"It's Just Emulation!": The Challenge of Selling Old Games
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- Опубликовано: 7 окт 2024
- Keeping classic games in print is a surprisingly risky and difficult business. This 2016 talk from Digital Eclipse's Frank Cifaldi showcases the approach taken for Capcom's Mega Man Legacy Collection to discuss how and why old games should and will become sellable again.
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This was excellent!
All the negativity I received from peers and relatives for downloading and emulating games in the early 2000s...
I grew up in a single parent, very low income household. Video games were not on the menu. Without emulation, I would have missed out on many memorable experiences.
Thank you very much for your time, effort, and contributions to this wonderful artform!
My brother and I used to play old Commodore 64 games when we were kids in the late 90s, great times.
We were poor-ish. We got our commodores on the cheap from a church sale.
I’ve got a Raspberry Pi and I’m going to download the RetroPi installation pack, I am going to just fill it with roms. It does a lot of old systems. So cool.
Battletech fan channel has an installation guide for Mechwarrior 2 games, description has what you need. It is an amazing game of giant robot combat. Historic adrenaline. Live what you could not as a kid. You will love it.
Finally, a speaker with some enthusiasm, great presentation. I've been deeply fascinated with both game emulation and preservation for many years, and have a sizable archive of Dos, Arcade, and Console games preserved on multiple formats with game info, history, and artwork attached.
Thank you.
I love emulation, always have. And like a true nerd I built a Mame cab. I don't get why anyone would hate emulation, if you want a basement full of floppies, cartridges and consoles, that's your right. I respect that, you have something to hold and to look at. But for me, it's all about the visuals and gameplay experience.
i got 3000+ roms/isos on a shitty galaxy tab e
@@totalpartykill999 my Galaxy A10 is my emulation machine with hundreds of roms no wonder it runs like a car from the 90s
I mean, the cases and original releases are also apart of history.
It's not a case of hating emulation it's a case of nintendo maintains that emulation is always illegal.
@@Earthboundmike which is incredibly ironic since Nintendo pretty much uses emulation for the majority of their re-releases
I don't know about anyone else here, but with everything going on I'm sharing this video nonstop.
Excellent speaker. This was extremely insightful. Thank you for giving me the chance to listen to this! :D
As much as video games that never made it to shelves are at risk of being lost forever, I really feel like Arcade Games and Cabinets are at just as much at a greater risk due to the complexity of the hardware,software,licensing rights, etc.
I belive a great way to preserve old video games and have the younger generations know about them is to package them along with their sequels or remakes.
For example, Metroid Zero Mission for the GBA, a Metroid remake included a port of the original Metroid, so that the original could also be available to younger generations, and a point of refference for what was changed in the remake. Metal Gear Solid 3: Substinence included a port of the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 for the MSX, which was an even better deal in the HD Remaster of the MGS series, with 5 full games available to play on a single disk.
I could see that working for other titles, especially since the memory requirements of those old games are miniscule compared to today's games. I would especially love to see more remakes of old games with the originals included, as the comparison of original and remake provides a frame of refference for the history of gaming.
That's not to say that EVERY game from the olden days deserves a full blown remake for the original to be bundled with, but as far as classics are concerned, I think it is a great way to preserve and at the same time modernise them.
This video was made 5 years ago and technology might've changed since, but I've seen amazing things being done through emulators, like people making entire new games using a rom from Zelda Ocarina of time which can run on any N64 emulator (and could possibly run on a N64 if someone were to make a cartridge of them), people adding new characters to the first smash bros, people creating a software to play the gamecube game Smash Bros Melee online with rollback netcode, hell I even played N64 games online with my friends during the pandemic. Right now I'm playing through Breath of the Wild on an emulator called CEMU, where I was able to easily add many mods to enhance my experience, such as the game running at 60fps, higher resolution, better depth of field, better draw distance, which make the game look stunning. Emulator is not just a way to preserve old video games, but a way in which the community can actively participate to improve the experience for new players of those video games.
In the 5 years since this talk we've seen several games released on Steam under emulation. Perhaps most notably Castlevania, one of the games on that list of unavailable NES games.
Because I am very old, I first got excited about emulators ( specifically Mame) when I discovered I could play reasonably well a version of Galaga (the best game ever) on my PC. This was in 1998/9 or so. Very cool.
