Nintendo are Scummy (and quite stupid)

 

Another day, another instance of Nintendo being complete fucking dirt.  Thanks to some nasty lawsuits from Nintendo, Switch emulator Yuzu has been completely taken down.  If you go to their site right now you are sent to a, admiteddly quite funny, message from the developers that reads like a hostage being fed lines from their captor with a gun to their head about how the project is dead and they didn't intend any piracy.  It's not just Yuzu that has been baleeted either, Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra has also been completely removed and is no longer avaliable for download, which in my opinion is considerably more of a problem than the Yuzu takedown.

Now to some degree I get it, the Switch is a current piece of hardware and Yuzu was being used to pirate various games by some users.  Not only this but the Yuzu team had a patreon and were making some decent cash off the emulator which some theorize to be the big reason why the lawyers got involved and why, at least at time of writing, Ryujinx is still alive.  There is also no denying that some people were using the emulator to pirate games, Nintendo are well within their rights to take this stuff down.

But there's a problem.  The first problem is that while I can understand Nintendo taking umbridge with ROM and ISO sites, Emulators aren't JUST for piracy.  For example I have a large collection of PS2 games that I bought back when I used to collect games extensively.  My actual PS2 is being kept in a shoebox in the store room of my house right now so just being able to pop the disc copy of the game into my PC and play it via PCSX2 is an absolute godsend.  Yuzu wasn't a piece of software made for piracy, no emulator is, they are made for convenience and preservation and Nintendo just decided to shit all over that for reasons I cannot comprehend

The other problem is that the Switch is a piece of fucking garbage.  The controllers suck, the pro controllers are overpriced and the system can barely handle its own games.  For example, the last big game I played on my Switch was Shin Megami Tensei 5, a game exclusive to the system AND YET suffered from massive frame drops when entering the fucking menu along with a bunch of other performance and visual hiccups.  My joycons have suffered from drift and the system feels like shit to play in "portable" mode and looks like shit when its displayed on my TV.  People who were using Yuzu to get a better resolution or not have their games run like trash don't deserve to be inconvenienced like this because of couple of fossilized scumfucks in Kyoto are mad they can't win a lawsuit against Palworld so they take it out on some emu devs.

I wrote a post about it previously before I had heard about any of this but emulation of systems and games is the single most important thing we have for preservation.  Nintendo won't fucking do it, if anything they keep closing down stores and services so that tons of games become just flat out unobtainable and unplayable outside of emulation or overpaying for hardware and a used game that they don't make any money off.  You can argue that maybe I'm overreacting a little because some other person will come along eventually and make a different Switch emulator in the future when its less relevant but the fact that a company is so willing to spit in the face of these efforts is just scummy and infuriating.

The funny part, the part that makes Nintendo seem a bit stupid and short sighted though, is that if you do a quick Google search for Yuzu or Citra, you will now find quite a large number of people flocking to uploads of the emulators in order to start using them (and probably pirating some games in the process) now that its ease of avaliability is dissapearing.  I found a certain webpage that had Citra and Yuzu avaliable for downloads and between a bunch of comments saying simply "fuck Nintendo", there were some users saying "I had never heard of Yuzu before but after seeing the news I decided to download it and try it out".  Does this count as the Streisand Effect?

Nintendo can throw their little tantrum and ruin a couple peoples lives, sure, but they aren't ever going to be able to stop the Emulation train.  The more Nintendo do this kind of thing the more people will start to think that its morally acceptable to pirate their shit, and not just their old shit either.  While they are probably a company that's too big to fail and have too many mindless fans that will give them millions of dollars for actual trash I can dream that one day all that good will will run dry and they will be forced to shutter their doors forever

Fuck Nintendo, haven't been good since the SNES

 

ROM Sites are Important

 

In the last couple of days well used emulation website CDRomance I assume got contacted by some legal types and were forced to take down all of their download links.  A sad day for users of emulation as CDRomance was probably one of the easiest places to get even some of the most obscure games you could think of and now those users have been scattered to other sites once again as a giant of emulation has fallen.

There are going to be a number of people, mainly Nitendo fans for some reason, who will see this news and think "Good! Another piracy website getting what it deserves" but I wish to point out to these idiots that emulation websites like CDRomance and Emuparadise before it are probably the best thing we have when it comes to the preservation of old games because we all know that developers and publishers sure as shit aren't going to preserve the data themselves.  In fact, companies are going out of their way to erase the past in the form of the hundreds of remakes that you see every year.  One look at Twitter when Resident Evil 4 Remake came out with people saying absolutely insane things like "Resident Evil 4 was always bad and this update was completely needed" and it paints the picture that even so-called "gaming enthusiasts" don't care about preserving the past of the medium.  People are more than happy to have the old thing erased if we can get another version of that old thing that just looks a bit shinier, even if its completely removed from what that original thing was.

