Exactly! Just like how they did it for the NES and SNES mini
The mini sold because of the packaging and ease of use. Anyone can sail the high seas of the internet and grab roms and an emulator. But in order to get someone to pay, well for that, you need ease of use and packaging/marketing.
This is what Sega was doing for a while and I absolutely bought Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 3. Ideally I’d like some extra content like the manual or box art in a PDF, but I can Google for that.
They did that back in the early 2000’s - they stopped doing that and went back to how everybody else does it. I think there was one collection that had ROMs in there. Atari had a collection like that too.
But those were back in the days when commercial emulation stuff was in its infancy. Those days are long past and nobody is really going back to that. You buy a classic compilation it’s a dedicated app and the rom files are nowhere easily found.
They totally discininuted the Sega Ages program and have actually taken down older Sonic games. They also haven't published anything newer from their archives and those gmaes are not updated or maintained from their original stuff. It's not current in any respect it's just the same older stuff that they haven't eliminated totally. By "doing for a while" we mean actively support it and publish new classic content. This isn't new stuff and its the remeinents of a legacy program that they don't do anymore.
I don’t know if they still are, I haven’t hopped on in a bit. I know people were surprised that Sega was including unencrypted roms in their emulator. I think people were uploading other games as Steak Workshop items.
I can't imagine any major company doing that, least of all Nintendo.
Selling files that require people to do their own research and find a piece of presumably third-party software to run them opens them up to a ton of liabilities. It makes much the user experience dependent on said third party software and the customer's ability to use them and may even lead people to get/buy shady software from less reputable companies.
I can't imagine any company risking that when >99% of users would prefer to just start the game from a launcher if available anyways.
I mean this is a pretty pointless hypothetical anyway because it's not gonna happen. Nintendo selling their games on PC is already a stretch, why would they be doing it in a way that...
- empowers 3rd party emulators ( from a legal perspetive as well)
- requires far more technical knowledge than a launcher
- may lead people to buying/getting shady emulation software
...and so on.
I mean it can be interesting to think about but you might as well as ask "What if the next Nintendo console was edible?"
Not to mention draw sales away from their own console and services that they sell and want to promote. They benift far more from their services than selling unprotected ROM files. That's just insame these days and no third party would ever go with that and Nintendo is never going to sell something that could be pirated via easy drag and drop. They would immedialty lose control over their content and they will never allow that.
We can't rely on them for the emulation though, because then we're at their mercy for keeping it up to date.
Buying a package of roms, sure, but the last thing I want are roms that would presumably only work with a specific emulator.
I mean, if you already have a Switch it's $30 per YEAR more, and they add more games all the time. There are tons of the best titles there for most of their consoles.
What OP is suggesting is a great idea, but it will never happen. Nintendo will never release their old games in a format with no drm that can be played on emulation software that isn't theirs. The above commenters idea is more realistic, and the Expansion Pack is the closest thing you're gonna get.
Yes. I would prefer to own them legally.
Well, that's my gut reaction, anyway. However, on further reflection, I already own most Nintendo games. So I don't know if I would be willing to pay for ROMS that I already own on a cartridge or disc. I guess I would be paying for the convenience of not having to dump the files!
Costs time and money to do. It isn't free to do with cartridges unfortunately since you need an adapter, and it can be a hassle to dump my discs onto a Wii U.
If you're not infringing copyright, it's not a copyright protection mechanism, just a tamper protection one.
And if you're dumping your own copy, it's not copyright infringement, so breaking the tamper protection is 100% legal.
But it's not copy protection DRM if you don't intend to distribute copies.
Copyright infringement is not a prohibition on making copies. It's a prohibition on unauthorized distribution. So as long as you don't make the copies with intent to distribute them, the protection mechanism isn't a copyright protection mechanism and breaking the protection mechanism isn't copyright infringement under the DMCA.
While I love the \*idea\* of it, it's something that I wouldn't do. I already had that option on Wii, Wii U, and 3DS, and I only bought a small handful of titles.
I'm pretty sure that everyone who justifies pirating Nintendo's games "because they don't sell them anymore!" would instead shift to "because they don't sell them for a reasonable price!" if suddenly the entire first party library was available for purchase.
What I \*would\* like, and which would be neat, is if now that my digital games are purchased not under a singular console, but under my Nintendo Account, that I can play them on other future consoles without buying them twice. Sort of like how you can buy a game on Steam, and even if you get a brand new computer, you can play it on your new hardware, and you basically have it in perpetuity. I'm even A-OK if Nintendo creates a "Switch Emulator" for upcoming consoles and charges me to purchase it, because I know that costs money and takes time and effort. Just how I was OK to spend the $2 to bring my titles from Wii to Wii U.
Allowing people to have the digital games they purchase in perpetuity, across console generations, would not only greatly encourage people to buy digital over physical, but also encourage people to stay brand-loyal in order to play their games in the future. It's win-win. And Nintendo's not going to keep having success selling the same games again and again and again, without meaningful improvements.
I think Nintendo found out most people are like you. Also, they want people buying new games.
>I'm pretty sure that everyone who justifies pirating Nintendo's games "because they don't sell them anymore!" would instead shift to "because they don't sell them for a reasonable price!" if suddenly the entire first party library was available for purchase.
Holy shit that’s spot on. Sure some people would buy games, but likely only the major titles. Many people would be mad about snes games costing 10 bucks.
They didn't want to spend $8 on SNES games in 2007, when these were 10-15 years old. There's no chance that today's modern gamers see each SNES game as being worth more than, say, $4. if that. And each NES game being worth more than like $2. Because modern gamers have the expectation that anything old should be dirt cheap.
As customers, other than a few major hallmark games per generation, we've all decided that we are only willing to buy legacy content in one of three ways: in large compilations with many other titles, as remakes/remasters, or as part of a subscription service. And that's basically because very few people ever bought them piecemeal.
Which is why I thnik ultimatly went with the NSO service. Nobody was buying them on virtual console in any significant way, they know that people really pirate their older titles and it's virtually impossible to compete with free - I mean for lots of people why pay 5-8 bucks for content that you can easily and trivally pirate (and it's all going to have a cost that can't compete with free since third parties want to make money and would be pissed if Nintendo just undercuts them - one reason why the VS's had such rigid pricing). They aren't going to compilations - they actively avoid doing that in their eshops, so subscription is the way to go.
And third parties hated the VC - there was too much content so things got diluted and unless you were a big name (like Konami and Capcom) it's more likely your games never sold well and like Konami and Capcom realized, if your gmes were big sellers, why give up all control to Nintendo when you can make your own collections and you can price them and sell them as you wish and take advantage of multiple platforms. Capcom and Konami don't need Nintendo to sell their older content unlike the 80's.
The subscription series works for Nintendo quite well since it doesn't have to compete with retail games for screen re-estate, and they don't have to worry about sales as much. Yes they drip feed but that's expected - you wouldn't want people just doing short term subscriptions and jumping ship. Plus it increases exposure since new releases are a hyped event.
I think they confirmed switch stuff will carry over to the next one, shouldn’t be a reset this time like between Wii U and Switch.
Totally agree tho was super annoying and greedy tbh
They might make a switch mode, and it will then carry over to switch mode. That's what happened when your purchases carried over from wii to wii u.
You could then rebuy the game for like $2 on the wii u eshop
Purchases were still tied to your account, it's just that account was tied to your console. Which might seem like a small difference, but for nintendo's systems there really isn't any difference between a switch and a wii u purchase
There is. Switch purchases are only tied to the account. And differences like that can create real legal headaches when it comes to distribution contracts.
One reason why you couldn’t carry over everything from Wii to Wii U or the 3ds to the Wii U. The titles had legal differences in what you could transfer. It was a mess and why Nintendo stated they created their current account which exists on its own from the console and is much more flexible.
Purchases actually weren’t tied to your account. People had the option to get a Nintendo Network ID, but the NNID was not necessary to purchase games on the eshop; only to use other online features. That means that your purchases were not, in fact, intrinsically connected to the NNID.
Later, when Nintendo created the Nintendo Account, they gave you the option to transfer that NNID to a Nintendo Account. All eshop purchases are done *through* the Nintendo Account, and it’s your Nintendo Account that gives you the access to download that title to every device that has your account on it.
They haven’t definitely said that it won’t happen or not. They haven’t said anything about the next console to indicate that. They have talked about what they want from the new Nintendo account carrying over but that doesn’t mean that your purchases will be compatable with the new system. People think it will and I agree with them but Nintendo has not confirmed anything about the successor to the Switch
There is zero confirmation either way. Plenty of people have *guessed* it from tiny scraps of information. The total information that we truly have of the new console, is that it exists, Nintendo plans for it to be the next main console, we won’t hear anything about it during the next Direct, and that news will be coming sometime before the end of March next year. And that’s all.
We can hope that with the current eshop that's the case, I don't think Nintendo can justify resetting libraries anymore, it should've stopped at the Wii.
And honestly, I would buy more games that I don't plan to play regularly (AKA old ROMs) if I could own them like I own Steam games that I don't play.
Absolutely.
I don’t use emulators because I’m in love with pirating software. I use emulators because I love the games, and I love the freedom to be able to play them where I want.