It's worth noting- Nintendo didn't actually download any roms from the internet. The iNes header is in all their roms because they actually hired the creator of the iNes header format (Tomohiro Kawase) for their emulation projects (he's mentioned at one point in iNES here fms.komkon.org/iNES/iNES.html, although it doesnt really detail everything he did). You can see his name in the credits of the original animal crossing specifically being credited for the "NES emulator program" (ruclips.net/video/zG2uHqwXhl0/видео.html), which is the first instance of an nes emulator being in a nintendo game.
Also, that ninja Jajamaru collection did eventually happen! :D
This has to be higher
That's not true. Marat Fayzullin is the creator of the iNES header format. Your link even says so. Also according to your link Tomohiro helped Marat fix his audio support. Tomohiro had nothing to do with the iNES header format.
I know what the link says; I can't find very many actual credits for iNes, because they weren't saying "this person worked on this, this, and this" every release. I just wanted to at the very least show that Tomohiro worked on iNes at all.
There are 2 major benefits to playing emulated games;
1 - ROM Patches to fix glitches that were overlooked before commercial release or to fix balancing issues or 'Bad Programming' in old games like in the NES era.
2 - ROM hacks that can add replayability to old games like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros.
Then there's also Randomizers which also add replayability by changing what direction & playstyle you approach the game with.
Piracy and private servers are at this point the only way to preserve old games.
So true. I'm counting on the pirates to archive all the more recent gen software. I buy original media, and I'm absolutely OK with that. But I also hack all my consoles to eliminate as much DRM as I can. Mostly so that it can survive a failed optical drive or flash storage, the loss of Internet access, or just to reduce wear on carts and discs. I also keep at least one spare of my most favorite consoles, so if/when mine breaks, I can tap in to my reserve unit(s). That can be problematic if everything needs to be activated or downloaded, so.... go pirates go! :-D You're my insurance policy!!
Did you watch the video? He supports them but the talk was ABOUT the other ways dude.
There's one point where he reads a notification on his phone without pausing for a millisecond or taking a breath.
It has been quite a few years since i have watched a complete presentation, but this kept one kept me to it's end. With the birth of emulation it is fair to say, that people like myself got the chance to be nostalgic by playing the games that we grew up with. Not having to dig out our fragile original hardware, was the biggest bonus of emulation for me. Over a recent period of time with the use of tablets, i have also benefitted from not being actually tied to a computer or console and can therefore walk around and play where i like. I have over 2000 ZX Spectrum original tapes with one of each version of the hardware sold in the UK and recently after buying Spectaculator for both my tablet and pc, i have bought game packs and individual games from the online app stores. I could if i wanted to make or use copies that are available, but i like to support the creators of those games. It would be absolutely fantastic to rebuy the Spectrum games with a complete history of the creators, artwork etc and hopefully someone will eventually do this. Thank you for a presentation that made me want to watch and learn to it's end.
Error at 29:25 ; Phantasy Star II is currently available for purchase on Virtual Console AND Steam, and has been available on both for years.
I'm pretty sure I've seen it on the Xbox store too.
Also, I'm not positively sure, but some NES games are available on the Rare Replay.
I'm also pretty sure you can buy it on Playstation and smartphones
Wow im the first to find you and know you before or atleast say it , love your content keep it up
based gamechamp
So glad his studio and M2 is releasing retro classics for the modern era. If it wasn't for Frank we wouldn't have almost all the Megaman titles.
It sounds like his point is basically that because game companies have demonized emulation rather than utilizing it for $$$, they have left piracy as the only option. Instead, they should have called open season on old games and anyone who has the rights should all be publishing emulated versions, just the same way "Uncle Buck" can apparently be sold by anyone.
There are people who would pay to just have the thing they want, and instead they are forced to steal it, because there is no other avenue to experience that. So in the reality Frank dreams of, you would see games like Ducktales on PS4, Xbox, and Switch because there's no legal reason not to (I presume).
exactly. Imagine every new console shipping with a collection of "player codex" emulators preinstalled and just waiting for the (hopefully) small license fee and download.
Nintendo clearly got the memo. Selling old games at $60 with extremely minimal improvements and extras. Case in point: Super Mario 3D All Stars.
I thniks some of the patches and DLCs of the OG Xbox Live may be lost forever just now.