There are purists out there who will also argue that emulation is bad because if you wanted to play or preserve the old thing so bad then you should go through the effort of aquiring original discs/carts and hardware.  Well there's two big problems with that.  The first being is that no physical media will last forever.  As much as I enjoy owning discs and carts of my personal faves there will come a day, maybe within my lifetime or maybe after I'm dead, it doesn't matter, that those discs and connectors on the carts will rot and the data will be lost.  You can make all the clone systems you want to play them but that doesn't change the fact those carts and discs will die one day.  Just because it might happen a few generations from now doesn't make it not a problem.  The second issue is that a lot of these games, the ones people want to play and preserve are prohibitably expensive thanks to absolute idiots treating old games like NFTs, not as games to be played or pieces of art to be preserved, but things to speculate on and hopefully get rich off of.

Don't forget, that when you buy an overpriced video game off some sausage fingered unwashed cunt on E-Bay or whatever other service, you aren't supporting that game in any meaningful way.  The money doesn't go to a developer that worked on it or even a grimy publisher that put it on store shelves, it goes right into the pocket of that unwashed cunt so that he can find some other obscure Saturn or N64 game to buy on the cheap and sit on it in the hopes that it'll build in value.  These phsycial copies don't hold any real purpose if they are priced so high that most people who remember them fondly or may want to experience them for the first time can't get hold of them.  

That's why emulation is so important, it makes the entire history of the medium avaliable for everyone to play and who knows how these older games may inspire another users who otherwise may have never gotten to try them.  How many games that have been locked to Japan for years for most people have been made avaliable to wider audiences thanks to emulation and ROM sites.  NO ONE would have known what fucking Racing Lagoon was if not for the efforts of those fan translators and sure, a bunch of people "pirated" the game to play it in English but if you think about it another way, the interest generated from that fan translation should maybe have the cogs going in some Square Enix money-mans brain to do a remake or a sequel.

Companies need to put the legal threats down and let ROM sites for old games just exist and a "necessary evil" for the sake of the mediums history.  Sure, if you have some sweaty nerds pirating the lastest Switch games to run on Yuzu, sure, take that shit down but if little Timmy wants to download fucking Albert Odyssey (real game btw) and experience it for the first time then fucking let him, I'm sure SEGAs bottom line will be just fine even if 100,000 people did that.

Leave the ROM sites alone
Fuck you Nintendo

Note: I'm aware of the half-truths in this post but I'm not discussing that here, shut up and enjoy your tickets in silence, idiot

Subscription ROM Services are Dumb

 

Yesterday I caught some news that Sony is joining Nintendo in giant game companies providing ROMS via a subscription service and it's pretty darn stupid to say the least.

On the surface it sounds like it could be a good idea.  The idea is that you pay a every month to get access to a collection of back-catalogue games from the companies previous systems to play as much as you want, good deal right?  Well no.  The initial problem with all this stuff is that you're only getting a very small amount of the back catalogue and usually only the best sellers.  This means that any hidden gems or good games that were less popular just get ignored and fall to the wayside which means that despite these services if there's an obscure game you really love you'll probably never get to play it on your modern hardware no matter how much of your hard earned money you give them.  If Shadow Hearts, for example ever turns up on PSN premium I will literally eat an entire shoe store

Money is the other problem because these companies are essentially ripping you off at every turn.  Nintendo released the expansion to Switch Online where you have to pay fifty bucks a month for a smattering of N64 games.  What's worse is that a lot of these games aren't very well presented with the Switch version of Ocarina of Time being somewhat famous for how shit it was compared to regular emulation on PC.  I've heard it has since become a bit better but the fact it was released in the condition that it was in for that price point AT ALL is really stupid.  Sony are even worse wanting $120 per year just for the ability to play some of the PS1/2/3s best sellers which is INSANE to me.  Maybe if it was a one time payment of 120 to play all those games forever, sort of like a giant greatest hits collection, then I wouldn't be moaning but these payments have to be constant.  If you stop playing for Switch online, no more SNES for you.  Stop paying for PSN Premium? Kiss your games goodbye until you cough up more cash.

All of this, when emulation exists which can be done for free and usually at a higher quality than anything Sony or Nintendo will give you.  Now I'm not going to argue the legality of emulation.  If you download some SNES ROMS or some PS2 ISOs and Nintendo or Sony come after you, they are well within their legal rights to do so but just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.  