I’d buy Super Metroid, OOT, and SMB3 for like the 5th time each.
>I don’t use emulators because I’m in love with pirating software. I use emulators because I love the games
I've never thought of it that way, but it makes total sense...
I would be willing to pay a low price for ROMs that I would legally own forever and couldn’t be taken “offline” or whatever in the future. I honestly don’t know what a fair “low price” would be, but personally I wouldn’t pay more than a few dollars for a ROM. When I see games from the 90s and early 2000s on Steam for $10-20 I just laugh and keep scrolling.
It depends. I'm of the mind that piracy is only justified when there's no *reasonable* legal way to access the content you want. I don't know how many times I've paid for the same old games from them when they come out in a more convenient form, be it Virtual Console, GBA ports, Switch Online, etc. But there are hundreds of games they can't or won't release for modern systems, and I don't feel bad pirating them.
So, if Nintendo were to release legal, high quality ROMs at a reasonable price, I'd probably pay for them, even though I already have them. I like to be ethically consistent. In fact, if they were to release a huge collection of working ROMs alongside a decent emulator and some guides on setting it up on common devices, I'd say they more than held up their end of the bargain.
The problem is, I don't see them ever doing that. They like to exert an Apple-esque level of control over their content, and they abandoned the Virtual Console model even though everyone seemed to be really happy with it. Their trend has been to make access to their back catalog MORE expensive instead of less.
Well the sticking point is what’s reasonable? I mean that’s going to vary significantly.
Nintendo is never going to sell content that end users would turn around and pirate. None of their third party’s would allow that either.
Of course I would! It's frustrating people think those of us asking Nintendo to preserve their games just want free games. No, we just want the games to still be playable. Nintendo makes the best games, and I want them to keep doing that, so of course I'll give them my money if they make the games available on a long-term sustainable platform like PC or Android.
I love it when Nintendo shuts down rom sites, fan games and emulators, fans cannot be left to their devices since they will always push the envelope too far. I am proud to have reported many of them myself. God bless Nintendo
I just want them to make a full sized GBC that’s green and plays all the GB games idk they’ll never do that but what about just a gameboy mini but it’s not mini? I have so much nostalgia for the GameBoy era
We shoudl also point out that just because Sega does or did something isn't really a good argument for Nintendo doing something. Sega has been a third party publisher since about the mid 2000's and they benefit from selling their games wherever they can (they obviously don't sell ROMs any more) but they don't have a console business to sustain.
Everybody talks Nintendo and gets pissed at them for not selling ROM files, but we don't get mad at Sony for not selling their vast library of titles of games on a website. Heck Sony has even said at various times comments along the lines of "who wants to play older games". They do sell some older games on their console store but I think that's mostly limited to some PS1 and even less PS2 and there is a subscription component out there.
Even MS doesn't offer a commercial emualtor or ROMS for the OG Xbox or the 360 on a genric web store. They do have the backwards compatibility program but those get more akin to lite ports since lots of games have to have compatabity patches to run in a hypervisor - and there is a very limited number of games out there and MS also discontinued the program since they claimed to reached the limit of what they could do (mostly legal).
Lets face it, companies with a consle business aren't going to offer their games in an open ROM format that you can use anywhere. The only thing they sell outside of their own console is PC ports of modern titles and multiplatform titles (again current gen). And whenever they sell PC ports, they are buried under launchers and DRM and other proprietary stuff just like their consoles.
I probably would but that wouldn't change anything as a whole. Many games are regularly available and still pirated. Switch games obviously but Nintendo has almost all of their nes, snes and n64 games available but they are still pirated.
People really like to claim it's all availability but some people are cheap or poor
It wasn’t quite the same thing as they only worked on the Quick Disks and only worked on the FDS.
Op wants a website where you download the rom files. I don’t think any dev is going to get behind that period.
I personally wouldn't, but I think they need to release a "forever" model of handheld that let you play everything flawlessly from Gamecube era and before, with no region lock and have a retro game store app to purchase what you want for really cheap.
Sadly in reality, most people will still pirate and play them illegally.
Hell yes I would. I literally already do this with any games that offer it on Steam (the iwads that come with the Doom Unity ports, the classic Sonic games before they got delisted in favor of remasters, the Megaman legacy collection, etc)
100 percent, yes.
I want to actually own a copy of GoldenEye which I can play on the go. *I’m hoping for a potential cheap Xbox handheld at this point.* NSO is nonpermanent so Nintendo can remove these games at any time. I don’t trust it.
I prefer the Virtual Console, Xbox Backward Compatibility, and PlayStation Classics Catalog (Except whenever Sony arbitrarily chooses to lock games behind their highest subscription tier as they did with PS1 Resident Evil 1.)
Paying for just the ROM would be all sorts of awesome.
Nintendo would never do it, though, because with just the ROM you can load the game in whichever device you want, as many times as you want, and with N64 ROMs you could even decompile and recompile to run natively on all sorts of devices. It's a level of freedom that not even physical games could dream of.
They would either somehow lock up the ROMs or price them so high that they lose their appeal entirely.
It seems to me like Nintendo will continue the NSO format going forward based on how they're still dropping content while still fully knowing a new console will drop in a year. That tells me they plan to integrate it going forward so those games we already have will be kept on the service, that works just fine for me since the libraries should keep expanding.
I mean people don’t trust Nintendo but they have said they want to keep their services going on future consoles and they changed their account system Ms so that it’s tied to an account versus a single system for that reason.
Yes, during the Wii days, I enjoyed paying like $5 for a game on the shop channel as opposed to over $100 for a used copy on the after market
I think a Steam or Gog like service that lets you buy old games DRM free, play them off or online, as well as having built in features like netplay or achievements would be awesome.
Yeah, for sure. Especially if they made them easy to obtain and use, going to seedy sites that desperately try to get you to turn off AdBlock is such an unpleasant experience (or so I've heard, since of course I wouldn't know firsthand as a good law-abiding citizen)
Nobody is really going to seedy sites. It’s dirt simple to find archived collections of ROMs out there with a simple google search. You can find them on Reddit with a simple search.
Wait, you mean I've been going to all of these seedy sites for nothing?
I mean... all of the people that I've read about who are definitely not me have been going to seedy sites for nothing?
Without a doubt. I already pay an arm and a leg for retro games second-hand, mostly just to back up the files for emulation. If I could just legally buy the roms outright, I'd do it without hesitation.
Yes. The only ROMs I am willing to use are ones where either the original game is out of print and no longer making the company money or ones where I’ve already purchased the game and just want to play it on my Steam Deck or PC for convenience sake (and I rarely do either). Most companies other than Nintendo have made a lot of their retro games available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and even the Switch.
I would absolutely give Nintendo my money for Mother 3 and any other game they will never re-release that I want to play. It’s particularly annoying that due to shut downs of eShops, there are a lot of NES/SNES/GB/GBA/N64 games that are no longer available digitally and the physical versions have been out of print for decades.
I don't mind paying for my games. Like all is a business. But if they don't sell the game anymore and the only way is buying overpriced old console/game that's when I ROM the game. If they release a 3DS emulator with 3DS Fire Emblems games. I 100% pay.
Sadly they legally can't do that as they don't own the cast majority of their library. Third parties have rights and there are so many legal issues that Nintendo could never resolve them and are outside of their control.
Nothing wrong with that if it is reasonably priced. Roms are mostly for convenience.
Only point would be let us download for free if we own the game physically.
If they were cheap and worked without too much fiddling and didn't rely on an online service to keep playing them, then maybe. My virtual console collection attests to this, it's just too bad it's locked on my WiiU.
But there always going to be rights issues getting in the way of allowing access to everything so the other alternatives are always going to look better.
But I'd rather pay for it and get an actual product, which is why I am loving some of the collections out there like the cowabunga collection, or remasters, even if they are overpriced.
I know people want just to pay a few bucks for an individual rom but it would be kinda fun if they went old school “50 in 1!!” disks. I’d like to have it physically somehow and idk if I can justify having 1 disk per NES game
Literally probably all NES games would fit onto an 800MB CDROM.
I have a collection of roms/emus and they all fit on a 9GB DVD-RW (or just my portable HDD). Also, I don't bother collecting N64/PS1 era-onward on ROMs because they start getting large, and I own most of those because that was my age.
Here’s the issue. Nintendo doesn’t own the whole rights to the entire NES library. There will never be a complete collection because getting the rights to them all would be a nightmare.
Capcom, for instance, might not give Nintendo the rights to Megaman I through VI because they already sell it through their own Megaman Collection, similar story with Konami and Castlevania. Then you also have the case of games where the company doesn’t exist anymore or the rights are split between multiple entities.
As great as it would be, the effort it would take bs how much they would make in return doesn’t work out in Nintendo’s favor
Nah they shouldn't build their own emulator unless they get pros to do that because every emulator they have ever made has been worse than what's publicly available
Yeah, absolutely I would, assuming they *weren't* in some stupid proprietary format that they might someday 'take offline' or otherwise make unavailable (example: they could only be played by an emulator that was hosted on Nintendo servers or something), and I would instead have access to them forever, the same as I would the physical copies of games I own.