I know I'm 4 years late but... they have all been preserved. You can find them at digiex. Some are region locked and most of them are from the NTSC region. So if you have European copies of the games, some DLCs and patches might not work.
17:50 I remember downloading UltraHLE. 7 MB *was* attainable on dialup, *however* the roms were over 25 MB in size! I remember it taking over a DAY to download Zelda 64 only for the download to be corrupted at 98%!
Robert Bledsaw III nice, I had the same issues with those early N64 downloads. I remember calling my dad to show him a photo on the internet which will load painfully slow from top to bottom and sometimes will time out
We used to have to use a download manager scheduled to dial up and download parts of the games over night to get N64 roms or PC game demos. You would be very particular on what you downloaded and plan it out. Sometimes it'd take a week to download something that way. The worst feeling was when the checksum was wrong and that thing you spent all that time downloading ends up not working. I think the first N64 ROM I downloaded was either Ocarina of Time or Mario 64.
F
It won't be long before games are 25TB by now.
Man, what I would give for directors commentary in gaming. Playing the original mega man or Super Mario bros with a voice over that plays as you hit points in the map or pick up certain items.
Frank I have a bone to pick with you... WHY NO ROCKMAN AND FORTE (SNES VERSION) ON THE LEGACY COLLECTIONS?!?!?!?!!!
(thank you for your hard work I 100% achievement all the Legacy Collection games!)
I was wondering that, too. But hey, we don't have the Battle Network or Star Force games yet, either, so maybe they just...haven't done it, yet. Hopefully.
@@arcdoesthings I think i poured my entire 14 year old life into battle network 3 white version... man I miss those games. they were so much fun! And I had 3 other friends to net battle and trade chips! I would kill for a battle network collection.
@@nypad5 Haha, It'd definitely be nice to have available. Maybe they could even throw in Network Transmission, seeing as we already have Mega Man X8 (a sixth generation console game) and a good GameCube emulator available. After watching this talk, though, I'm kind of curious why the Legacy Collections aren't on Linux. I mean, the guy went out of his way to say that emulation is affordable and easily portable, so I'm...a little confused. Like, if it's that easy, why not do it, you know? But I guess it's more "small Linux market" stuff or whatever. *sigh*
Another issue they didn't mention is preservation of games based on a license (despite them actually using a licensed game, Duck Tales, as their main example). Often games based on a license just disappear from digital stores and physical print. One such example is Capcom's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game. Capcom released an HD version of the game a while back, but then their license expired and they removed the game from digital stores, thus making this game unavailable legally. In such cases the only thing that can help is piracy, and many people don't condone it.
If I'm not mistaken, Rare Replay actually emulates all of its games (including the N64, no less), so that was another step
+Kevin H. (vgf89) Yeah, and I reckon it absolutely helps (for future uptake in the biz) that they've done such a *great* job with it too. :)
He's making a great point. I want Duck Tales, Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers, Lion King TMNT2, TMNT3, TMNT4 Turtles In Time, Felix The Cat and a bunch of others. But there is no way unless you wanna pay out the ass for the carts.
I just saw this! Frank, you rock so much
Segas pretty good at re releasing their back catalogue at a fair price (on genesis anyways) Sonic Mega Collection was a treat.
yeah, sega does what nintendon't!
They've released a ton of emulated Genesis games on steam. It has a nice launcher with a built in emulator, but you can also open the game folder and extract the ROMs to run them in any emulator you want. They also support steam workshop, allowing the uploading and downloading of ROM hacks. Sega is definitely leading the charge in good support of emulation.
This didn’t age well
Omg this guy is soooooo much better than Frank Lantz. Holy hell, what a fantastic presentation.
Thank God for software pirates who are actually working to preserve this history
It’s frightening when you think about classic games companies like Konami who today couldn’t give a s**t about popular classic series like Castlevania. If pirates won’t preserve it, no one will.
Personally I feel a problem that should be looked at is that you as a person, when you have bought a film, game or piece of software should own it for the rest of your life. In some cases that can already be done, like if you buy a game on Steam, the game will be yours no matter how many PCs you buy, so you can play Braid in 30 years when you are old and grey on your latest PC. Not so with the vast majority of other media. So if they do embrace emulation, you should own the rights to play that ROM no matter what system you want to play it on in some way or another. The only way to do that today is to actually get the original physical media of something - but as things move into the digital format that boundary is fuzzy and we are just at the mercy of what the media providers do. And we all know, they actually want us to buy the same game or movie over and over if possible which is pretty silly. Convenience for the consumer is everything here, let them buy it once and own a copy forever.