Let's think about Emulation for a second, who is it hurting?  For this example let's take someone downloading an ISO of Shadow Hearts on the PS2.  You could argue that they should be paying money to play it to support Sony or the developer, Sacnoth.  Well that argument doesn't stand because 1) Sacnoth ain't around no more, 2) The game isn't being sold anywhere no more and 3) The game isn't avaliable on the back catalogue subscription service.  "So go and buy a disc copy instead of pirating then!" I hear you cry through a wave of drool.  

Shadow Hearts on disc is about $130-300 depending on where you buy it.  Now let's say you go this route, where does that money go?  Does it go to Sony to support their production of future games?  No it doesn't.  Does it go to Sacnoth or their parent company Aruze to maybe fund another Shadow Hearts game?  No it doesn't.  So where does the money go then?  It goes to some fat, middle aged neckbeard who hasn't showered in 2 weeks so he can go scoop up more retro games from garage sales and used book stores to over price in online marketplaces.  I know it feels "morally correct" to buy a disc version of a retro game but you're supporting an absolutely disgusting marketplace that's really bad for players.

So tell these subscriptions to go fuck themselves and go fire yourself up and emulator.  I'm sure the multi-billion dollar corporations won't go under because you decided to fire up Yakiniku Bugyou on ePSXe, you don't need to worry your damaged little brain about it

Abandoning Game Collection

 

When I first moved to Japan, access to retro shops and old hardware meant that I was extremely excited to start collecting old games.  I quite enjoy playing retro games and so being able to do so on real hardware sounded really good but over the years I have come to realize that collecting games is a big pile of bullshit (for me)

As of right now, I still have a pretty sizeable chunk of my game collection.  A while ago I sold a bunch of boxed SNES games that I had bought for about 100 yen each back to local used book chain Book Off because they were eating up tons of space in my closet, but most of it remains intact.  The problem with this collection though is that it's not doing anything, it's just sat there, collecting dust, I just own it for the sake of owning it.  

I do know that there's quite a lot of people who like displaying their games.  Piling them up in shelves like in the header image, putting jewel cases and boxes side by side or, in some cases, even putting them in special display cabinets.  This is all fine and dandy but there are two problems with that.  The first is a problem personal to me and many other collectors living in Japan where our houses or apartments just don't have to the space to do that, so even though I have a pretty sizable collection of PS1 games, they are just hiding in a cardboard box in my wardrobe.  The second is that even if I could, I just don't give enough of a fuck do that, I don't see the appeal of it.  Games are meant to be PLAYED, not looked at and I'm sure as shit that if you have a full wall of SNES games you aren't playing all of them any time soon.  In fact, if what I've seen on Twitter is to be believed, you have that massive wall of games and yet all you do is sit there and play Super Mario World, Super Metriod and Tetris all day while the rest of it sits there unused and unloved.  

What I realized though, the reason I started collecting all those games all those years ago is that I care about having access to these games more than I care about owning them.  Sometimes, on a lazy afternoon, it would be nice to just grab a random handful of Saturn games, spread them around me on the floor like I'm a young lad again and whittle away the hours playing a bunch of shit I've never heard of.  But nowadays that isn't necessary.  Mini systems and more importantly, emulation exist now so you don't actually NEED to spend a ton of money and use a ton of space to have that experience, with a few clicks and some computer know how you can have that afternoon with the Saturn but at no cost and you'll still have the shelf space for a cactus or something.

"But Tau! Emulation is IlLeGaL" I hear some of the 40 year old British saddos on Twitter cry.  Yes, to some extent they are correct, companies would probably rather you not download 3rd party software and their games and play them on your PC but who is really being hurt by emulation? Let's think on it for a second

One game I love dearly is Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne.  A long while ago, after moving to Japan, I wanted to play it again on my nice PS2 that I bought in Book Off.  So I went down to that very same Book Off to find a copy, and lo and behold there it was, the regular edition of SMT3 for about 600 yen.  But wait, Nocturne in Japan isn't the same Nocturne I had in the UK, I had the Maniacs edition! So a bit more looking and I find the Maniacs edition for TWENTY THOUSAND FUCKING YEN.  So I went home and I emulated it via PCSX2.  Now who did I hurt by doing this? ATLUS? No because they got my high school pocket money when I bought it in England.  The only people that lost out was the company that runs Book Off.  Someone who wasn't related to it's production or publication missed out on $200 because I'm not willing to pay jacked up prices for game that came out in 2003.

