If you think emulators are illegal, you're wrong

The market for emulators in the '90s was weird - even the big name publishers didn't quite know if they were legal, or if they counted as piracy. So it was surprising when Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld 1999 to announce that PlayStation games would soon be coming to Mac. What was unsurprising, was Sony's response.
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[@bobbaggins403]

‘If you have enough money to defend yourself’ is the most American sentence.

[@dox6031]

Nah that shit is global. Money=power= complete safety is a universal law in a world based on money

[@thothtahuti5509]

yeah :(

[@dontchewglass]

I saw this comment before the video and assumed it was referring to gun ownership (wealthy people who can collect/stockpile guns account for like half the guns owned in the US)

[@bobbaggins403]

@@dontchewglass that is so understandable 😹

[@dontchewglass]

@@bobbaggins403 lol yep, and the interests of those collectors plus manufacturers are the only ones the NRA/most gun lobbyists actually care about

[@SomeGuyWithAFace9]

if something is legal, but a big company can bully you into submission by having more money and lawyers than you, then whos really deciding whats legal?

[@thewinter_]

polygon's comments are as anticapitalist as ever lmao

[@Guimhj]

Burgeois democracy being questioned, one game at a time

[@theunnamedaccount4009]

@@thewinter_ I feel like most communities start off fairly politically neutral before slowly over the years leaning towards one ideology after everyone kind of just realises that the current political status on today's issues seems a bit off

[@aa-tx7th]

most people are anticapitalist my man especially the younger gens

[@thewinter_]

@@aa-tx7th if that were true, wouldn't we have abolished capitalism by now?

[@arthurdurham]

Copyright is one of the biggest abuses of our legal system. Really shows how often something's legality has little to do with what can be made litigious.

[@Alte.Kameraden]

Well of course, they were created to help prop up monopolies and large companies. In a laissez-faire Economic Liberal system, it's very hard for companies to grow large, and become monopolies. As you have no way of protecting against other people copying your products and making them more affordable. The larger a company becomes, the less efficient they are, even if the company is very wealthy, it can never make a product as cheap as a smaller company can, or an individual can. Because that larger company also has far more financial overheard, more employees to pay, more property to tax, and far higher salaries for owners, manages and even often employees. Copyright laws were never created to protect small business from big business, that is a lie. It's the reverse. Large companies can afford to sue a company or individual even if they didn't do something illegal, using the Copyright Law as a foundation for the suite. Hoping the defendant will give up and settle instead of trying to win. Mean while large companies can easily just afford to change a product just enough so it no longer falls under Copyright Production, and without much effort steal other people's products, while having the lawyers to ensure they never sue back. The laws have never existed to protect the little man in short. Want to know why the EU pushed for new Copyright Laws on the internet that mostly focused on Major Media Content, even News Articles (so you couldn't quote a news article even in a video legally). It was done so by the Central State to protect large multi national media conglomerates because the Little Man on Social Media was literally kicking their ass on the political world stage. Good example, Tim Pool annually has more viewers than CNN or FOX.

[@Amir_404]

@@Alte.Kameraden Laissez-faire economics always leads to monopolies. Efficiency increases with size; this is called economy of scale. The reason monopolies are considered bad isn't because they are inefficient, but rather because they are too efficient at achieving *their* goal. The goals of a businesses and the goals of the consumer are misaligned. A consumer wants low cost and high quality products, but the businesses only wants profit. A small business can only turn a profit by giving the consumer driven market what it wants, but a large enough business can start modifying the market.

[@ashwilliams1725]

Yeah at this point I'm full blown anti-copyright

[@Alte.Kameraden]

@@Amir_404 "Efficiency increases with size; this is called economy of scale." If that was the case, Socialism wouldn't fail, but it does so horrifically. You'd think a Corporation that holds control over everything which is what a Socialist economy basically is, a giant Corporation that controls everything, all the resources they need, labor they need. You'd think they'd be super efficient but that isn't how it turns out. They in exchange actually struggle to keep up with the rest of the world, heck keep up with their own domestic production. People who work in a large company have no real incentive to work hard. It's not 'their' business, they work for a wage or salary. Increase the size/bureaucracy behind it and employees increasingly have no incentive to work hard. You see this in the video game industry where Talent is actually leaving large Corporations like Rockstar, Activision, Bethesda, among many others which now have very few of the people working for said companies that actually made the products consumers loved. Same thing happened in the anime industry. Throughout the 80s/90s only a hand full of super mega corporations/animation studios dominated the market. In the early 2000s however there was a shift, thousands of animators, and people of talent just slowly started leaving these companies and forming their own studios, often out of their own pockets. Now Japan is filled with a ridiculous number of animation studios, some of which so small they only have a few hundred employees. Vs the mega Corporations that were say Sunrise Inc for example. This is actually the primary reason for the anime boom of the 2000s as well, on an international level. More anime = more chances of an anime that appeals to a viewer, and it only takes finding one they like to get their foot into that market as a consumer. Also because the companies are much smaller, they also do not have to be nearly as profitable to stay afloat as well. So it doesn't even matter if they make an anime that becomes a big hit.