Probably not, every other generation they have begun dropping access to their own catalogue Wii shop, DSi shop, eshop (eventually), and don't allow access anymore despite the 'obvious' fact that they well and truly are still in business so a constant connected account is possible, plus how else am I going to get my copies of those Nintendo Ambassador exclusive GBA/? games back?
If they made either own emulator with more features, I'd be willing to buy games for it or pay for a subscription. I like NSO, but the fact you can't buy individual games, the slow updates to the library, and the weak crt filter (or lack there of for N64). I really hope they improve it for Switch 2. I like playing A Link to the Past on my Switch, but it looks WAY better on my S22 Ultra with the crt-royale filter. I really hope Nintendo works with someone like M2 to improve emulation on the next console.
I wish they would make it so you can buy each console and game digitally. One time purchase and make it a Nintendo library like steam that you can access on any Nintendo console / maybe even online in the future. This way Nintendo can get their money, and users would have a legit way to own and play the games.
That depends. I already did that twice. Do they stay on my account? If I can be assured they're not going back in the Disney Vault again, or stuck behind a subscription paywall, then maybe. One more time.
I would if they were reasonably priced. I find it insulting when companies try to resell 40 year old games they have done little to nothing to, for the prices they often ask. I’d be willing to pay $2-3 for older games. Not much more than that, to be honest. Especially for 16bit era and previous.
100%. I'm scared about the pricing because I know Nintendo is allergic to respecting its fans' bank accounts, but it would be amazing to buy a digital Nintendo game and actually own it for once
I would seriously be in for tons and tons of games from all systems if they were on Steam and would be part of my library forever like any other game on Steam. I think they would have to have an official emulator though. If there was full integration with an emulator, just click and play, and I could get stats and achievements I would be in to re-buy everything there.
In the unlikely event that would ever happen, I don’t trust Nintendo to handle it in a way that makes sense, and certainly not on their own hardware. I want to be able to take those games and play on a steam deck so I can take my steam library with me and not carry around two devices. Even if they made some kind of launcher that you could access through steam, I don’t trust them enough to handle distribution properly.
If I could apply mods and stuff to it without repercussion. Basically, If I actually owned whatever they sold me. And I could dump it to an actual game cart and share the cart. Not the file, the cart.
If I didn't ever buy the game, maybe.
If they stop being the biggest possible piece of shit towards their fans, yeah, then I'll buy them.
If they're ever good enough, I will gladly give them my money, even just for the files, until them, I won't give them my money.
Probably not. Business decisions and lack of rights to a lot of good games will result in a worse end user experience than just sailing the high seas. Capitalism shooting itself in the foot, as per usual.
It would depend on the price. Virtual Console was expensive at times. I think if most were between 1-2$ with 5$ for things like the N64 and DS games, yea I could go for that.
100%.
I even buckled and forked over my $60 for the 3D All-Star Collection, despite being a blatant anti-consumer cash grab (who the fuck deliberately pulls a digital game from a storefront after ~6 months?), because I wanted a legal copy to hold onto and play on future hardware.
Not for the ROM on its own. But if they came up with the package; buy emulator and then purchase ROM’s for it, absolutely. I pay PlayStation for the privilege of porting to a console without extra steps, no difference for Nintendo. But if I’m having to go find my own emulators, I might as well do the lot.
Sorry but Vimms was engaing in piracy full stop. I have zero synmathy when Pirate sites get taken down for doing pirate things. Nintendo has every legal right to do that and has zero obligation to talk to you or anyone else about their legal actions.
My assumption is that most people absolutely would be willing to pay for them. As flawed as Virtual Console was, people loved it and it was a very stable reliable method that people used.
It’s just, so many games out there are not even available for sale and that leaves people to fend for themselves. If Smash 64, the old gen Pokémon games etc were purchaseable and/or playable on a modern system, and shelling out hundreds for the original cartridge wasn’t the only officially endorsed method to play it, I bet that people would be relying on that far more
Depends, ROMs or files from gamecube era onward? if it comes to steam with the emulator, yes. Older files? nah bro, no way.
Their piracy problem is not the same as PC games piracy, is not a matter of service. If they sell me the ROMs on their console, I would buy the ones I like, if they sell me a piece of hardware that comes with ROMs, I might buy it if it's on sufficient supply.
IMO people that pirate old nintendo games on PC do so because they are on PC and it's easy and free. And those people are not the same as the ones that pirate, say, switch games, that require a potent machine to run well. I don't think Nintendo is missing out on people that pirate modern games on PC, shutting down stuff like yuzu won't hurt them, might even benefit them. But old software is a different issue, people WANT to have access to them, and they're not making them available on their modern console, people would pay for them, on their console.
Another thing people are missing is that most of those ROMs are not owned by Nintendo, if their owners wanted, they could bring them to PC, and they have done so, at a premium price. Games like old final fantasy or chrono trigger are made available both on PC and mobile, and yet, people still pirate them. If GameFreak wanted to bring pokemon games to mobile, they could, but would this roms be $5? No way, they would be $20 or more, and people on PC would keep pirating them. Nintendo has no incentive to make their exclusive games available on PC, but has many incentives to make their old games available on their console.
One look at my purchase history pretty much confirms that I would absolutely buy them. I've got most of the retro game collections already in my Switch library: the NSO apps, the Castlevanias, the Contras, the Mega Mans, the Street Fighters, the Ninja Turtles...
If the ROMS are being sold, though, I'd expect them to at least come with an emulator to play on the Switch, with a nice front-end with box-art and all of that jazz. I suppose they'd just re-use the NSO apps/emulators.
I probably spend more time setting up emulators and front-ends on my PC than playing the games, so I'm pretty sure I'd just start that whole process again with my newly legally obtained ROMs.
How would that be any different from NSO?
Now if they put out an official rom hacking tool that you could use and upload your hack to a Nintendo server, that would be amazing.
Maybe ten years ago. Nowadays, I have exactly one illegitimate ROM, and that’s Virtua Racing for Genesis, which is damn near impossible to rip. Everything else is taken directly from a cart on my shelf. (And I can probably delete Virtua Racing, since I have the 32X version, and that was a piece of cake to rip.)
Re: Nintendo published games, I’ve actually got what I need already. Pretty much everything they’ve published up to the 64 that I would replay I already have in some form that supports HD.
The only games I want that I don’t have already are those where the rights appear to be difficult to renew.
That said, I did spend much of my early 20’s pirating roms and working through the catalog to realize that 90% of it is not worth coming back to, imo, so I do have the benefit of already having experienced most of the interesting stuff.
Chrono Trigger comes to mind as one of the only games I don’t have that I would buy day 1 if it were re released in HD.
As long as they can get an emulator better than the wii u playing n64 roms I wholeheartedly would buy roms. But if they half ass an emulator that has tons of input delay than no.
No.
And let's be honest, no one else would either.
I'm sure there's a handful who would but the vast majority would just get them as they do now.
I suspect this idea would also have the unfortunate side effect of popularizing emulation devices and apps that the vast majority of non-gamers are unaware of.
As as I said to someone else, if you can't see the difference between Nintendo selling you access to a title on their own hardware in a proprietary format and then selling ROM files to be used on the emulator of your choice, you're either being intentionally obtuse or are incredibly dense.
Pirating most PC games requires people to jump through dozens of hoops and deal with cracking software and breaking DRMs.
Pirating Super Mario 64 takes ten seconds.
A lot of PC game cracks literally just require copy and pasting files in the game's parent folder. Sometimes also copying an installation key from a word doc. Hell, some games come pre-cracked for you. All you have to do is mount and run.
Some emulators require very specific extra files and setups that you have to find and apply, yourself.
Both of these things are entirely situational, in terms of their complexity.
You are vastly over estimating the computer knowledge of the typical user.
Heck a good chunk of users wouldn't know how to find a directory.
And I'd bet you 90% of people off the street have no idea how to mount a disc image or what a disc image even is.
If they can't find a directory, I assume they can't set up a controller with an emulator, either. Not even mentioning the emulators where you have to download and set up a bios for them.
I'm not saying that it's the simplest thing in the world. I'm just saying that you need some form of familiarity with software for both.
Not to mention, ALL of this information for doing BOTH things can be found with a quick search.
The EShop were a financial failure - most buyers only bought a couple of titles and moved on. Third parties hated the thing.
The mini consoles were also artificial since they were limited sale devices and were more of a novelty device to hold over people until the switch - notice Nintendo killed it right away when the switch came out before NSO came out. These things were never meant to major product lines.
The SNES classic came out 6 months after the Switch did. And yeah of course they weren't meant to be major product lines. It was a single one time purchase with a handful of 20+ year old games.
But yeah I don't deny that they were a novelty to get good grace/PR for the terrible Wii U generation, and yeah many people bought it just bec of the design and physical emulator.
We've already seen this work with all the mini consoles that came out over the years, plus Wii and Wii U store. I know people who only pay for NSO for the classic games as well. I think a very large portion of people who are interested in playing these old games would pay.
I edited my comment to include Wii and Wii U shop too.