I agree with you, but you're contradicting yourself here. You say in the digital age we're at the mercy of content providers- surely you realize it's the same way with Steam right? You don't own any game on Steam, you just own licenses to them, and there's no guarantee you'll be able to play anything on there on a PC 30 years down the line.
There are games released less than 10 years ago that won't run on the latest version of Windows, there's no guarantee of anything.
That's absolutely so far from the truth. If you ever have an issue with steam, for instance something that might make you consider using a chargeback they will ban your account and your will lose access to every single one of your games. If you are using a distribution platform you are at their behest 100%.
If someone else controls access to the data you do not permanently own that data.
They address this on the Steam website. They have a system in place that removes the online requirement of the Steam DRM should Steam ever be shut down permanently.
Unfortunately archiving the installers to disc/drive would be the user's responsibility in the event of a Steam shutdown. but the internet being what it is I'm sure download sites would spring up.
@@shona-sof And you believe words of big companies? All it takes is for some big publisher to give Steam money in exchange for reinstating this online requirement. If Steam was shutting down in chaos they could even just pay off a single employee.
Well my reason for emulation has always been that when I buy a retro game the developer and publisher get nothing. Often the publisher no longer exists. But with commercial emulation such as virtual console, whilst the original devs might not be getting money from it the company who owns the property is and it will fund more games from them. So I'll buy that, and failing that, I'll emulate.
I like the bouquet approach. I love Learning about my favorite games and how they were made.
Just give me accurate emulation, a crt filter, and some concept art and I’ll give you money
I really love this guy's passion. Amazing talk 10/10
This is such an important subject! It’s unfortunate not many people are aware of it or even care. Keep doing what you’re doing man! I love your work and support it. Hopefully one day soon we will have easy and ready access to thousands of old games
$30 IS a high price point for an individual older game, absolutely. Especially if it's only a digital copy. But yes, like the legacies collection, you can add value by providing more content people will actually care about. At least, if you don't try and piece meal it out...
To me, for example, including the soundtrack to a game does make that game more valuable. Trying to sell me that separately does not. I'll either take the files from your game anyway if I really want them, or find good OC Remix versions.
I soft modded my Wii & setup 40 systems on it. I have preserved over 24000 games. Over 98% are playable, yet every time a developer remakes or remasters a game or compilation with a physical release I buy it especially if they put a lot of stuff into the extras like the awesome swapping on the fly from the original or the remake which is just great. Pirates are made because companies don't give people the ability to play them any other way. Physical versions are necessary but if they aren't preserved digitally they will be lost forever. Many developers want their games enjoyed & not forgotten I would love to play my NES games without all of the flickering & slow down, basically remastered.
14:40 this has since been denied, there's a Nintendo emulation that was developed for the N64 DD, eventually used for Animal Crossing, that used this code and predates the uploaded emulation.
I'm just seeing this now.
My person experience - I've bought many older Sega Master System and Mega Drive games for my Xbox. Experience these games again with my son is something we both look forward to. Especially the old couch coop games. If I really enjoyed it as a kid I'm happy to buy it again for a reasonable price just to own a digital copy.
Gorramn. One of the best GDC talks I've ever heard. Great speaker. Great content. Passionately delivered.
I have preserved the Gamecube Service Disk and the SNES Burn-in Test Cart REV D. BS-X preservation is almost certainly a lost cause :( Thanks for winning the auction for the Kirby games. Nintendo was stupid for cancelling and refusing to release a lot of games. Hopefully we will have more prototype dumps soon.
Emulation and backups are vital to preserving game history when there are options to buy official I try but it’s not always the case with more obscure titles
we need more discussion like this, about this
Uncle Buck, Great movie.
Used to play NESticle at my primary school computer class in 2nd grade. I was familiar with Famiclone before, but the teacher actually uses it as a prize for a good job. Played Gremlins 2, I suppose. Also, GTA1.
Thank you so much for being in defence of us emulator enthusiasts, Frank!
I think if we EVER miraculously get a Mother 123 collection, I wanna see scans of the Player's Guide and images of the original clay models (if they still exist,) as well as other fun pieces of trivia, like the Mach Pizza air freshener and new information about the lost Earthbound 64. Getting to see all of that while also being able to play these games, one of which was never released outside of Japan would be incredible.
