the social and legal ramifications have hinder the value of any service to come.

Maybe if the education of one preserving their games, emphasing it's complexity, and the value these games hold would have made the Emulation community less of a stigma. Maybe the community as a whole could of helped companies like Nintendo, SEGA, Sony and Atari by curating and distributing their retro or legacy games library rather than being a nuisance..

1) Emulation community knows how to make roms
2) Emulation is not associated with piracy, its associated with emulation.
3) Consumers see the easiest route and go for it.

Here's gaben on the matter which owns valve and steam, the biggest pc publisher of games probably.

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

The proof is in the proverbial pudding. “Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become [Steam’s] largest market in Europe,” Newell said.

4) Making roms is easy, but takes time and money
5) U get practically banned from any emulator discord if you talk about downloading roms from the internet, so no its not tolerated in the community's.
6) There can't de damage if there never was value.
7) Yes most people play the same files, even nintendo uses community made roms and sells them on there own platform. So even they download roms from those community's.
8) There is no lack of education, u either serve or people serve themselves
9) Disney and pixar didn't do shit, the same way nintendo lawyers can't do shit. the moment stuff is on the internet its always out there.
10) U have the typical early 2000 publisher ceo attitude that all made them fail in the PC space because of it.

The same way how sony increases for example there games towards 80 euro's for the base version. Guess what happens? u see a reduction in people buying your game, which results in even more need for money and more expensive versions which again results in less people buying the games and eventually they blame the gamers close shop and move on. ( not that sony closes shop but publishers in general ).
This is also why i always say, games need to be cheaper not more expensive and anybody advocating for higher prices is just playing a fools game.

It's the typical arrogance that never works. Your consumer is king, u look at what your consumer wants, and u offer the best and most easy way to get it and people will buy.

11) Value of games is determed in my view by time. I will never pay 50 bucks for zelda ocarina of time, because the game is way way way to old. If they completely remade it in EU5 with extra content, i would probably. If its a simple n64 port? maybe 5-10 cents.

12) Nobody in the PC space or emulation space cares about what publishers that don't support them think. It's not there problem.
 
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KungFucius

King Snowflake
How is Disney + more accessible than the Chinese streaming sites? It is easier for people because they have the app on the TV already and can cheaply join for a month or whatnot, not because people got sued for hosting pirated crap 20 years ago. If people want to pirate, they can do so easily its just trading quality for cost.
 

SomeGit

Member
Pirating old games, many from defunct developers that can't be bought new is no big deal.
Ethically if the game hasn’t been rereleased or isn’t available today, pirating or buying a uses copy on eBay is pretty much the same.

Same with whatever OP is balbing about, if already own the game.
 

hlm666

Member
I can't remember which games they were exactly, but I remember a while ago reading something where a publisher released a retro collection and used roms dumped by the emu community because they didn't have them or machines they could dump them from. So your emu community doesn't know how to make roms idea goes both ways.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
bad-opinion-opinion.gif
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Step away from the keyboard OP, collect your thoughts, organize them, and re-write this into a cohesive well thought out and structured piece. Until you do that, I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a D- for rambling
 

PhaseJump

Banned
I am on daily IV drugs, have been awake for 2 days, and need to keep my head on straight for at least 3 more hours to get all that shit over with...

Reading OP here is making me:

neil-degrasse-tyson.gif
 

Fredrik

Member
Depends on the platform. Ripping PS1 and PS2 games takes like 2 minutes. Amiga games are easy to rip too. Ripping arcade games is more complicated.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Ethically if the game hasn’t been rereleased or isn’t available today, pirating or buying a uses copy on eBay is pretty much the same.

Same with whatever OP is balbing about, if already own the game.
Seriously. If there’s some way to purchase the game from the publisher then that’s 100% what you should do. If, on the other hand, the only way to get it is by paying collectors’ prices on a secondhand market, I see absolutely no ethical problem with downloading a ROM.

In that case, all you’re doing when buying it the “legal” way is driving up the price and depriving someone else who might actually be interested in owning a physical copy.

BTW I can happily say that pretty much every ROM I pirated that later became available for purchase, I bought it, some of them multiple times (mostly a bunch of JRPGs that were only originally available in Japan e.g. FF III, FF V, Romancing Saga 1-3, Trials of Mana, Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocean, etc plus tons of Virtual Console games)
 

Fredrik

Member
Factor 5 still have their Turrican trilogy adf files on their website free to download. I wish all devs did it like that so fans can enjoy these great classics without feeling bad about it, or having to invest half a fortune to acquire the original games that might not even work much longer.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Ethically if the game hasn’t been rereleased or isn’t available today, pirating or buying a uses copy on eBay is pretty much the same.

Same with whatever OP is balbing about, if already own the game.
Not really. Anyone have "the right" to use that used original copy of the game (obviously if legally purchased). But no one has "the right" to use a pirated copy.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I've dumped my own roms. I've also burned my own roms onto physical cartridges before. It's all about having the right tools - the collective knowledge is out there OP.
 