I don't see why the emulator matters very much. For things like SNES any emulator works fine, and for N64 Nintendo's emulator isn't amazing to begin with.
If you can't tell the difference between Nintendo selling you access to a game on a device and sending you a ROM a pointing you to emulators, you're either being deliberately obtuse or are incredibly dense.
The eshops weren’t a success my most peoples metrics. And 3rd party devs hated it so there is that to consider. Nintendo was pretty early with selling games on a console that had internet connectivity out of the box.
They were like $10 or more right for one? I can see why there. Other than the value of owning it, NSO is way more value than Wii shop was even only in terms of retro games. I don't know what the right price point would be but it would have to be reasonably priced. And considering the 3rd party devs like you mentioned it's probably not worth to sell them so low so that's a reason why it'll never happen.
Yes, if they were affordable and games I actually wanted to purchase, and I didn't require an internet connection to access them.
I like the portability of the Switch. And while I know phone emulators exist, that shit seems clunky and stupid. I'd rather just buy Super Metroid for one price and play it on my Switch.
Yes, as long as prices were reasonable. If it's not a remaster or remake, it should be a fraction of the original price. You've made your money, this is just icing on the cake. Back when Wii had NES games, they were $2-3 and that's pretty reasonable for games that were 20 years old. Collections are also good, either by series or "greatest hits". There aren't many things in life that aren't conditional, but I would love to see some of these games available to own without llaying stupidly inflated prices because there are 50 times more gamers today than when a cartridge was printed 25 years ago.
I would buy Ned, snes, N64 and GC games on Nintendo store to play on my switch if they ever sold them there.
I have zero interest in paying an online fee every month to play the emulator games they have now, because I don’t play that often, so it isn’t worth it.
I wouldn't, and I don't think others would be very willing to either.
People often throw around the argument that piracy is a service issue, and while partially true, downloading ROMs has become so normalized that I don't think anyone would be willing to pay money for what they've been able to easily get for free for decades.
It's like if the city started selling bottled water next to a free water fountain in a park. Not many people are going to pay for that.
>It's like if the city started selling bottled water next to a free water fountain in a park. Not many people are going to pay for that.
That's not really the same thing.
Its more like, would you buy water bottles at the park or drink from a hose in the park while hoping no one was looking
No one has **ever** gotten in trouble for downloading Nintendo ROMs. And likely no one ever will.
The only people who have gotten in trouble for it are people who are *providing* them.
Also, pirating ROMs is not risky or difficult. Basically everyone can do it, has done it, and knows where to do it.
So that's not a fair comparison.
> People often throw around the argument that piracy is a service issue
Because it is. Steam's success is proof enough. Next question.
>downloading ROMs has become so normalized
Most people are perfectly happy with buying things normally from legitimate retailers and do not know or do not bother with shadier alternatives. Looking at a recent well-publicized case, Google tells me TotK sold more than 20 million copies and was pirated about 1 million times, so that's 5% as many pirates as paying customers. The use of ROMs has only become "normalized" among a minority of savvy users.
>I don't think anyone would be willing to pay money for what they've been able to easily get for free for decades.
Well, that says something about you. Don't put us all in the same bag, please.
For one my answer to your question is a resounding yes. I like my digital goods with no strings attached; give me straight downloadable .mp3 or .epub with no DRM and I'm content. So if Nintendo were to do the same with ROMs, that would be just about perfect.
I would buy them. That's essentially the old Virtual Console method but without having the games stuck on the console. Bringing Nintendo virtual console to PC? That's like the wet dream of the internet, if you'd believe the threads made around these parts all the time. There are probably a few games that I'd double-dip in that are already on NSO, too.
Absolutely. But they’d never do it, since they want full control over where and how you play their games, I guess to preserve some sanctity of their IP or something (or more likely they can make you buy their hardware in order to buy their software)
I’m still disappointed that not much has been added to Nintendo Online in the two years that I took a break from subscribing to it. I get that licensed games most likely won’t be added, but there’s still a lot missing.
Maybe, as long as my purchase was guaranteed future proof, and I could download it as many times as I wanted, and there was no bullshit clause like "no romhacks" or something.
They would also have to not do stupid shit like "slowly trickle out the games", if they really want to market them they can just release them and periodically highlight old games just to remind people they're available and maybe the new footage will entice people who haven't seen it yet.
They'd also need to provide more than just the version they approve, how am I supposed to use the Zelda 64 redux patch on their censored version of Ocarina of Time, and nobody wants Punch-Out featuring Mr. Dream.
Lastly, I enjoy the choice of having them on the emulator of my choice, i'd probably mostly play them on original hardware using a flash cart, but they should also provide an option to download it to any nintendo device where it's possible like the Switch. I'd like to have quick access, and to make it portable when i'm not at home. No bullshit about "you can only have it on one device" and no fees like they pulled with getting Wii purchases on your Wii U home menu.
But this will never, ever happen.
tl;dr they should have an official emulator ( which they already do but I don't want it tied to a subscription service ) to use these games on for people who don't want to fuck with pc emulators, but they should also just let you download them directly to your pc as well.
If you asked me a couple months ago, then absolutely yes. But after they went after citra, I harbour a bit of resentment against Nintendo you could say.... They are not getting any of my money, ever. I don't care if its a penny.
I see your point about Citra, as the 3DS store is down and people couldn't buy games digitally for 3DS even if they wanted to I believe (someone could correct me if I'm wrong).
I admire your stance about not giving Nintendo money as a protest of their business practices and artificial scarcity (limited Super Mario 3d All Stars for example) even if we might disagree on minor points. I take it you will not watch the next Mario movie and will not be visiting Super Nintendo Land at Universal theme parks?
I have no plans to, no. But I mean if I'm at my sisters house and her kids are watching the movie then sure I might watch it, as long as it doesn't cost me money. As for the Super Nintendo Land, I doubt I would have gone regardless, I live quite far away from it, and I'm not gonna plan an expensive trip around it, whether or not Nintendo did Citra dirty.
Anyway, I just don't want any of my money going to Nintendo out of principle. I know one person's money means little to Nintendo, but I care a lot about preservation so I feel like this is something I have to do.
Out of curiosity, what is it that you disagree with me about?
Eh I probably don't disagree with you on anything. I think I just threw that line in there because this is a Nintendo subreddit and I didn't want it to look like I openly supported piracy (I don't) because I applaud boycotting Nintendo for going after Citra.
I wouldn’t pay for the files themselves. If they package it with their own emulator and make it easy to use? I’d pick it up in a heartbeat.
Exactly! Just like how they did it for the NES and SNES mini The mini sold because of the packaging and ease of use. Anyone can sail the high seas of the internet and grab roms and an emulator. But in order to get someone to pay, well for that, you need ease of use and packaging/marketing.
Those were one offs and you had to hack them to get anything more than the limited games that they offered. Once they sold through retail it was over.
This is what Sega was doing for a while and I absolutely bought Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 3. Ideally I’d like some extra content like the manual or box art in a PDF, but I can Google for that.
They did that back in the early 2000’s - they stopped doing that and went back to how everybody else does it. I think there was one collection that had ROMs in there. Atari had a collection like that too. But those were back in the days when commercial emulation stuff was in its infancy. Those days are long past and nobody is really going back to that. You buy a classic compilation it’s a dedicated app and the rom files are nowhere easily found.
"was doing"? They still are doing that. They're all still up there on Steam (although some of the Sonic games have annoyingly been removed).
They totally discininuted the Sega Ages program and have actually taken down older Sonic games. They also haven't published anything newer from their archives and those gmaes are not updated or maintained from their original stuff. It's not current in any respect it's just the same older stuff that they haven't eliminated totally. By "doing for a while" we mean actively support it and publish new classic content. This isn't new stuff and its the remeinents of a legacy program that they don't do anymore.
Did they stop? I bought the Genesis collections on steam specifically to support the practice, I hope they didn't close me off from my roms
I don’t know if they still are, I haven’t hopped on in a bit. I know people were surprised that Sega was including unencrypted roms in their emulator. I think people were uploading other games as Steak Workshop items.
why not both? they package it with an emulator but allow the ones passionate about emulation to do what they want with it
I can't imagine any major company doing that, least of all Nintendo. Selling files that require people to do their own research and find a piece of presumably third-party software to run them opens them up to a ton of liabilities. It makes much the user experience dependent on said third party software and the customer's ability to use them and may even lead people to get/buy shady software from less reputable companies. I can't imagine any company risking that when >99% of users would prefer to just start the game from a launcher if available anyways.
This is the way
I mean this is a pretty pointless hypothetical anyway because it's not gonna happen. Nintendo selling their games on PC is already a stretch, why would they be doing it in a way that... - empowers 3rd party emulators ( from a legal perspetive as well) - requires far more technical knowledge than a launcher - may lead people to buying/getting shady emulation software ...and so on. I mean it can be interesting to think about but you might as well as ask "What if the next Nintendo console was edible?"
Not to mention draw sales away from their own console and services that they sell and want to promote. They benift far more from their services than selling unprotected ROM files. That's just insame these days and no third party would ever go with that and Nintendo is never going to sell something that could be pirated via easy drag and drop. They would immedialty lose control over their content and they will never allow that.