I loved this presentation, and I feel a lot more people need to see this!
I have a question about the Mega Man Legacy Collection, though. There is a noticeable amount of input lag in these games--do you have any idea what might have caused this? Is it related to that "work-around" to emulation that you mentioned earlier in your presentation? If so, I feel this is very unfortunate, as this means that current industry attitudes towards emulation have marred what is otherwise an excellent re-release of these classics.
The year after this, digital eclipse released a compilation game that included ducktales btw
Warched it 6 years ago. And watching it again. And again. So good, so much good examples...
Wow, really great talk. It almost makes me want to become a video game historian.
My bf threw 2 paintings he did in the garbage, his friend ended up taking them out of the garbage and years later they're hanging on my wall. Even if something isn't amazing or didn't turn out how you wanted it, it's still valid, it's still something you created. Same with games. Beta's for example, I find insanely interesting and I love seeing videos of games going through Beta's and I think it would be amazing if this information is available in these Collection/Legacy Collection releases. Once you get that info out to the world it has a better chance of being retained. Someone might be using a product thinking thats how it is, thats it, but in reality there could of been a previous version lost to time or a long journey of Beta's and Alpha's lost to time.
I really, really like him pointing out that selling games with an 'emulator' can work, and it does, and GoG is a good example of it. And that depending on the emulator, it can be easily distributed in many platforms at once, without too much hassle. I mean, aren't there dosbox ports for phones/android or whatnot even?, not that GoG supports those but, yeah.
You can really see the impact today. Game collections with emulated games, and Nintendo barely having any third party games in their NSO services because the companies would rather sell them on the eshop themselves
This stings differently in 2021. After the events like Mario 3d all stars
How come?
Thanks to emulation I got into videogames as a whole, how else would a third world country person like me get into them if not thanks to emulation? And now that I'm making my own money I want to buy those games I played a lot, like the Golden Sun trilogy which I was made before I was born and the only way to buy them legally I had was on the Wii U, console I have never planed on buying.
Emulation is needed.
This man is speaking truth about EMULATION and why is bad that companies DEMONIZED it instead of embracing it
25:41 - 30:10
To me, this sums up the entire problem almost perfectly.
He’s absolutely right! Think about other media over the centuries. We have museums funded by millions of dollars preserving ancient artifacts worth millions of dollars. Same with old books and even ancient scrolls. Original video games need to be preserved.
30:42
Interesting how he softens the blow a little bit my referring to “we”. By “we” he means Nintendo, Sega, Sony…basically all the Japanese mega-corps that are in the video game business.
I kept meaning to watch this, but I'm glad I did! infinitely more relevant now, with what nintendo's been doing in recent months. :(
I loved the original DuckTales. What a fun game
Thank you for this video & ty to the speaker for this amazing speech. This has completely changed my outlook on emulation. I'd now like to get into emulation myself.
Another example of a notable game from 1989 that for some reason wasn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article was Chip's Challenge (originally for Lynx, ported to Windows and home computers shortly afterward), which was best known from the Windows Entertainment Pack but was unplayable on 64-bit Windows until the 2015 port was released on Steam (along with a port of the much less widely released Chip's Challenge 2, and the new game Chuck's Challenge, named after series creator Chuck Sommerville).
I have the roms for Mega Man 1-5. Didn't stop me buying the Mega Man Collections
I share this video regularly. People in the industry, journalism, and gamers in general NEED to know this informaiton.
Super enjoyed the talk. Glad your doing this!
Only a few years later and we have a jajamaru collection now. :-)
I had a NES as a kid and a black Peavey Predator as a teen also. Fun times.
Holy crap. Nintendo downloaded roms of the internet made by hackers and sold it to regular customers!
My mind is blown.
There are at least some ROMs on VC which do not seem to originate from the rom piracy scene... and yet, even they have iNES headers. Weirdness.
There are at least some ROMs on VC which do not seem to originate from the rom piracy scene... and yet, even they have iNES headers. Weirdness.
There are at least some ROMs on VC which do not seem to originate from the rom piracy scene... and yet, even they have iNES headers. Weirdness.
That is not what he said!
