Ramble - Nintendo - ROMs and other (slightly odd) decisions

Today I'm going to ramble about ROMs, defined by Wikipedia as:
"A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequently used in the context of emulation, whereby older games or computer firmware are copied to ROM files on modern computers and can, using a piece of software known as an emulator, be run on a computer."

I'm sure someone at Nintendo thinks these things are a good idea, but sometimes it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot.  This week in the news we learned that Nintendo was suing two ROM sites, and this has led to other sites preemptively taking ROMs offline.  But why should we care about this?  It IS technically illegal to download the things, after all.

Well, as someone who worries about digital archiving as part of my job, I worry that decisions like this mean games are going to be lost forever.  And even if they're one of the few games 'remastered', these are not the originals.  If, one day, you want to play an old game, perhaps you really want to play the original version, not some shiny HD thing.  And how can you do that?  Emulators.  (Unless you have serious money to buy old consoles and old cartridges etc - and cartridges, tapes etc are decaying, so they won't work forever anyway...)

I haven't played many things via emulators, but I have dallied with SCUMMVM.  Using this brilliant piece of work I've played a game that I never finished on my Amiga - Flight of the Amazon Queen.  And I played it on my phone using the original point and click interface.

Most old games end up as 'Abandonware', defined by Wikipedia as:
"Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in general it is like any item that is abandoned – it is ignored by the owner, and as such product support and possibly copyright enforcement are also "abandoned". It can refer to a product that is no longer available for legal purchase, over the age where the product creator feels an obligation to continue to support it, or where operating systems or hardware platforms have evolved to such a degree that the creator feels continued support cannot be financially justified. In such cases, copyright and support issues are often ignored."

Often the only way to play old games is to download ROMs and use emulators.  If ROM sites weren't collating these games, who would do it?  Maybe what is needed here is better rules. Clearly games that are currently available for sale shouldn't be available for download - that's piracy.  There's a line there somewhere.

I'm guessing that Nintendo's latest action has something to do with their launch of Nintendo Switch Online, coming in September.  Maybe they want people to pay to get their 'classic Nintendo library', so they don't want to risk them getting the games for free elsewhere.  I wonder whether it really would lose them money, though.  If you can conveniently play games on your Switch then you'll probably do it.  You're unlikely to go to the effort of emulating the things if there's an easy option.

Using me as a case in point, I've bought Broken Sword on more platforms than I can remember, just because it was more convenient.  And Monkey Island.  I'm sure people will still give Nintendo money to play their games. If anything, playing a few games via emulators may be more likely to get you interested in classic titles and more likely to pay for the privilege of convenient Switch-based playtime.  Hence shooting themselves in the foot.  Retro is in right now - people want to play games they played when they were young.  They want to show their kids games they remember fondly.  So yeah, I know it's technically illegal, but it's sad it has come to this.

This isn't the first time Nintendo has gone a little over the top - they are notoriously harsh on YouTube copyright issues; they introduced the Nintendo Creators Program so they could make money from YouTubers' videos.  Ok, the games are theirs, but surely it's better that YouTubers are playing the games.  You don't want to put them off.  It's basically free advertising.  Making YouTubers pay for the privilege of advertising for Nintendo seems a little extreme!

If you want to have a go at some old games, go to the Internet Archive - they have a massive archive of old PC games playable in your browser via the emulator DOSBox.  Awesome.  :-D