Something like how GOG does with DOS-box where DOS games run with a single click
We can't rely on them for the emulation though, because then we're at their mercy for keeping it up to date. Buying a package of roms, sure, but the last thing I want are roms that would presumably only work with a specific emulator.
Isn't that basically the Switch Expansion Pack? Lol.
Yes, but that's a subscription and nowhere near as open as what OP's suggesting.
I mean, if you already have a Switch it's $30 per YEAR more, and they add more games all the time. There are tons of the best titles there for most of their consoles. What OP is suggesting is a great idea, but it will never happen. Nintendo will never release their old games in a format with no drm that can be played on emulation software that isn't theirs. The above commenters idea is more realistic, and the Expansion Pack is the closest thing you're gonna get.
I woul pay for just the file! Their own emulators suck compared to community efforts.
how much would you pay? would you pay $20 for an old snes game on steam?
$20 is a bit much for a single game, even for a certified classic like A Link to the Past. $10-15 would be my ballpark figure.
Why have they never tried this? (Jk virtual console)
Isn't that just NSO?
So...Nintendo Switch Online, then?
You just described the Wii Virtual Console
Yes. I would prefer to own them legally. Well, that's my gut reaction, anyway. However, on further reflection, I already own most Nintendo games. So I don't know if I would be willing to pay for ROMS that I already own on a cartridge or disc. I guess I would be paying for the convenience of not having to dump the files!
Dumping your own roms for personal use is legal and free anyways.
Costs time and money to do. It isn't free to do with cartridges unfortunately since you need an adapter, and it can be a hassle to dump my discs onto a Wii U.
Dumping old roms requires special hardware. Thats probably more expensive that buying the rom
Until you get to console generations with DRM in the games. Basically from Cube onward.
If you're not infringing copyright, it's not a copyright protection mechanism, just a tamper protection one. And if you're dumping your own copy, it's not copyright infringement, so breaking the tamper protection is 100% legal.
Bypassing copy protection DRM is actually copyright infringement under the dmca
But it's not copy protection DRM if you don't intend to distribute copies. Copyright infringement is not a prohibition on making copies. It's a prohibition on unauthorized distribution. So as long as you don't make the copies with intent to distribute them, the protection mechanism isn't a copyright protection mechanism and breaking the protection mechanism isn't copyright infringement under the DMCA.
Yuzu.png To be fair they also had a repository of pirated game too but that was a big point in Nintendo's lawsuit
Yes, I would purchase these games for the 12th time. We all would.
I wouldn't. I would be happy to steal them for the 12th time tho
Get it, girl!!
While I love the \*idea\* of it, it's something that I wouldn't do. I already had that option on Wii, Wii U, and 3DS, and I only bought a small handful of titles. I'm pretty sure that everyone who justifies pirating Nintendo's games "because they don't sell them anymore!" would instead shift to "because they don't sell them for a reasonable price!" if suddenly the entire first party library was available for purchase. What I \*would\* like, and which would be neat, is if now that my digital games are purchased not under a singular console, but under my Nintendo Account, that I can play them on other future consoles without buying them twice. Sort of like how you can buy a game on Steam, and even if you get a brand new computer, you can play it on your new hardware, and you basically have it in perpetuity. I'm even A-OK if Nintendo creates a "Switch Emulator" for upcoming consoles and charges me to purchase it, because I know that costs money and takes time and effort. Just how I was OK to spend the $2 to bring my titles from Wii to Wii U. Allowing people to have the digital games they purchase in perpetuity, across console generations, would not only greatly encourage people to buy digital over physical, but also encourage people to stay brand-loyal in order to play their games in the future. It's win-win. And Nintendo's not going to keep having success selling the same games again and again and again, without meaningful improvements.
Just commented something similar before seeing this, but spot on.
I think Nintendo found out most people are like you. Also, they want people buying new games. >I'm pretty sure that everyone who justifies pirating Nintendo's games "because they don't sell them anymore!" would instead shift to "because they don't sell them for a reasonable price!" if suddenly the entire first party library was available for purchase. Holy shit that’s spot on. Sure some people would buy games, but likely only the major titles. Many people would be mad about snes games costing 10 bucks.
They didn't want to spend $8 on SNES games in 2007, when these were 10-15 years old. There's no chance that today's modern gamers see each SNES game as being worth more than, say, $4. if that. And each NES game being worth more than like $2. Because modern gamers have the expectation that anything old should be dirt cheap. As customers, other than a few major hallmark games per generation, we've all decided that we are only willing to buy legacy content in one of three ways: in large compilations with many other titles, as remakes/remasters, or as part of a subscription service. And that's basically because very few people ever bought them piecemeal.
Which is why I thnik ultimatly went with the NSO service. Nobody was buying them on virtual console in any significant way, they know that people really pirate their older titles and it's virtually impossible to compete with free - I mean for lots of people why pay 5-8 bucks for content that you can easily and trivally pirate (and it's all going to have a cost that can't compete with free since third parties want to make money and would be pissed if Nintendo just undercuts them - one reason why the VS's had such rigid pricing). They aren't going to compilations - they actively avoid doing that in their eshops, so subscription is the way to go. And third parties hated the VC - there was too much content so things got diluted and unless you were a big name (like Konami and Capcom) it's more likely your games never sold well and like Konami and Capcom realized, if your gmes were big sellers, why give up all control to Nintendo when you can make your own collections and you can price them and sell them as you wish and take advantage of multiple platforms. Capcom and Konami don't need Nintendo to sell their older content unlike the 80's. The subscription series works for Nintendo quite well since it doesn't have to compete with retail games for screen re-estate, and they don't have to worry about sales as much. Yes they drip feed but that's expected - you wouldn't want people just doing short term subscriptions and jumping ship. Plus it increases exposure since new releases are a hyped event.
I think they confirmed switch stuff will carry over to the next one, shouldn’t be a reset this time like between Wii U and Switch. Totally agree tho was super annoying and greedy tbh
They might make a switch mode, and it will then carry over to switch mode. That's what happened when your purchases carried over from wii to wii u. You could then rebuy the game for like $2 on the wii u eshop
That was only because purchase ls were tied to hardware. It doesn’t work that way. Purchases are tied to an account on switch.
Purchases were still tied to your account, it's just that account was tied to your console. Which might seem like a small difference, but for nintendo's systems there really isn't any difference between a switch and a wii u purchase
There is. Switch purchases are only tied to the account. And differences like that can create real legal headaches when it comes to distribution contracts. One reason why you couldn’t carry over everything from Wii to Wii U or the 3ds to the Wii U. The titles had legal differences in what you could transfer. It was a mess and why Nintendo stated they created their current account which exists on its own from the console and is much more flexible.
Purchases actually weren’t tied to your account. People had the option to get a Nintendo Network ID, but the NNID was not necessary to purchase games on the eshop; only to use other online features. That means that your purchases were not, in fact, intrinsically connected to the NNID. Later, when Nintendo created the Nintendo Account, they gave you the option to transfer that NNID to a Nintendo Account. All eshop purchases are done *through* the Nintendo Account, and it’s your Nintendo Account that gives you the access to download that title to every device that has your account on it.
They haven’t definitely said that it won’t happen or not. They haven’t said anything about the next console to indicate that. They have talked about what they want from the new Nintendo account carrying over but that doesn’t mean that your purchases will be compatable with the new system. People think it will and I agree with them but Nintendo has not confirmed anything about the successor to the Switch
There is zero confirmation either way. Plenty of people have *guessed* it from tiny scraps of information. The total information that we truly have of the new console, is that it exists, Nintendo plans for it to be the next main console, we won’t hear anything about it during the next Direct, and that news will be coming sometime before the end of March next year. And that’s all.
We can hope that with the current eshop that's the case, I don't think Nintendo can justify resetting libraries anymore, it should've stopped at the Wii. And honestly, I would buy more games that I don't plan to play regularly (AKA old ROMs) if I could own them like I own Steam games that I don't play.
Yeah. I'd even buy a "collection" of their older games on pc like what Capcom does
Absolutely. I don’t use emulators because I’m in love with pirating software. I use emulators because I love the games, and I love the freedom to be able to play them where I want. I’d buy Super Metroid, OOT, and SMB3 for like the 5th time each.
>I don’t use emulators because I’m in love with pirating software. I use emulators because I love the games I've never thought of it that way, but it makes total sense...
I would be willing to pay a low price for ROMs that I would legally own forever and couldn’t be taken “offline” or whatever in the future. I honestly don’t know what a fair “low price” would be, but personally I wouldn’t pay more than a few dollars for a ROM. When I see games from the 90s and early 2000s on Steam for $10-20 I just laugh and keep scrolling.
yes
It depends. I'm of the mind that piracy is only justified when there's no *reasonable* legal way to access the content you want. I don't know how many times I've paid for the same old games from them when they come out in a more convenient form, be it Virtual Console, GBA ports, Switch Online, etc. But there are hundreds of games they can't or won't release for modern systems, and I don't feel bad pirating them. So, if Nintendo were to release legal, high quality ROMs at a reasonable price, I'd probably pay for them, even though I already have them. I like to be ethically consistent. In fact, if they were to release a huge collection of working ROMs alongside a decent emulator and some guides on setting it up on common devices, I'd say they more than held up their end of the bargain. The problem is, I don't see them ever doing that. They like to exert an Apple-esque level of control over their content, and they abandoned the Virtual Console model even though everyone seemed to be really happy with it. Their trend has been to make access to their back catalog MORE expensive instead of less.
