Old School Games.

[yro Pedward]

Have you ever been told that you can actually play old school games onto your computer? For me, I am here to share it to ya, but it'll only cost a reply from any of you that are interested.

[Graedius]

Yes, it's called emulators, and everyone knows. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[yro Pedward]

Oouuuuwwwww, too bad for me then. But if they need to know where to get it, I know a perfect, and safe place to get it, with no cost of limitation.

[Lazo]

I think anyone who cares enough to want an emulater already has one.

[TekStation]

How about if we start up a topic about emulators and ROMs instead? =P

~Tek Station

[yro Pedward]

Ya, it's a good idea though, hehehe, let's let the admins, or mods decide.

[Lazo]

Or, not, and transform it ourselves. We don't have to depend on the mods for everything.

First, no matter how you feel about it, ROMs and emulations are illegal. That means not legal. Not legal. Not legal. Not legal. At all.

I don't approve of emulators for systems that are still in commission, such as Gameboy Advance, however, I think that it's a good way for people who are willing to take that risk to relive "the good ol' days." Usually with ROMs of games they never owned.

[Graedius]

Illegal?

Honestly, has that stoppped any of us before?
XD, Half of my computer (or more) is illegal. XD

I approve of games still in circulation for a "Try" basis. You can try out GBA games and see if they're crappy or not, heh.

[TekStation]

If you own the original game, ROMs are legal to own. I assume the same would go with the type of Emulator. I still technically own a SNES, so I find nothing wrong with having ZSNES (the SNES emulator I favor) or most of the games with it. I have all the basics, such as the SNES FF games, Yoshi's Island, and stuff like that. Use to use them both for pleasure and for ripping sprites to use in my comics and such (when I still were active enough to make comics, that is >_>).

So I'm all good, legal-wise =P

~Tek Station

[Bry]

Emulators are perfectly legal. They can (and indeed have been) sold as commercial products. Best example was the Playstation Emulator, Bleem! which was available for the PC and a special version for the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast Discs had to be unique for each game but essentially you bought, say Bleem! Gran Turismo 2 for Dreamcast.
Popped the disc in the console, and when asked, you put the original Playstaion disc in the Dreamcast and away you went.
(Before anyone says, Bleem wasn't stopped because it was illegal. What happened was Sony tried to get it stopped and lost the court case. So they kept trying until Bleem was eventually made bankrupt from the legal costs of defending itself. Never for actually doing something illegal)
So yes, there is absolutly nothing illegal in an emulator. Its just a bunch of code that talks to one system and tells it to try and behave like a different system.
Heck, the Playstation 2 has PSX emulator software inside it.

Roms... well... technically illegal yes. Even if you do own the original cartridge, its not exactly over the table. Ofcourse, if you MADE a ROM from you own cartridge for backup purposes, that's different.
But SNES games pretty much mean nothing to the likes of Nintendo or other game makers now. If you buy them, it'll be second hand from shops or brand new sealed ones in the hands of collectors who know they can be sold for biggish cash.
So for pretty much 99.99% of SNES games sold now, nothing will go to the game companies. Commercially, SNES roms do no harm. In a couple of years, N64 ROMs will be far more common as, again, they aren't produced anymore and are fast only available second hand or through collectors.. though there are possibly a couple of warehouses still trying to flog off stock.

GBA Roms, yes, not really able to approve of that too much... especially since Nintendo pretty much depends on GBA software sales to stay viable. I've used it as a trial once or twice or for games that aren't out in the UK yet but that's about it.
Doesn't mean I'm critical of other people who use them though. ^_^

[yro Pedward]

Well, at Gamestop (down here in Florida) are selling like old games, which yeah, perfectplace to pick up, also, selling away stuff. Ebay is like expensive, so drop by in Gamestop store! Many old games are there and such, but I get the feeling people wishes to play over computer. And there was rumors you can play against one and another over netplay, like Zsnes, connecting to an IP number, for Gens, you connect to people around the world to challenge on games they host, but depending how good their ping is. I'm surprised Zsnes has no no more absolute lag in game since the day they updated and fixed some bugs in it.

[Graedius]

Well, I guess the point is, why is the downloading of something that is no longer made and the original company no longer cares about nor gets any proft for illegal? XD

[Bry]

Mainly just copyright issues and alike =P Just how the law works.
Some companies take a different approach... Bungie for example, the creators of Halo, have made their original game series, called Marathon, open source.
So it is totally free to download from the Bungie website and even to tweak the files however you want. That's Marathon 1, 2 and 3 all for free from the makers. Not a pad deal really.

Though part of why Nintendo would be concerned is because they tend to re-release their games. A great number of GBA games are SNES ports and a fair deal of DS games are based on N64 versions. So in that sense, it does still make a little sense about why Nintendo atleast would make an issue out of it.

[Soul]

Nintendo was not concerned at all about SNES roms, until the GBA shipped. Since a lot of SNES games have been released for the GBA, SNES roms have once again become a real threat to Nintendo's business. And N64 roms will soon be just as threatening because many of them will be relaunched on the DS. That means that Nintendo will actively hunt down sites that offer SNES and N64 roms of their games. And believe me, I assure you they are doing it every day.

Roms are always illegal simply because Nintendo says so. Being the copyright holders of their games, they have complete legal authority to decide how their games are to be distributed. If they say that their games shall only be distributed in hardware made by themselves and that all other forms are illegal, then that's the way it's going to be, and current laws back such a decision. As for emulators, an emulator is simply a program that simulates a different environment so as to enable software from other systems to run in an incompatible system. For example you can't run Mac OS X on anything that's not a Mac, unless you use an emulator (called Basilisk... right PFY?). That doesn't imply emulators are illegal. An emulator can be illegal if it is legally classified by lawyers as a "antipiracy-measure-disabling device". Any device or software that breaks copyright-protection measures is potentially illegal, particularly if it only has that one function. CD burners can be used for music piracy but they can be used to make data discs and legitimate copies of one's own music or other works, thus they have many other uses that help them not be classified as devices meant exclusively for piracy.

Here's a helpful document:
img.2yr.net/EmuFAQ.html

[yro Pedward]

Yeah, that's true about that.