Yeah, it's also possible Nintendo dumped the ROMs themselves... using the very ROM copiers/piracy tools they used to fight against in the past. Which may as well be "same difference".
Last few year start to understand good games are still good games many years later if they had solid foundation the game holds up
One old game I emulated that without the emulation and fan community, I'd have never experienced: 46 okunen monogatari: the shinka Ron, aka E.V.O. The Theory of Evolution. This game, not only was it never released outside of Japan, the system it was made for also never left Japan. A true delight.
Now, in 2021, it looks like the example set by Mega Man seems to have inspired quite a few of this kind of release.
glad to hear a mention of agdq here!
I´ve got to agree. As someone who was born in 2001, I firmly believe megaman legacy collection is one of the best things that have ever happened.
I doubt anyone will see this but there is one new release that's doing something I would love to see reviving retro games. Basically they are selling a new gba game in different formats, you can get the rom and for a little more you can get a physical copy with the cartridge and a old school manual inside, with artwork and commentary. As much as I like compilations, I really want to see more of this instead.
So, here is my suggestion for anyone who cares, we need a new official console, preferably a handheld, dedicated to emulation paired with a cartridge format to allow for games from different systems, and any physical copy of those games should be treated as a collectible item, with stuff like a little manual with artwork, dev commentary and another popular game suggestions. Chinese emulators like the rg350p are already halfway there. Achievements should be mandatory on this new system as it really helps bring life back to old games.
For those who only care about the roms, they should be readily available for download, be it via subscription service or bought separately by a small fee, mostly like gamepass, there should be a monthly or quarterly rotation of roms made available at any given time to keep things fresh and to better showcase other games to the public. What if you really enjoy one particular game or just want to collect? Buy that special physical release made on demand and delivered by mail (it would be smart to partner with amazon for that, specially because they want to get in the game industry). Note that you don't need to have physical copies of every game, only the ones you put the work to make it special, though physical copies should be advertised on the online shop, and a little monthly showcase wouldn't hurt.
I would love being able to play new indie ports as well, because I had many issues with input lag in Hollow knight and that simply isn't a problem with my handhelds.
With a system like that, it's a matter of negotiating with devs who may want to see their games on the platform, I would imagine it would be a big issue with Nintendo though I don't see why they aren't the ones making it in the first place.
I know it is wishful thinking but this is only a dream of mine.
49:49 I’m kind of surprised and yet somewhat fascinated how he overcomplicates how to preserve online games here. In 2016 I would have said something similar, but now with things like viable fan servers and Pretendo coming into the spotlight the answer is so much more clearer.
17:55 the first "full-speed" N64 emulator was on PCs in 1999 and now in 2020 I still can't get good emulation on like 80% of the games.
To be fair, I think that says more about the N64 than the people who have tried to reverse engineer it
N64 was a mess from what I understand, a lot of devs didn't like working on it.
this is quickly changing recently. Parallel n64 is moving at fast rate, and we also have project64 aiming for cycle accuracy.
Btw, there are many communities on the net that does digital preservation of original games for old systems now. We are a team of people who do preservation of old Commodore 64 games, many which only exist on now 30 year old tapes that are gradually loosing their data. Although pirates have been very good at this up to this day they also have a tendency to modify the binaries and "tag" their releases with intro scrollers and all sorts of hacks. We at retrocollector.org try to preserve the originals as they were mastered without any tampering including scans of the boxes and other things. I am afraid a lot of focus is only made on the console classics like Megaman, which in the end means a lot of games will take the same route as those old movies that are lost forever now, even though preserving a game takes so little storage space compared to a film.
Very good talk. Just to clarify a point for future readers: it was discovered in later years that most probably Nintendo did not download the ROM from Internet as they had hired the creator of iNes for making their internal emulator and, well, he had invented those headers.
This is really interesting I think so many games a lost and in a lot of cases the only option is to pirate because many retro games aren't being sold anymore. I'm sure if the games were on steam and for a reasonable price and with achievements or other added extras people would pay rather than downloading roms or isos.
Videogames are like consumables. If you put Coca Cola in a Pepsi bottle, thats not illegal, to drink. Emulation is the same and needs to be treated as such. If you own a book you should be able to PDF it and read it on your phone if you want without repurchasing it. Same principle. A bottle cap is perhaps a way to prevent circumvention of soda. But if you own the soda its a non-issue. Funnels and cups are legal as well.
