What is with everyone thinking using Dolphin is illegal?

[Starscream]

If you were to have downloaded old Sega Genesis games and NES games while the GC was still new, you would have thought the same as you do now, that they are old and hard to find and that no one really cares about them anymore. Had you waited till the Wii came out, you would have realized that those old games are now available on the VC and that you are expected to pay for them. Now, since you have already stolen those games, you no longer need to buy them and are costing Nintendo money all the same. The point is that you're giving these old games and old game developers a time limit (that is in your mind) of when you think enough time has gone by and when you feel that it is okay to obtain these older games by downloading them for free. That time limit or the rarity that you have in your mind is not your call to make and you do not know what console or what developer has in store for their old games.

In the end, it is their games to do what they like, not yours. If you feel okay with downloading games for free, then fine, but if you don't (as you say) you have to respect all games and game developers alike.

[Ocean]

Some old game developers have been bankrupt for decades and the publisher has no sales license for the game anymore. Please reread the copyright.gov part where it says

Quote:video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

You can't steal something which has become commercially obsolete. Video games are unique in terms of copyrights compared to music, films and old products that still hold commercial value, because many of the producing companies and publishers no longer exist just 30 decades after the first release.

Rephrasing.. These games will never be available in their original commercial form again. In contrast some old systems like sega mega drive II are still commercially available at clearance prices so the plantiff has a case against you due to the commercial availability of the product. However some games and software (like many popular shareware licensed commercial PC games in the 90's) are obsolete because

1. They cannot be literally purchased anywhere
2. The developer doesn't exist anymore.

You can purchase beethoven music and though it's in the public domain, you still pay royalties to the recording company who produced the CD from orchestral performance, hence it's not obsolete.

Old atari 2600 games for example, such as the one I mentioned, are obsolete because

1. Atari inc., the publisher, went bankrupt in 1983
2. Digital eclipse inc. doesn't include the game in any of it's collections
3. There are no secondary editions or commercial copies available in 2010 except in private home collections
4. The developer xonox went bankrupt in 1984
5. Hasbro, Infogrames and ASA (the legacy stockholders) have not produced any cartridges for either the 2600 or 5200 systems ever since.

Really, I don't know how you can disrespect a game developer that no longer exists . It is completely different than pirating wii or xbox360 games. Since it's literally impossible to obtain game cartridges like artillery duel anymore, the only way to get them is to find a backup copy online or from a ftp archive. Even if you *want* to pay for it, you can't.

[Starscream]

(05-27-2010, 03:44 AM)[SS] Starscream Wrote: That time limit or the rarity that you have in your mind is not your call to make and you do not know what console or what developer has in store for their old games.

http://www.atari.com/games/atari_flashback2_plus/7800

Are you able to tell me with any certainty that Atari does not now, or ever will be releasing reproductions of their other consoles or games in an attempt to make money?

[Ocean]

Every single game on the flashback are atari's own productions. It has no third party releases of successful games, because ASA no longer has rights to them. Nearly every flashback game has already been republished years ago either as NES titles or on the ps1.

There are over 500 games for the atari 2600 (over 600 if counting the 5200 ones made shortly before atari went bust) that have never been republished. No, nobody can say with certainty they wont be all made into similar remakes that are built into a device with flash memory. Will you wait for the next 10-20 years or more to find out? I wouldn't know. The few games I'd play, Atlantis and Artillery duel can't be bought anywhere officially, except when they pop up on ebay.

[Diddy Kong]

Say one decides to be "moral", how would they go about dumping a game cartridge for a prehistoric console?

[Apostacious]

(05-27-2010, 08:09 AM)Diddy Kong Wrote: Say one decides to be "moral", how would they go about dumping a game cartridge for a prehistoric console?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwq6vRM8U7k&feature=player_embedded

Ive seen for all types cartridges but they're not cheap, namely the Retrode, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noKhIsKWP5E

[Ocean]

Depends on how old you're talking about. You could read and rip your snes and sega genesis cartridges with retrode for about 100-150 bucks. N64 cartridges are harder because there is really just one tool available which is Doctor V64, and it is extremely expensive & hard to find (and is obviously not in production anymore). Gamecube games are just as easy to rip as wii games, there is even a guide on dolphin forums.

If we're talking 'nes' old, there are a couple ways to go about it.. You can either build a eprom pcb that plugs into a cartridge and bridge it to usb, or you can buy a kit such as copynes (but it will require significant soldering skills and knowledge of cutting traces on the board). A ready kit usually wont be able to read most roms at all, and pal/jp roms will be out of question. However for US dumps they can be useful.

Atari games are even harder if not impossible to dump anymore because the cartridge battery has an average lifespan of 10 years. Most rips were made on win95 or dos applications which can't be even run on modern computers unless using dos emulator in 16-bit compatibility mode. I wouldn't say it's impossible because there has been one person called Peter Rittwage who has attempted to create a working dump program in the 2000's. But it's never surfaced on the internet and his site is dead so it's definitely out of reach.

[mystvearn]

I have a slightly different question. I don't have any consoles, but after hearing about this Dolphin emulator, I go out buy used games (which are cheap), and wiimote (without the original console itself) and play this game on my pc. Is this legal? Technically I have the game, but not the original means to play it by its own without the console relying only on emulator and computer.

[Starscream]

(04-03-2011, 08:51 PM)mystvearn Wrote: I go out buy used games (which are cheap), and wiimote (without the original console itself) and play this game on my pc. Is this legal?

It depends who you ask.

[KHRZ]

Say you also bought a 3rd party wiimote, Nintendo would earn no cash so they would say no