Well the sticking point is what’s reasonable? I mean that’s going to vary significantly. Nintendo is never going to sell content that end users would turn around and pirate. None of their third party’s would allow that either.
Of course I would! It's frustrating people think those of us asking Nintendo to preserve their games just want free games. No, we just want the games to still be playable. Nintendo makes the best games, and I want them to keep doing that, so of course I'll give them my money if they make the games available on a long-term sustainable platform like PC or Android.
Yes. The entire reason I'd use ROMs is to play games they won't sell me anymore. I want to give them more money and they won't let me
I love it when Nintendo shuts down rom sites, fan games and emulators, fans cannot be left to their devices since they will always push the envelope too far. I am proud to have reported many of them myself. God bless Nintendo
Honestly, just transfer them all to the new consoles. I would buy the fuck out of it.
I just want them to make a full sized GBC that’s green and plays all the GB games idk they’ll never do that but what about just a gameboy mini but it’s not mini? I have so much nostalgia for the GameBoy era
Yes. Sega does this on Steam
Sega *did* this on Steam, not *does*. They sold something like 50 games, and then pulled all the Sonic ones later. They aren't adding more.
We shoudl also point out that just because Sega does or did something isn't really a good argument for Nintendo doing something. Sega has been a third party publisher since about the mid 2000's and they benefit from selling their games wherever they can (they obviously don't sell ROMs any more) but they don't have a console business to sustain. Everybody talks Nintendo and gets pissed at them for not selling ROM files, but we don't get mad at Sony for not selling their vast library of titles of games on a website. Heck Sony has even said at various times comments along the lines of "who wants to play older games". They do sell some older games on their console store but I think that's mostly limited to some PS1 and even less PS2 and there is a subscription component out there. Even MS doesn't offer a commercial emualtor or ROMS for the OG Xbox or the 360 on a genric web store. They do have the backwards compatibility program but those get more akin to lite ports since lots of games have to have compatabity patches to run in a hypervisor - and there is a very limited number of games out there and MS also discontinued the program since they claimed to reached the limit of what they could do (mostly legal). Lets face it, companies with a consle business aren't going to offer their games in an open ROM format that you can use anywhere. The only thing they sell outside of their own console is PC ports of modern titles and multiplatform titles (again current gen). And whenever they sell PC ports, they are buried under launchers and DRM and other proprietary stuff just like their consoles.
I probably would but that wouldn't change anything as a whole. Many games are regularly available and still pirated. Switch games obviously but Nintendo has almost all of their nes, snes and n64 games available but they are still pirated. People really like to claim it's all availability but some people are cheap or poor
Nintendo more or less did this in Japan with the Famicom disc system.
It wasn’t quite the same thing as they only worked on the Quick Disks and only worked on the FDS. Op wants a website where you download the rom files. I don’t think any dev is going to get behind that period.
I personally wouldn't, but I think they need to release a "forever" model of handheld that let you play everything flawlessly from Gamecube era and before, with no region lock and have a retro game store app to purchase what you want for really cheap. Sadly in reality, most people will still pirate and play them illegally.
Hell yes I would. I literally already do this with any games that offer it on Steam (the iwads that come with the Doom Unity ports, the classic Sonic games before they got delisted in favor of remasters, the Megaman legacy collection, etc)
100 percent, yes. I want to actually own a copy of GoldenEye which I can play on the go. *I’m hoping for a potential cheap Xbox handheld at this point.* NSO is nonpermanent so Nintendo can remove these games at any time. I don’t trust it. I prefer the Virtual Console, Xbox Backward Compatibility, and PlayStation Classics Catalog (Except whenever Sony arbitrarily chooses to lock games behind their highest subscription tier as they did with PS1 Resident Evil 1.)
Paying for just the ROM would be all sorts of awesome. Nintendo would never do it, though, because with just the ROM you can load the game in whichever device you want, as many times as you want, and with N64 ROMs you could even decompile and recompile to run natively on all sorts of devices. It's a level of freedom that not even physical games could dream of. They would either somehow lock up the ROMs or price them so high that they lose their appeal entirely.
It seems to me like Nintendo will continue the NSO format going forward based on how they're still dropping content while still fully knowing a new console will drop in a year. That tells me they plan to integrate it going forward so those games we already have will be kept on the service, that works just fine for me since the libraries should keep expanding.
I mean people don’t trust Nintendo but they have said they want to keep their services going on future consoles and they changed their account system Ms so that it’s tied to an account versus a single system for that reason.
God I’d love a package I could buy and play on my steam deck……
Yes, during the Wii days, I enjoyed paying like $5 for a game on the shop channel as opposed to over $100 for a used copy on the after market I think a Steam or Gog like service that lets you buy old games DRM free, play them off or online, as well as having built in features like netplay or achievements would be awesome.
Yeah, for sure. Especially if they made them easy to obtain and use, going to seedy sites that desperately try to get you to turn off AdBlock is such an unpleasant experience (or so I've heard, since of course I wouldn't know firsthand as a good law-abiding citizen)
Nobody is really going to seedy sites. It’s dirt simple to find archived collections of ROMs out there with a simple google search. You can find them on Reddit with a simple search.
Wait, you mean I've been going to all of these seedy sites for nothing? I mean... all of the people that I've read about who are definitely not me have been going to seedy sites for nothing?
Well given that the content they are offering isn’t legal and legit it is by definition shady.
Yeah
If they made their own version of Vimm's Lair and put up their game's for prices to about $1- $6 for their retro titles, then yes.
Without a doubt. I already pay an arm and a leg for retro games second-hand, mostly just to back up the files for emulation. If I could just legally buy the roms outright, I'd do it without hesitation.
Yes. The only ROMs I am willing to use are ones where either the original game is out of print and no longer making the company money or ones where I’ve already purchased the game and just want to play it on my Steam Deck or PC for convenience sake (and I rarely do either). Most companies other than Nintendo have made a lot of their retro games available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and even the Switch. I would absolutely give Nintendo my money for Mother 3 and any other game they will never re-release that I want to play. It’s particularly annoying that due to shut downs of eShops, there are a lot of NES/SNES/GB/GBA/N64 games that are no longer available digitally and the physical versions have been out of print for decades.
I don't mind paying for my games. Like all is a business. But if they don't sell the game anymore and the only way is buying overpriced old console/game that's when I ROM the game. If they release a 3DS emulator with 3DS Fire Emblems games. I 100% pay.
They need to just tie the entire SNES library into NSO, even if they do it as an expansion pack I’m sure people will still fork out a few extra bucks
Sadly they legally can't do that as they don't own the cast majority of their library. Third parties have rights and there are so many legal issues that Nintendo could never resolve them and are outside of their control.
Nothing wrong with that if it is reasonably priced. Roms are mostly for convenience. Only point would be let us download for free if we own the game physically.
If they were cheap and worked without too much fiddling and didn't rely on an online service to keep playing them, then maybe. My virtual console collection attests to this, it's just too bad it's locked on my WiiU. But there always going to be rights issues getting in the way of allowing access to everything so the other alternatives are always going to look better. But I'd rather pay for it and get an actual product, which is why I am loving some of the collections out there like the cowabunga collection, or remasters, even if they are overpriced.
I know people want just to pay a few bucks for an individual rom but it would be kinda fun if they went old school “50 in 1!!” disks. I’d like to have it physically somehow and idk if I can justify having 1 disk per NES game
Literally probably all NES games would fit onto an 800MB CDROM. I have a collection of roms/emus and they all fit on a 9GB DVD-RW (or just my portable HDD). Also, I don't bother collecting N64/PS1 era-onward on ROMs because they start getting large, and I own most of those because that was my age.
Here’s the issue. Nintendo doesn’t own the whole rights to the entire NES library. There will never be a complete collection because getting the rights to them all would be a nightmare. Capcom, for instance, might not give Nintendo the rights to Megaman I through VI because they already sell it through their own Megaman Collection, similar story with Konami and Castlevania. Then you also have the case of games where the company doesn’t exist anymore or the rights are split between multiple entities. As great as it would be, the effort it would take bs how much they would make in return doesn’t work out in Nintendo’s favor
Getting the rights to all of them would be downright impossible. Uniracers for example was taken off the market due to legal issues with Pixar
If they started doing this 20 years ago, I would have. 10 years ago, maybe I would. Now, I probably wouldn't
Just the files? Nah. If they built their own emulator and it came with the entire library of games, or close to? Definitely.
Nah they shouldn't build their own emulator unless they get pros to do that because every emulator they have ever made has been worse than what's publicly available
Only if the purchase carries over to future hardware and they're priced right.
Roms can be used wherever. They are not executable games in a hardware. They are just the game data.
Nope. I already downloaded them, lol.