But the, a miracle happened, a Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster was announced for the Switch and PS4 and lemme fuckin' tell ya, I bought that shit IMMEDIATELY.  So the 20,000 yen I didn't give to whatever cunt runs Book Off I instead gave 6000 of it to ATLUS for the Switch version because SMT3 on the go is rad. The other 14,000 that I saved I can now use to buy other Atlus games like P5R (lol) and P5S or Persona Q or something like that.  Money that will go to people who actually work on those games to hopefully give me more SMT games (SMT5 release date please I'm beggin ya) If however I HAD given my money to Book Off that instead though, I probably wouldn't buy the remaster because I already had it on PS2 and ATLUS would have lost out on a sale.  Emulation reminded me just how awesome SMT3 still is after all those years, and then ATLUS sucked the money right out of my wallet with a version I can play on the go.  ATLUS, if anything, owe a big thank you to PCSX2.

If I buy a classic game, I want that money to go to the developers or the people who may be involved in making another one, I want to vote with my wallet and tell those devs or publishers that this is what I want more of.  I don't want to make some re-seller little cunt on Ebay $200 richer so he can buy more anime figurines to cum all over

I'm not saying however that game collecting is complete bullshit, if YOU personally get something out of it and you have the money to do it, then go for it.  I know a couple guys who collect for specifically the Saturn and the PC Engine and to tell you the truth, the idea of curating a collection of games for one system that you're particularly passionate about does have a sort of lure to me even now.  But if I'm being honest I'd rather save my money, support new IP and buy certain remakes of games I really like so that hopefully we can see some more from those series'

The Playstation Classic Isn't THAT Bad

I never thought I'd do a post advocating in favor (sort of) of an overpriced emulator in a box but here I am.  Before I start, in case you don't know, Sony have followed Nintendo's lead of releasing mini classic systems with their own Playstation Classic.  The list of 20 games that are preloaded onto the system were announced and people are NOT happy about it.


There are some really well known titles in the lineup such as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 and Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey but then there's some slightly less popular/well known games such as Jumping Flash, Intelligence Qube and Mr Driller.  There's no real game on there that's really bad, despite some people telling me that Rainbow Six is dicks but I remember having fun with it (not played in a long time, mind you), so why are people so mad?

From what I can tell it seems to be that people are pissed because games like Puzzle Fighter 2 got put on the system over things like Spyro, Crash, Silent Hill or one of the other many great games in the PS1 library.  These are the 3 big titles I see popping up in every little comment but I don't understand how you can be mad about those because Crash has been remade for PS4, Spyro is about to be remade for PS4 and Silent Hill is owned by a company so inept that they nearly got sued over voice rights for their own remake of 2 and 3 so lord only knows what kind of licensing issue lies in that one.

My problem with people complaining about it in general though is that people only seem to want obvious shit on their classic systems.  For example, the SNES classic is a cool piece of kit but I'll never buy one because it only contains games that I've already played to death.  Obvious picks to keep the fanboys happy, so that people can go on social media and post stupid shit like "erh mah gerd do you remember Mario?!"  At least Sony had the balls to put on some lesser known titles like fucking Jumping Flash or Intelligence Qube, so that maybe once you've had your little nostalgia rush you can explore a few gems of the system that you may have not heard of.

I would have considered buying a SNES classic, for example, if Nintendo had made let's say, only 10 of the games safe bets like Earthbound, Metroid, Zelda, Mario and the rest as things like Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma and Ogre Battle.  Syphon Filter, Wild Arms and Super Puzzle Fighter are good games, why are you so afraid to broaden your horizons a bit?  The only "shit" game on that entire list is Revelations: Persona and that's only because the localization was a complete botch job, not that the game itself is shit.  Maybe its an updated version and then what I said about it being crap isn't even true. 

If you're THAT pissed off about it just go and emulate stuff.  The emulators for PS1 are actually pretty good so just make your own PS1 "Classic" and play the games you like.  Also the list of games in Japan is much different and contains things like Parasite Eve and G Darius.  The lineup here is so good I might even pick one up once the price tag goes down a little bit. 

Play something new, it won't kill you, you might even like that Wild Arms thing.

I don't understand the NES/SNES Mini

Unless you've been living under a rock or something you've probably heard of the NES/SNES Mini.  If you are unsure of what they are then they are little versions of the classic systems that come pre loaded with a bunch of games and you just plug that shit directly into your TV and have a grand old time.  The SNES Mini even comes with the unreleased Starfox 2 so if you're a fan of those games I'm sure that enough is reason alone to jump up and down in excitement.

