oh, Good Morning. Rom situation is sad. I always buy old games when the possibility comes, and i m happy that latest street fighter for ps4 comes with 12 roms of old games. Offering download for games now that most companies made an official emulated version of the old consoles is illegal enough. I m also very disappointed that nintendo does not allow you to download roms from website with payment outside the virtual console games that require a nintendo console to be played. And that is sick since earnings come from softwares not from hardware for them Same for arcade roms, only snk offered a paid download for them.

Some of these sites are making money by offering ROMs though. That's scummy.

All this will do is encourage a LOT of people to download all of the ROMs available from other sites so that they can be preserved and made available by a variety of different means. If every ROM site in the world vanished Nintendo would not see a tangible bump in their sales. In fact the reduction of exposure might reduce retro sales on their virtual consoles. My son played a lot of 16 ear games in his PC via emulator and then bought a bunch of them for virtual console so he could have the convenience of all his games in one place. I don't think Nintendo gets this at all.

i still think 5$ for any rom, up to n64 and vanished gameboys, would be a good deal for them. A cash flow. Unsure how much would cost to setup the system to do so. probably little since they have the eshop already. Same for SEGA. Sony too cold sell ps1 cd images without repackaging them every time for ps3 or ps4.

asturur:

i still think 5$ for any rom, up to n64 and vanished gameboys, would be a good deal for them. A cash flow. Unsure how much would cost to setup the system to do so. probably little since they have the eshop already. Same for SEGA. Sony too cold sell ps1 cd images without repackaging them every time for ps3 or ps4.

I'd definitely consider paying $5/game if I were able to login to an account and download it anytime/anywhere without a worry.

I understand that Nintendo wants to protect their stuff but in this case they are exaggerating. We are talking about games that are 20 or 30 years old that very few people recognize and are willing to pay something for them so why not make them "freeware" for all those who want to try them out.

Same old story, company kills off an offering to the market that they were never willing to handle themselves. A lose for everybody.

Vid I watched yesterday nailed it, allow us to purchase an old official rom/game then be able to play across multiple emulation platforms. Not have to buy the same game for every emulation! Nintendo is notorious of this within there own platforms. [youtube=YMqtS7bsJUY]

H83:

I understand that Nintendo wants to protect their stuff but in this case they are exaggerating. We are talking about games that are 20 or 30 years old that very few people recognize and are willing to pay something for them so why not make them "freeware" for all those who want to try them out.

Hmm. A game like Half-life is coming up to 20yrs old, but, I don't see anyone suggesting that Half-life should be made freeware. The same goes for games like Quake and Quake 2, which are now over 20yrs old. The list could go on and on. Without a doubt, Nintendo games are some of the most downloaded/pirated software and I do think this is a problem. More likely than not, I think what Nintendo has been doing is pre-emptive, due to the Switch being hacked and Switch games flooding rom sites if they didn't do anything.

Stormyandcold:

Hmm. A game like Half-life is coming up to 20yrs old, but, I don't see anyone suggesting that Half-life should be made freeware. The same goes for games like Quake and Quake 2, which are now over 20yrs old. The list could go on and on. Without a doubt, Nintendo games are some of the most downloaded/pirated software and I do think this is a problem. More likely than not, I think what Nintendo has been doing is pre-emptive, due to the Switch being hacked and Switch games flooding rom sites if they didn't do anything.

On the other hand, I doubt that Valve, Bethesda, or any large company cares if anyone pirates those games.

Stormyandcold:

Hmm. A game like Half-life is coming up to 20yrs old, but, I don't see anyone suggesting that Half-life should be made freeware. The same goes for games like Quake and Quake 2, which are now over 20yrs old. The list could go on and on. Without a doubt, Nintendo games are some of the most downloaded/pirated software and I do think this is a problem. More likely than not, I think what Nintendo has been doing is pre-emptive, due to the Switch being hacked and Switch games flooding rom sites if they didn't do anything.