NESticle, gotta love Bloodlust Software!
Awesome talk! Uncle Buck would be proud!
2018 update... Disney took ducktails remastered down, and most of all the old tomb raider games are officially available they only run an win95
Emulation was a dirty word in 1998 - I know because this was the same year I found out about Gameboy emulators and Pokemon.
oh and Awesome topic. So funny as an adut who was a gamer growing up. I now have my money and would like to buy remakes, emulation, rereleases.
"Spotify of games"!! That is what I have been saying. Add revenue for classics and subscription for new games and updated games. Thank you very much for the work you do.
Here's the thing spotify doesn't really work for making money. To make money equal to a minimum wage job off of spotify you would need to have to have 6 million play every single day. This is fine for music artist that get most of their money from tours and merch but video game devs can't go on tour and code on stage.
OmegaBlue69 Then changes need to be made to the system. Free to stream with adds but $20 or so a month for unlimited legal downloads would be reasonable. If it was owned by devs they could split profits fairly instead of most of it going to the company hosting the products. I am not an expert but I would pay $30 a month for professionally programed emulators, universal launcher and unlimited legal rom downloads. Cutting the expense of paying a bunch of CEOs to run/own the service would free up profits and splitting the cost of upkeep and improvements would create incentive for companies to push the service instead of ignoring it. As I said, I'm not an expert but I think it could be done and be beneficial for all involved.
OmegaBlue69 Removing some if the exclusivity of games could potentially help smaller devs by allowing easy and cheap access to games that might otherwise get ignored. I was late to a few good smaller dev games because Skyrim. Basing profit on how much a game gets played could be incentive for companies to make better games. Instead of a one time purchase where the profits are made when it's sold or a free to play model where they have to convince them to pay for additional content they would have to rely on the game being good and nothing else. The consumer can then play what they want without additional investment, increasing the chance that a good game will be played and will make profit. I think it is worth looking into at least.
Your twitter thread brought me here, and it was treat to lesson :)
Completely agree with this. It's a loss of money on the companies end and forces potential buyers to pirate games. That's why stuff like Nintendos Virtual Console is so immensly popular.
Needs more views. Great talk.
the challenge will always be there but the history of video games needs to be preserved.
Emulation has technical challenges which, even today, force some software releases to acknowledge that they only work on real classic hw. However, the biggest challenge emulation faces is simply this: Coders continue to discover new undocumented and previously unknown features of the old chips. And if it took 40 years to discover the 8-bit DAC in a 1981 sound chip, what will be discovered 40 years from now?
His claim that "An emulator is accurate" is true only insofar as the emulator coders are aware, and only to the extent that testing has revealed.
I recommend buying the original hardware -- they need preservation too.
The Great Outdoors, man. Annette Benning's finest role. The ol' 96'er. John Candy getting hit with a mini-golf ball while driving a go-kart. The shotgun lamp. I'm not saying it's a good movie, but it has moments.
Thank you, thank you, so much... Thank you!
#freemelee I'm sadden by the fact the legal system is an effective tool for bullying. I know it's prevalent everywhere in society and its use in the video game sphere is not life or death, but its still obvious and depressing :(
I had no idea Steve Jobs announced the connectix virtual game station, I remember using that to play PS1 games flawlessly (in my memory; probably wasn't *flawless* but pretty well) on school computers in 2002
And now we have the NES and SNES clone box made by Nintendo.
@William Burns In the end, they are just Pi equivalents running proprietary software. Nothing saying you can't find a way past security and put your own software on them. In the end, a Pi is a Pi. But it does go to show that like everything else Nintendo puts out, it's low effort, high price. They could have easily bundled the SNES and NES classic minis together into one package, maybe raise the price $5. They certainly had enough storage space on the things to do so, and SNES controllers would have worked perfectly fine as NES controllers.
still relevant in 2018
Still relevant in 2020
@@Flameshadow22 specially now
I think that only thing that is stopping publishers is the fear to hardware manufacturers, becuase if for example the Xbox game pass uses something like Mame and the other one on their service, it's only to get the rights from the developers, becuase it could be an NES game, but the game code is theirs not Nintendo's, and then we can easily have the Spotify for gaming and open up generations and platforms of games into one single and consumer friendly package.
Quite an interesting and insightful presentation.
Interesting to hear Frank opinion over AM2R.