Now what I'm not going to do in this post is fly off the handle in my usual offensive "fuck you" nature because I don't think that if you buy one or are excited to buy one you're an idiot.  It's a convenient piece of kit, a cool collectors item if you're into that or if you're an oblivious parent looking for a gift then this seems like a sure thing.

Personally though, I don't understand it. 

If we look at the SNES Mini in particular, from what I've heard it's about $80 but that's only if you can actually find one to buy.  Apparently it's selling so fast that actually getting a hold of one is pretty difficult.  For that $80 you get about 21 games and everything you need to play them such as cables and controllers.  Now 21 games for $80 may SEEM like a good deal until you take a look at something called the Super Everdrive

https://krikzz.com/store/home/13-super-everdrive-v2.html

For a mere $6 dollars more you can get a cartridge that plugs into the original hardware and then you play games via an SD card that you load down with ROMS.  I'm not going to discuss the legality of all that in this specific post (not that I'm unwilling in a comment section though) but that means for $6 more than the SNES Mini, providing you have an SNES already, you could play all 783 officially released games rather than just 21.  But maybe you don't have your SNES anymore, fair enough, but you probably have a PC.

Emulation is what seems to make buyers and fans of the SNES Mini roll their eyes in disgust and granted I can see why.  Every Tom Dick and Harry is making that argument against the system that emulation is basically free and you can play any game you want.  You don't even need to look very hard on google to find hundreds of websites just offering ROM dumps of these games providing you can tolerate their 80,000,000 pop ups.  But maybe you have a problem with the legality, maybe it doesn't sit well with you.

Well doesn't almost every modern Nintendo system come with a virtual console that allows you to buy these games for like, $5/6 each?  Granted that would be more expensive than just buying a SNES Mini and of course you can't play Starfox 2 but unless you really like ALL 21 of those games then you aren't really getting the full value.  For example I have absolutely NO interest in playing Street Fighter 2 when I can just pop Alpha 3 in my PS2.  I personally have no real interest in replaying FF6 or Super Mario RPG any time soon.  I don't really take much pleasure in the original F-Zero (not that it's bad mind, it's just hard to play after X) and why the fuck would I play Super Mario Kart when I can just play Mario Kart 8, online, with more than 1 friend.  So already that's cut the value down for me but I understand that not everyone will feel that way.

There's alternatives too but it would take me literally all night to type them out

Like I said, I don't think you're an idiot and I can KIND of see the appeal in certain ways but ultimately I just can't see why you'd drop $80 on a system when there's cheaper (and arguably better) alternatives that you can access without having to desperately search stores for.  Still, power to ya, you do you, enjoy a box full of great games.

Emulation Vs Carts

Anyone who has any kind of interest in older games knows about emulation and where to get their favourite roms.  There are a number of purists who will tell you that carts are the only way to go but how do emulated games stack up to the actual thing?  I'm not here to talk about the legal side of things, that's another topic for another time, I'm just talking about how it feels to play the game on an emulator vs playing on actual hardware.

I for one am all for a little bit of emulation mainly because it's fucking convenient.  I have tons and tons of SNES and NES carts lying around my house but I don't have the space to have those consoles hooked up all the time, which is unfortunate.  Emulation is a good way for me to be able to play all the games from my retro collection without having to go through the effort of digging out the system and hooking that bastard up in order to play it.  Maybe I just want a go on something for 30 minutes or whatever, I don't want to have to go through a bunch of effort for a quick go on something.

However, I do feel like some of the experience is lost when playing on an emulator.  The first thing, at least for me, is comfort.  When I play on my original hardware I can lay back on my couch and just chill but when emulating I have to play at my computer which is significantly less comfortable.  Technical issues will also rear their ugly head when emulating which has led to many a stressful evening.  Sometimes a certain ROM or ISO just doesn't want to function on your emulator of choice and having to work shit out to get certain games to run is a massive pain in the hole.  It sometimes gets to the point where it would have just been faster to hook up my system rather than spend time googling around for configuration setups for specific games.

So while I feel that carts are infinitely better, emulation has a few perks that just makes life a hell of a lot easier.  For me as someone who speed runs, emulation makes streaming a fuckton easier and it makes practicing certain segments of certain games a lot faster and less annoying too.  That said, I'd much rather be chilling on my couch playing my retro games than destroying my ass on my shitty computer chair, but that's just me.  For people that don't have access to older games or for people that just want to keep their old collections easily accessible, emulation is pretty vital and as much as the big companies hate it, it's here to stay and that's a good thing.