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
During the same time pirating was beginning on the internet, Disney and Pixar made sure to act quickly so that their films were not prirated. They went to every Internet provider in the early 2000s to hinder user who downloaded their movie illegally. That move very early on paid off today where Disney + is more accessible than it would be to pirate.

Nintendo on the other hand has just enough(not enough) lawyers to remove fan made games off a website. In their defense, had no way to combat or slow down pirated ROMs.


I have no idea why this is behind a spoiler tag. But your example here is why your whole premise is flawed.

Movie studio efforts to stop piracy at the ISP level worked for some, but not the vast majority of pirates. It was the same with those who pirated music. Again, efforts to go after individual users stopped some, but not most people.

What is the main thing that led to a steep drop of piracy of both movies and music? An new delivery system, streaming, which offered this media at a reasonable price (for most) with a large amount of convenience! That is what Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu effecively did. They made it easier and more convenient to be a legal user of this media, for a reasonable price.

Now compare that to Nintendo. Nintendo offers only they oldest and in most cases worst games on a service which, while may not be very expensive, is very inconvenient to most people if you dont have a Switch for example. The same goes for a lot of old game makers. While Nintendo doesnt want to devale their product by putting for example as many games as they can (including Mario and Zelda) on a games service for a small monthly fee (think 5 a month), that is their choice. But until they do, people will still pirate.
 

Patrick S.

Banned
Back when I had my phase of trying out MAME, I remember there were games that never worked because there wasn't a working ROM dump. Like, the same ROM set with the same CRC errors or whatever was the one that floated around on all ROM websites. And there were games that couldn't be dumped because of copy protections, IIRC. So no, in some cases it doesn't seem to be as straightforward as you might think.
 

Fuz

Banned
The proof is in the proverbial pudding. “Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become [Steam’s] largest market in Europe,” Newell said.
Russia is not Europe, Gabe.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I have no idea why this is behind a spoiler tag. But your example here is why your whole premise is flawed.

Movie studio efforts to stop piracy at the ISP level worked for some, but not the vast majority of pirates. It was the same with those who pirated music. Again, efforts to go after individual users stopped some, but not most people.

What is the main thing that led to a steep drop of piracy of both movies and music? An new delivery system, streaming, which offered this media at a reasonable price (for most) with a large amount of convenience! That is what Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu effecively did. They made it easier and more convenient to be a legal user of this media, for a reasonable price.

Now compare that to Nintendo. Nintendo offers only they oldest and in most cases worst games on a service which, while may not be very expensive, is very inconvenient to most people if you dont have a Switch for example. The same goes for a lot of old game makers. While Nintendo doesnt want to devale their product by putting for example as many games as they can (including Mario and Zelda) on a games service for a small monthly fee (think 5 a month), that is their choice. But until they do, people will still pirate.
I agree with everything you’re saying but I think it’s even more extreme when you’re talking about classic games. With music/movies/etc there was usually still a way for you to purchase it from the copyright holder even though it was less convenient. Whereas with classic games, it’s been out of print for a long time and the only way to get a “legal” copy is by buying secondhand. AND it also requires a device capable of playing it, which may be difficult or impossible to find.

It would be like if the only way to legally buy some album were to get an original 8-track from decades ago on the secondhand market. In that case IMO there is absolutely nothing unethical about pirating it. You aren’t harming anybody nor are you depriving the copyright holder of a sale.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
“Ethical” and “legal” are two completely different things.
I used the word "right" because of that. It's not ethical to use pirated games not available officially to sell, because it's the owner of the IP that chooses not to sell anymore for whatever reason. And no one has ethically or legally the right to use that pirated game.
 
I downloaded Xenosaga a few years ago from the internet and I feel fine.
But if you're playing the latest Pokémon on CEMU without owning a copy it's piracy pure and simple.
 

theclaw135

Banned
If the emulation community needs more of an "air of legitimacy", I'd promote developing original games.

The most advanced emulators can even be educational. Imagine that! A comprehensive integrated development environment, walking you through what makes the hardware tick.
 

Killer8

Member
Why would anyone waste their time a) researching how to make a ROM, b) acquiring the materials to make the ROM (many PCs no longer have disc drives and cartridges often need specialized hardware), and c) take the time to actually rip it, document it, make sure it's the right file type, make sure the file structure is correct etc etc...

... when you can just download a 100% identical file from the internet with a few clicks? Piracy maybe a poo poo'd subject on here but it's simply the easiest and least time consuming solution. Stop wasting your precious time on Earth and just do it.
 

SomeGit

Member
I used the word "right" because of that. It's not ethical to use pirated games not available officially to sell, because it's the owner of the IP that chooses not to sell anymore for whatever reason. And no one has ethically or legally the right to use that pirated game.
It's a fine legal argument for an utopian society, but you need to come down to earth and be realistic. If there is a "will there is a way" and if the owner of the IP chooses to not sell anymore (or most likely can't) and there is demand, that demand will find a solution. And that solution will either be an old used copy or go online and find a pirated copy. Either way it's zero per cent of that revenue that will go to the IP owner, I'm not going to lose sleep over a IP owner's lost revenue of something they choose not to gain in the first place and filling up the pockets of someone who is selling it at 2 times the retail price, without a cent going to the developers doesn't sound anymore "right". So in the end I can't blame someone for either choice.

