This really isn't that surprising. They used ROMs for the classic games in Animal Crossing. They even had evidence it was from a release group, and not Nintendo's own copies
I really don't understand why this is embarrassing. I don't know the exact setup they have going on. Is it like a kiosk where people can play classic games, or is it a monitor just displaying them? They have their own emulator, Canoe, that they used for the SNES Classic. I don't remember the name of the NES one
Weren't at least some of the games in the Super Mario Collection ROMs? I guess I can see why people would expect a direct port from the company that created it, or original hardware running the original games, but it isn't like Nintendo doesn't already have a track record for this sort of thing
It's embarrassing because of how extremely litigious Nintendo is, and that they are themselves profiting using other people's work (emulators and/or ROMs acquired from the internet), the exact thing they ruin lives over.
I'm not saying they haven't used others work in the past, but they do have their own emulators and ROMs. They have for a long time. They are still terrible, but this just doesn't seem like a big deal to me
Edit: Also, whose lives have they ruined aside from those profiting off of distributing copyrighted material? Taking down a fan game doesn't sound life ruining
They've never sued anyone for playing an emulated game. They have (most likely wrongly) threatened emulator developers over circumventing copyright and encryption. I don't like it anymore than anybody else, but are we actually mad at a company for preserving their games? You can hate them for what they are doing to others while still being ok with their own emulation
They've sued multiple times emulator developers, even when it's completely legal.
(it is 100% legal to emulate, and make emulators.)
Due to the fact that a court case is expensive AF, this usually just kills the emulator group.
we're mad at nintendo precisely because they do not, themselves preserve games. While they try to sue emulation and game preservers, they also use their ROMs and emulations to sell games to the consumer.
they are going after the developers that make it possible to play your emulated game....
they aren't selling all their games, and never have.
ever wanted to play earthbound? you can't legally...
if you want to blame me for "rehashing arguments" then maybe look where you are first, and then read my comment. this isn't a place for respecting copyright, or corporations fighting against preservation.
feel free to check out my other comment on this post. where I link to nintendo using pirated roms and selling it back to us.
point is to stop giving the rich ass company any benefit of doubt.
I have so many things to be angry at Nintendo for I don't see the point in complaining about them emulating their own games. Why is Dolphin still around? I played Earthbound legally on my Wii U. I understand you can no longer obtain it, and you should most definitely pirate it, but they have released it again. I've pirated all my Nintendo games for years. Fuck 'em. If they want to emulate their own games in their own museum, alright
They are not "banning" emulators. They take action against two sorts of problems: leaking, and distribution of copyrighted material. Yuzu was taken down because they stupidly started charging for help with playing Tears of the Kingdom before its release. Other emulators have been threatened because they included binary console OS software (rather than actually fully emulating the console itself) or actually distributed game ROMs.
Dolphin has been around for about 20 years now. Why? Because they don't distribute copyrighted material, recommend against doing so, and don't require to include any binaries from the console.
Here's all they had to both say and adhere to, to "survive" the supposedly blood-hungry Nintendo for longer than some of the people reading this have been alive:
Where can I download game ISOs/ROMs?¶
Short answer: You don't. Buy games and dump them with a Wii.
Long answer: Downloading commercial games is illegal and thus strongly frowned upon by the Dolphin developers. To prevent legal issues, this includes gray areas like downloading games which you purchased earlier. You don't necessarily need to own a gaming console by yourself because you can buy a game disc and dump them with a friend's console. On the other hand, copying a friend's game dump is considered illegal again.
Also, lol @ the idea that it's hypocrisy for them to use their own game files. You understand that's what a ROM is, right? It isn't magic. It's just a binary file.
"Ripping" ROMs, or dumping them, takes almost no effort. If you have the cartridge reader its about as much work as taking photos off an SD card. Certainly nothing at all like cracking a game, which is pretty much software development.
Please consider informing yourself before forming strong opinions.
They were observed finding one ROM on the Internet, ever. They do have their own emulator(s).
Nintendo is a bunch of humans. If my boss asks me to see if I can find the installer for an old version of our software, you can bet I'll check anywhere before volunteering to go scrape old hard drives.
This is the part where I focus for half a second and realize this is about SNES and everything makes a lot more sense. I would hope newer stuff would have some form of protection 😅