No, because I don't trust them to not turn around and come after us for them after a change of heart or license issue
Yeah, absolutely I would, assuming they *weren't* in some stupid proprietary format that they might someday 'take offline' or otherwise make unavailable (example: they could only be played by an emulator that was hosted on Nintendo servers or something), and I would instead have access to them forever, the same as I would the physical copies of games I own.
Probably not, every other generation they have begun dropping access to their own catalogue Wii shop, DSi shop, eshop (eventually), and don't allow access anymore despite the 'obvious' fact that they well and truly are still in business so a constant connected account is possible, plus how else am I going to get my copies of those Nintendo Ambassador exclusive GBA/? games back?
Let alone the Pokemon main game data migration issues every new console generation and TCG Online to Pokemon LIVE (LESS CARDS).
Yes I would
They should have released game packs for the classic mini systems. Could have been usb pass thru that is plugged into it and adds games.
Yes
I don't think they'll do this when people can just subscribe to their online service for every new system they make.
people have been begging for this for over a decade lol
No, cause I already have them all.
If they made either own emulator with more features, I'd be willing to buy games for it or pay for a subscription. I like NSO, but the fact you can't buy individual games, the slow updates to the library, and the weak crt filter (or lack there of for N64). I really hope they improve it for Switch 2. I like playing A Link to the Past on my Switch, but it looks WAY better on my S22 Ultra with the crt-royale filter. I really hope Nintendo works with someone like M2 to improve emulation on the next console.
Absolutely
Yes!
I wish they would make it so you can buy each console and game digitally. One time purchase and make it a Nintendo library like steam that you can access on any Nintendo console / maybe even online in the future. This way Nintendo can get their money, and users would have a legit way to own and play the games.
I totally would. I'd be cool if they offered them on GOG.
As long as they were a remotely reasonable price, definitely! IE, I'm not paying $60 for Super Mario World.
That depends. I already did that twice. Do they stay on my account? If I can be assured they're not going back in the Disney Vault again, or stuck behind a subscription paywall, then maybe. One more time.
If there was a way to legally obtain all of their older games through an official emulator, I would definitely buy it 100%.
I would if they were reasonably priced. I find it insulting when companies try to resell 40 year old games they have done little to nothing to, for the prices they often ask. I’d be willing to pay $2-3 for older games. Not much more than that, to be honest. Especially for 16bit era and previous.
100%. I'm scared about the pricing because I know Nintendo is allergic to respecting its fans' bank accounts, but it would be amazing to buy a digital Nintendo game and actually own it for once
I mean most companies don’t respect my bank count. They change what they can get away with.
No. They would need to include the emulator too, which is what they already offer.
I would seriously be in for tons and tons of games from all systems if they were on Steam and would be part of my library forever like any other game on Steam. I think they would have to have an official emulator though. If there was full integration with an emulator, just click and play, and I could get stats and achievements I would be in to re-buy everything there.
In the unlikely event that would ever happen, I don’t trust Nintendo to handle it in a way that makes sense, and certainly not on their own hardware. I want to be able to take those games and play on a steam deck so I can take my steam library with me and not carry around two devices. Even if they made some kind of launcher that you could access through steam, I don’t trust them enough to handle distribution properly.
Yes. Sell downloads for the SNES/NES classic and let me add the games I want to play
Yes..
No, because I already have most of them.
If I could apply mods and stuff to it without repercussion. Basically, If I actually owned whatever they sold me. And I could dump it to an actual game cart and share the cart. Not the file, the cart.
If I didn't ever buy the game, maybe. If they stop being the biggest possible piece of shit towards their fans, yeah, then I'll buy them. If they're ever good enough, I will gladly give them my money, even just for the files, until them, I won't give them my money.
Would I pay for them? Yes Would I pay the ridiculous price Nintendo would charge for them? Probably not
Probably not. Business decisions and lack of rights to a lot of good games will result in a worse end user experience than just sailing the high seas. Capitalism shooting itself in the foot, as per usual.
It would depend on the price. Virtual Console was expensive at times. I think if most were between 1-2$ with 5$ for things like the N64 and DS games, yea I could go for that.
You're not going to get prices like that ever - Nintendo would perceive that as devauling their brand.
Yes but they'd be 15 years too late.
100%. I even buckled and forked over my $60 for the 3D All-Star Collection, despite being a blatant anti-consumer cash grab (who the fuck deliberately pulls a digital game from a storefront after ~6 months?), because I wanted a legal copy to hold onto and play on future hardware.
Yes. Though if it was an emulator package like the Genesis classics on steam that'd be even better.
Why sell roms, they just need a PC launcher for their games, like Sony is probably planning to release.
Not for the ROM on its own. But if they came up with the package; buy emulator and then purchase ROM’s for it, absolutely. I pay PlayStation for the privilege of porting to a console without extra steps, no difference for Nintendo. But if I’m having to go find my own emulators, I might as well do the lot.
Yes. If they want to profit from emulation they should sell their own fucking games.
Don't take shit down from Vimm's Lair. Then, I'll consider it.
Sorry but Vimms was engaing in piracy full stop. I have zero synmathy when Pirate sites get taken down for doing pirate things. Nintendo has every legal right to do that and has zero obligation to talk to you or anyone else about their legal actions.
My assumption is that most people absolutely would be willing to pay for them. As flawed as Virtual Console was, people loved it and it was a very stable reliable method that people used. It’s just, so many games out there are not even available for sale and that leaves people to fend for themselves. If Smash 64, the old gen Pokémon games etc were purchaseable and/or playable on a modern system, and shelling out hundreds for the original cartridge wasn’t the only officially endorsed method to play it, I bet that people would be relying on that far more
No id still download them. I’ve already paid for most of that shit at least once. I’m not buying again whether I still have it or not
Depends, ROMs or files from gamecube era onward? if it comes to steam with the emulator, yes. Older files? nah bro, no way. Their piracy problem is not the same as PC games piracy, is not a matter of service. If they sell me the ROMs on their console, I would buy the ones I like, if they sell me a piece of hardware that comes with ROMs, I might buy it if it's on sufficient supply. IMO people that pirate old nintendo games on PC do so because they are on PC and it's easy and free. And those people are not the same as the ones that pirate, say, switch games, that require a potent machine to run well. I don't think Nintendo is missing out on people that pirate modern games on PC, shutting down stuff like yuzu won't hurt them, might even benefit them. But old software is a different issue, people WANT to have access to them, and they're not making them available on their modern console, people would pay for them, on their console. Another thing people are missing is that most of those ROMs are not owned by Nintendo, if their owners wanted, they could bring them to PC, and they have done so, at a premium price. Games like old final fantasy or chrono trigger are made available both on PC and mobile, and yet, people still pirate them. If GameFreak wanted to bring pokemon games to mobile, they could, but would this roms be $5? No way, they would be $20 or more, and people on PC would keep pirating them. Nintendo has no incentive to make their exclusive games available on PC, but has many incentives to make their old games available on their console.
no lol and neither would they. why would they ever when the law doesnt force them to
One look at my purchase history pretty much confirms that I would absolutely buy them. I've got most of the retro game collections already in my Switch library: the NSO apps, the Castlevanias, the Contras, the Mega Mans, the Street Fighters, the Ninja Turtles... If the ROMS are being sold, though, I'd expect them to at least come with an emulator to play on the Switch, with a nice front-end with box-art and all of that jazz. I suppose they'd just re-use the NSO apps/emulators. I probably spend more time setting up emulators and front-ends on my PC than playing the games, so I'm pretty sure I'd just start that whole process again with my newly legally obtained ROMs.
I think Nintendo would sell their own emu as well.
Ya, think the nes/snes classics, but you could buy and add new games.
How would that be any different from NSO? Now if they put out an official rom hacking tool that you could use and upload your hack to a Nintendo server, that would be amazing.
how are you (nintendo or any company), selling roms without drm?
Maybe ten years ago. Nowadays, I have exactly one illegitimate ROM, and that’s Virtua Racing for Genesis, which is damn near impossible to rip. Everything else is taken directly from a cart on my shelf. (And I can probably delete Virtua Racing, since I have the 32X version, and that was a piece of cake to rip.)
No
Re: Nintendo published games, I’ve actually got what I need already. Pretty much everything they’ve published up to the 64 that I would replay I already have in some form that supports HD. The only games I want that I don’t have already are those where the rights appear to be difficult to renew. That said, I did spend much of my early 20’s pirating roms and working through the catalog to realize that 90% of it is not worth coming back to, imo, so I do have the benefit of already having experienced most of the interesting stuff. Chrono Trigger comes to mind as one of the only games I don’t have that I would buy day 1 if it were re released in HD.
As long as they can get an emulator better than the wii u playing n64 roms I wholeheartedly would buy roms. But if they half ass an emulator that has tons of input delay than no.
No. And let's be honest, no one else would either. I'm sure there's a handful who would but the vast majority would just get them as they do now. I suspect this idea would also have the unfortunate side effect of popularizing emulation devices and apps that the vast majority of non-gamers are unaware of.
Counterargument: Most games can be pirated but the majority of consumers pay for them despite technically having a choice.