Saying "it's not right!!" it's just throwing peebles into the river, the water flow of society will just circle around it.
 
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Its the complete opposite. Companies like Nintendo actively push people towards piracy. Here's a recent and obvious example. Fire Emblem is a long running Nintendo franchise, that recently has finally gotten fairly popular world wide. The majority of early games in the franchise were never localized outside of Japan. Meaning if you wanted to play them, you'd have no choice but to rely on fan translated roms, most likely obtained via piracy. They celebrated Fire Emblems 30 year anniversary by localizing the original Fire Emblem for the very first time. So you can finally play this game, legally. Problem solved right? Nope, the physical released was fairly limited, and it's no longer sold digitally. So your best bet of playing this 30 year re-release? Piracy! So imagine some young kid really likes Fire Emblem Three Houses. He goes online and learns via fan communities that this franchise has been around forever and has all these cool games. He's like, awesome I'm gonna play those. Boots up his Switch and can't buy them. Nintendo could offer them, they could sell them, but they just don't.
 

Wildebeest

Member
People do make new homebrew games or demakes for old hardware. They also do rom hacks for all sorts of things such as fixing bugs, updating bad translations, adding new challenges, randomizing content.
 

nush

Gold Member
I was working for a big game publisher and posed the question one time.

"If I was to download one of our old games, using our network, installing it on one of our PCs, is that piracy?"
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Why would anyone waste their time a) researching how to make a ROM, b) acquiring the materials to make the ROM (many PCs no longer have disc drives and cartridges often need specialized hardware), and c) take the time to actually rip it, document it, make sure it's the right file type, make sure the file structure is correct etc etc...

... when you can just download a 100% identical file from the internet with a few clicks? Piracy maybe a poo poo'd subject on here but it's simply the easiest and least time consuming solution. Stop wasting your precious time on Earth and just do it.
This is true of basically everything up until the newest generation. For example, Switch cartridges all have a digital certificate / thumbprint that are unique to just that cartridge. It's an anti-piracy feature that's also tied to their "My Nintendo Rewards" thing (so that they don't give rewards out to everyone for the same cartridge). But it also means that backing up your own cartridges, rather than just downloading identical copies, is pretty important. In this case, Nintendo can tell if two people are playing the exact same game online at the same time which shouldn't ever be possible. Of course if you're emulating these games and playing them offline I guess it's all the same...
 
If the emulation community needs more of an "air of legitimacy", I'd promote developing original games.

There's been some stabs at this with several projects by now; I'm going to guess you never heard of them because games on old hardware are hard to sell to anyone who isn't already actively looking for that sort of thing.

It'd be a lot easier if you could take the ROMs of said games that sell them on the PS Store or Switch eShop without having to re-program them from the ground up, but that takes us back to square one on the "air of legitimacy" issue.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I used the word "right" because of that. It's not ethical to use pirated games not available officially to sell, because it's the owner of the IP that chooses not to sell anymore for whatever reason. And no one has ethically or legally the right to use that pirated game.
No, I disagree. If it’s some indie dev who owns the copyright for their own game, and they decide that they want some limited run of physical copies to be the only way to play their game then, well, that would be really douche-y but you could make the case that it’s ethically wrong to pirate their game.

When you’re talking about some large publisher who owns a huge catalog of old software, and some subset of that catalog is not available for purchase because they decided it’s not worth the time/effort to make it available, then I see absolutely zero ethical problems with pirating it.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
No, I disagree. If it’s some indie dev who owns the copyright for their own game, and they decide that they want some limited run of physical copies to be the only way to play their game then, well, that would be really douche-y but you could make the case that it’s ethically wrong to pirate their game.

When you’re talking about some large publisher who owns a huge catalog of old software, and some subset of that catalog is not available for purchase because they decided it’s not worth the time/effort to make it available, then I see absolutely zero ethical problems with pirating it.
It's is still their product and they have the right to not make available to anyone else...
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
I have no idea why this is behind a spoiler tag. But your example here is why your whole premise is flawed.

Movie studio efforts to stop piracy at the ISP level worked for some, but not the vast majority of pirates. It was the same with those who pirated music. Again, efforts to go after individual users stopped some, but not most people.

What is the main thing that led to a steep drop of piracy of both movies and music? An new delivery system, streaming, which offered this media at a reasonable price (for most) with a large amount of convenience! That is what Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu effecively did. They made it easier and more convenient to be a legal user of this media, for a reasonable price.

Now compare that to Nintendo. Nintendo offers only they oldest and in most cases worst games on a service which, while may not be very expensive, is very inconvenient to most people if you dont have a Switch for example. The same goes for a lot of old game makers. While Nintendo doesnt want to devale their product by putting for example as many games as they can (including Mario and Zelda) on a games service for a small monthly fee (think 5 a month), that is their choice. But until they do, people will still pirate.
I love threads like this on gaf. I completely ignore the main post and read the reactions 🤙👆
 
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