You make a good point, didn´t remember that games like Half Life are turning into classics. But on the other hand, what´s the value of those amazing classics nowadays? Everybody has already played Half Life so who´s going to pay for it? And how much is the game worth right now, 5 or 10€? Some people defend that games older than 20 or 30 years should be free or almost free and i think i agree with them. And in Nintendo´s case, things are different because we are talking about even older games still from the 2D times...

Total titles available: 34305 That's a lot of roms. I thought they only listed roms with no copyright protection available meaning they are freeware basically.

asturur:

i still think 5$ for any rom, up to n64 and vanished gameboys, would be a good deal for them.

They don't want you to have ROMs. Nintendo especially considers emulation illegal, even if you have a legit copy of the game. They want to sell you the same game 100 times on every iteration of their virtual console and their NES Classic Editions and whatnot. Nintendo have an infamous page about emulation: https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom (I had to throw up a little reading that blatantly anti-consumer BS. They managed to compress so many lies and misinformation in such a little amount of characters. It's like a next-gen compression algorithm for BS.) And I wouldn't pay even $5 for a ROM to begin with... Maybe $1. Maybe.

a sad day !

RealNC:

They don't want you to have ROMs. Nintendo especially considers emulation illegal, even if you have a legit copy of the game. They want to sell you the same game 100 times on every iteration of their virtual console and their NES Classic Editions and whatnot. Nintendo have an infamous page about emulation: https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom (I had to throw up a little reading that blatantly anti-consumer BS. They managed to compress so many lies and misinformation in such a little amount of characters. It's like a next-gen compression algorithm for BS.) And I wouldn't pay even $5 for a ROM to begin with... Maybe $1. Maybe.

I wouldn't mind Nintendo being against emulation so much if they changed a few things. 1. I bought Virtual console games on my Wii, but these could not transfer to my Wii U, so if I wanted them again I had to buy them? What about originals of games I own? I own my carts still of both Zelda's on the n64, there's no way I can prove I own these to Nintendo to get a copy of them for virtual console and have that on every Nintendo system I bought? 2. So you have this new console, that you can take with you everywhere. You're embracing the whole online shop experience and have improved it 100% from previous iterations. But on the Switch, there is no virtual console? 3. The price the price the priceeeeeeee. Buying these games on virtual console were not cheap, no they weren't that badly priced but not cheap to the point where I wouldn't mind paying for them again. 4. This one I would understand if they had virtual console on the Switch, but Nintendo even said they have no plans of doing so. But if you aren't going to have Virtual Console on the Switch, then will you at least put these classic games on iOS and Android? Or have the virtual Console market available on both? I like having some of the series have a spot on mobile devices how they are now, but I just want to legally play Pokemon Red on my phone! I get that they have to protect their content and property, I fully understand that. But they don't make it easy to support them doing so. I get these roms are not the most legal, but come on do you know what really helped Sega out? Releasing the original Sonic games on Android for free!

All you have to do is wait 120 years from creation of the game and you are free to copy it for resale. What's all the belly aching about?

I may hate Nintendo, but they do have a point, piracy is criminal and should not be encouraged, but then again abandonware has always been a gray zone.

RzrTrek:

I may hate Nintendo, but they do have a point, piracy is criminal and should not be encouraged, but then again abandonware has always been a gray zone.

You know that with "piracy" you make an all-in-one term for different laws in every country around the world? In my country if you own a "creative work" you can make a "private copy" for you own and most of EULA terms do not apply at all (you can also bypass the DRM/copy protection since it is something against the law of private copy itself... of course any kind of profits is not allowed at all in any case...), but at the same time there is no such thing like "fair use". In other countries is the opposite.

I think Nintendo can go get ligma. They're so ass-backwards when it comes to everything internet related it's unreal. Just look into their YouTube policies for starters.

There are so many rom sites that one disappearing really don't matter in the long run, there will always be people who will want to play old forgotten video games and they will always be available because..... the net is vast and infinite xD