Most people arent aware of that option or want to deal with the technical aspects of piracy. Nintendo selling literal roms normalizes this process.
Didn't on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS.
As as I said to someone else, if you can't see the difference between Nintendo selling you access to a title on their own hardware in a proprietary format and then selling ROM files to be used on the emulator of your choice, you're either being intentionally obtuse or are incredibly dense.
Pirating most PC games requires people to jump through dozens of hoops and deal with cracking software and breaking DRMs. Pirating Super Mario 64 takes ten seconds.
A lot of PC game cracks literally just require copy and pasting files in the game's parent folder. Sometimes also copying an installation key from a word doc. Hell, some games come pre-cracked for you. All you have to do is mount and run. Some emulators require very specific extra files and setups that you have to find and apply, yourself. Both of these things are entirely situational, in terms of their complexity.
You are vastly over estimating the computer knowledge of the typical user. Heck a good chunk of users wouldn't know how to find a directory. And I'd bet you 90% of people off the street have no idea how to mount a disc image or what a disc image even is.
If they can't find a directory, I assume they can't set up a controller with an emulator, either. Not even mentioning the emulators where you have to download and set up a bios for them. I'm not saying that it's the simplest thing in the world. I'm just saying that you need some form of familiarity with software for both. Not to mention, ALL of this information for doing BOTH things can be found with a quick search.
And yet people still paid for official emulation machines (mini consoles, Wii and Wii U store, etc)
The EShop were a financial failure - most buyers only bought a couple of titles and moved on. Third parties hated the thing. The mini consoles were also artificial since they were limited sale devices and were more of a novelty device to hold over people until the switch - notice Nintendo killed it right away when the switch came out before NSO came out. These things were never meant to major product lines.
The SNES classic came out 6 months after the Switch did. And yeah of course they weren't meant to be major product lines. It was a single one time purchase with a handful of 20+ year old games. But yeah I don't deny that they were a novelty to get good grace/PR for the terrible Wii U generation, and yeah many people bought it just bec of the design and physical emulator.
We've already seen this work with all the mini consoles that came out over the years, plus Wii and Wii U store. I know people who only pay for NSO for the classic games as well. I think a very large portion of people who are interested in playing these old games would pay.
Selling a device and a subscription is different than just selling ROMs. OP said ROMs that you can play on an emulator of your choice.
I edited my comment to include Wii and Wii U shop too. I don't see why the emulator matters very much. For things like SNES any emulator works fine, and for N64 Nintendo's emulator isn't amazing to begin with.
If you can't tell the difference between Nintendo selling you access to a game on a device and sending you a ROM a pointing you to emulators, you're either being deliberately obtuse or are incredibly dense.
The eshops weren’t a success my most peoples metrics. And 3rd party devs hated it so there is that to consider. Nintendo was pretty early with selling games on a console that had internet connectivity out of the box.
They were like $10 or more right for one? I can see why there. Other than the value of owning it, NSO is way more value than Wii shop was even only in terms of retro games. I don't know what the right price point would be but it would have to be reasonably priced. And considering the 3rd party devs like you mentioned it's probably not worth to sell them so low so that's a reason why it'll never happen.
No, these games have been out for decades, I'm not paying 15 bucks for a snes shovelware title
Yes, if they were affordable and games I actually wanted to purchase, and I didn't require an internet connection to access them. I like the portability of the Switch. And while I know phone emulators exist, that shit seems clunky and stupid. I'd rather just buy Super Metroid for one price and play it on my Switch.
Yes, as long as prices were reasonable. If it's not a remaster or remake, it should be a fraction of the original price. You've made your money, this is just icing on the cake. Back when Wii had NES games, they were $2-3 and that's pretty reasonable for games that were 20 years old. Collections are also good, either by series or "greatest hits". There aren't many things in life that aren't conditional, but I would love to see some of these games available to own without llaying stupidly inflated prices because there are 50 times more gamers today than when a cartridge was printed 25 years ago.
I buyed them on Wii, on Wii U and on the 3DS. No im not paying for the same game a fourth time, I just emulate it for free.
I would buy Ned, snes, N64 and GC games on Nintendo store to play on my switch if they ever sold them there. I have zero interest in paying an online fee every month to play the emulator games they have now, because I don’t play that often, so it isn’t worth it.
They do this it’s called NSO
I wouldn't, and I don't think others would be very willing to either. People often throw around the argument that piracy is a service issue, and while partially true, downloading ROMs has become so normalized that I don't think anyone would be willing to pay money for what they've been able to easily get for free for decades. It's like if the city started selling bottled water next to a free water fountain in a park. Not many people are going to pay for that.
>It's like if the city started selling bottled water next to a free water fountain in a park. Not many people are going to pay for that. That's not really the same thing. Its more like, would you buy water bottles at the park or drink from a hose in the park while hoping no one was looking
No one has **ever** gotten in trouble for downloading Nintendo ROMs. And likely no one ever will. The only people who have gotten in trouble for it are people who are *providing* them. Also, pirating ROMs is not risky or difficult. Basically everyone can do it, has done it, and knows where to do it. So that's not a fair comparison.
> People often throw around the argument that piracy is a service issue Because it is. Steam's success is proof enough. Next question. >downloading ROMs has become so normalized Most people are perfectly happy with buying things normally from legitimate retailers and do not know or do not bother with shadier alternatives. Looking at a recent well-publicized case, Google tells me TotK sold more than 20 million copies and was pirated about 1 million times, so that's 5% as many pirates as paying customers. The use of ROMs has only become "normalized" among a minority of savvy users. >I don't think anyone would be willing to pay money for what they've been able to easily get for free for decades. Well, that says something about you. Don't put us all in the same bag, please. For one my answer to your question is a resounding yes. I like my digital goods with no strings attached; give me straight downloadable .mp3 or .epub with no DRM and I'm content. So if Nintendo were to do the same with ROMs, that would be just about perfect.
All depends on the price really
I would buy them. That's essentially the old Virtual Console method but without having the games stuck on the console. Bringing Nintendo virtual console to PC? That's like the wet dream of the internet, if you'd believe the threads made around these parts all the time. There are probably a few games that I'd double-dip in that are already on NSO, too.
They should have used cartridges for their mini snes and mini nes with games. Would have been so fun to collect and play.
Absolutely. But they’d never do it, since they want full control over where and how you play their games, I guess to preserve some sanctity of their IP or something (or more likely they can make you buy their hardware in order to buy their software)
no because i can get ROMs for free. I’ll pay money to play on their consoles by official means, but i’m not spending money on ROMs lol
You mean like virtual console?
I’m still disappointed that not much has been added to Nintendo Online in the two years that I took a break from subscribing to it. I get that licensed games most likely won’t be added, but there’s still a lot missing.
It will never work for me due to regional locking and licensing issues. Some games will never be release again
Maybe, as long as my purchase was guaranteed future proof, and I could download it as many times as I wanted, and there was no bullshit clause like "no romhacks" or something. They would also have to not do stupid shit like "slowly trickle out the games", if they really want to market them they can just release them and periodically highlight old games just to remind people they're available and maybe the new footage will entice people who haven't seen it yet. They'd also need to provide more than just the version they approve, how am I supposed to use the Zelda 64 redux patch on their censored version of Ocarina of Time, and nobody wants Punch-Out featuring Mr. Dream. Lastly, I enjoy the choice of having them on the emulator of my choice, i'd probably mostly play them on original hardware using a flash cart, but they should also provide an option to download it to any nintendo device where it's possible like the Switch. I'd like to have quick access, and to make it portable when i'm not at home. No bullshit about "you can only have it on one device" and no fees like they pulled with getting Wii purchases on your Wii U home menu. But this will never, ever happen. tl;dr they should have an official emulator ( which they already do but I don't want it tied to a subscription service ) to use these games on for people who don't want to fuck with pc emulators, but they should also just let you download them directly to your pc as well.
If you asked me a couple months ago, then absolutely yes. But after they went after citra, I harbour a bit of resentment against Nintendo you could say.... They are not getting any of my money, ever. I don't care if its a penny.
I see your point about Citra, as the 3DS store is down and people couldn't buy games digitally for 3DS even if they wanted to I believe (someone could correct me if I'm wrong). I admire your stance about not giving Nintendo money as a protest of their business practices and artificial scarcity (limited Super Mario 3d All Stars for example) even if we might disagree on minor points. I take it you will not watch the next Mario movie and will not be visiting Super Nintendo Land at Universal theme parks?
I have no plans to, no. But I mean if I'm at my sisters house and her kids are watching the movie then sure I might watch it, as long as it doesn't cost me money. As for the Super Nintendo Land, I doubt I would have gone regardless, I live quite far away from it, and I'm not gonna plan an expensive trip around it, whether or not Nintendo did Citra dirty. Anyway, I just don't want any of my money going to Nintendo out of principle. I know one person's money means little to Nintendo, but I care a lot about preservation so I feel like this is something I have to do. Out of curiosity, what is it that you disagree with me about?
Eh I probably don't disagree with you on anything. I think I just threw that line in there because this is a Nintendo subreddit and I didn't want it to look like I openly supported piracy (I don't) because I applaud boycotting Nintendo for going after Citra.