I would provide Nintendo's link, but that's kind of biased toward anything emulation is illegal. Which isn't entirely true, only distributing Roms and bios is.
Wikipedia - Emulation - Legal Issues, the US section specifically:
Quote:However, unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention.[2] Obtaining games through methods not authorized by the developer or publisher is illegal in the United States.
Putting up ROMs on a public website constitutes unauthorized distribution (unless you and Nintendo worked something out). Copying a game through adapters or using your console to dump a game
is unauthorized by the developer or publisher,
but that's rightly covered under our Fair Use rules, since it's a personal copy at that point, intended for your own use and not for distribution.
Like I said, other countries have different rules. I'm pretty sure the Netherlands (or Sweden?) allows just what you said, where if you have the physical incarnation you can download it. I've only lived in the U.S., so I can only speak for this country (sometimes Canada too) :p
@noah - Sorry, kinda missed your question. The BeagleBone Black should be roughly 2x as fast as the Raspberry Pi for a price increase of only $10. The BeagleBone Black is geared more towards hardware hacking; the RPi is more of a multi-purpose learning tool. If you want to emulate systems, it's alright; you need to be willing to work at it to get good results. The RPi is easier to get Linux running on, and it has an expansive community. The BeagleBone has a solid community, but it's not as "supported" as the RPi (probably due to popularity, but that might change). If you are advanced in Linux, the BeagleBone Black is a better offer; if you want to start dabbling in ARM SoCs, the RPi is a good entry point.
Quote:A game is merely software
which needs the console to be played on.
i supose it`s only illegal if there`s direct competition between the console and the emu.
(05-13-2013, 01:54 PM)omega_rugal Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:A game is merely software
which needs the console to be played on.
i supose it`s only illegal if there`s direct competition between the console and the emu.
Software is a set of instructions for a specific task. The game console happens to be the platform of choice by the software's author, but the console itself is not necessary to run said software. You see this all the time with software emulators included with official SDKs. This helps developers program games for a system even before the system is widely available. A great example of this is Ensata (the official DS emulator from Nintendo) or the only reasonably working emulator for the forgotten, maligned Game.com.
It's also not illegal for an emu and the console itself to be in direct competition. That was one of the major decisions to come from
Sony v. Bleem!. Sony lost its case to prove that running Playstation games on non-Playstation hardware was unfair competition. If that were the case, a number of emulators published during the lifespan of a console (e.g. emulators for the GBA, DS, PSP, Wii) would have been banned. That wasn't and hasn't been the case in the U.S.
But Nintendo claims that emulators are illegal, so why would they make one? And what is the game.com emulator?
(05-13-2013, 09:45 PM)noah Wrote: [ -> ]But Nintendo claims that emulators are illegal, so why would they make one?
They claim that emulators are illegal when they lose money. I explain.
IMO the only emulator that really bothers Nintendo is Dolphin. Why? Because it emulates their current system. They aren't silly. They know that a lot of people use illegal copies and simply use the emulator. And they know how much it costs them. They don't really care about other emulators (for older systems). If they make one they won't win a lot of money with it but it will increase their popularity among old players. It's free ad.
Wii U release is a windfall for them. It's a "respite" until a Wii U emulator exists
Don't forget, Nintendo (and even Sony now on the PSP and Vita) make a pretty good sum of cash from Virtual Consoles on the Wii, WiiU, and 3DS. They may be older games, but they still "compete" against modern emulators that we use. They have probably always disliked every emulator since they saw it as reducing demand for re-releases and remakes. Don't forget that VBA was very popular when the GBA was still available in retail; that must have been frustrating for them just like Dolphin.
@noah - The Game.com was Tiger Electronic's failed attempt at a real handheld console. Due to lack of interest in system, hardly anyone wanted to program an emulator for it. MESS has hit or miss support though. It probably would have been forgotten altogether from history once the real systems died. At any rate, in '11, someone finally leaked an internal developer's only emulator that Tiger provided. It can run all of the games, but most only have tested it for nostalgia or educational purposes (because really, the games are pretty bad). I don't have the system or the games, but you can see the status of the emulator on YouTube.
noah Wrote:Also, what is better, a Raspverry Pi or this Beaglebone thing (had to look it up at first, never heard of it).
The beagleboard is better hardware wise. But also much pricier.
Is Ensata better than DeSmuME? And Nintendo made it? That's what doesn't make sense, why didn't they just send devs each a DS to make games for, instead of creating an emulator which they claim is illegal?