[@Sleepy_Wolve]

@@Alte.Kameraden Socialism "fails" because of the US's interventions. Vietnam has half the GDP per capita of my country yet excels compared to my country. Cuba has decent GDP per capita growth despite being under an illegal embargo by the US. "People who work in a large company have no real incentive to work hard It's not 'their' business, they work for a wage or salary." which is why socialism works.

[@dsproductions19]

A quick note: copying for personal backup is perfectly legal as long as you don't sell or share the copy, the same as backing up music CDs in the early 2000s. Most people assume ROMs are always pirated since it used to require specific (and expensive) hardware, as well as often modifying the file afterward (like NES). This isn't as much of an issue for a while now, as many consoles can be hacked to make backups with just free software, and backup hardware these days can be as cheap as $10, but the assumption still stands.

[@intraum]

isn't that dependent on the specific End User Licence Agreement? i'm no expert but it's my understanding that games these days technically just give you a licence to play the game, you don't actually own the contents of the cartridge in your hand.

[@TokenSelf]

One small problem: Most commercial software & digital content has copy-protection, and the DMCA prohibits circumventing access-control measures. So you technically have the right to make a personal backup but no legal method of actually doing so.

[@thelonejedi538]

@@TokenSelf yeah DMCA made even posessing tools to decrypt illegal. I remember when 2600 was selling shirts with the source code to decrypt DVD's on them to protest 🤣

[@theunnamedaccount4009]

I would honestly recommend legally obtaining DS roms. Since Nintendo is really down bad and basically forced 90% of Nintendo roms off the internet, the only ones around anymore have well known bugs (look at HG/SS, wth screen flickering and bugged sprites). Due to this, the best way to play Nintendo roms is... well... to get them yourself from your own cartridge, bug free Honestly, I can understand if people don't want to do this. You have to jailbreak your console, which can take hours if you don't know what to do, but the end result is a very legal very clean rom that is very legal. Or not. I'm not a law expert

[@thelonejedi538]

@@theunnamedaccount4009 it really depends on where you live. Japan has weird laws against reverse engineering/modding stuff that are more strict than anywhere else. America is cool with reverse engineering in general, BUT, if the media you are copying has any form of copy protection and dumping requires any sort of process to circumvent it in order to make a backup, then that is 100% illegal in america. For the rest of the world, even in countries that actually respect copyright and intelectual property, as long as you aren't distributing your backup to others it is legal. I'm not familiar with ds so I don't know the process for dumping. Hacking your ds is legal in most places. And as long as the homebrew app for dumping games doesn't circumvent encryption, then it is legal as well. It likely does, but I wouldn't worry. Unless you're running a web site or discord server distributing the dumps. Fun fact to end on here: Nintendo has long been very anti-emulation, and they are the only major game company with a stated policy on emulation. 30 years ago there was a fairly crappy NES emulator(by todays standards) , that was the best of the ones floating around, but it would crash depending on dump variations, so some extra data was injected into the rom to allow the emulator to know the proper way to open it. Because this emulator was the best, basically all nes roms floating around were modded with this extra data. Then nintendo launches the wii, brings back old games to sell again on the virtual console. Wii gets hacked, someone looks at the hex dump of the game and finds this extra bit of data used by that long ago abandoned emulator. Nintendo literally got caught red handed illegally downloading their own games and then selling them back to people 🤣

[@ypob2007]

“Pirating Nintendo isn’t a crime, it’s an obligation”

[@wp_2k]

if a company no longer distributes a piece of software, it should be legal to emulate it

[@inkchariot6147]

@@wp_2k It is, they won't say it, but it is.

[@tasteslikestupid4003]

It's always morally correct

[@emeraldgiss]

You say you pirate Xbox, PlayStation, or PC games and people will judge you (and on the extrema case turn you in). If you pirate older Nintendo games they will be like oh ok, or at max judge you because they don't know how bad Nintendo is.

[@ypob2007]

@@emeraldgiss actually it’s more because Nintendo wants you to buy the console and game even if they won’t even receive that money

[@NickWimpyNoodle]

Know what’s ACTUALLY criminal? These game companies letting legacies of games die off forever

[@ricepony33]

What would you all pay to have an actual Netflix of gaming with every game playable right off your tv with connected controller?

[@Mars0War]

I mean, it sucks but it's not literally a crime.

[@shaungreer3350]

@@ricepony33 nothing seeing as i could just pirate them

[@chazl4968]

When has any company or producer of art in other mediums had their catalog of works available on shelves for all of time? What’s wrong with emulation or second hand for “preservation”? What are we mad about?

[@shaungreer3350]

@@chazl4968 exactly. games are probably the best preserved media in all of history, seeing as they’ve been around for alot less time than others and the fans are more eager to preserve things.

[@intraum]

the watery fanfic disclaimer / emulator blurbs that you referenced are some of the funniest things about ~2000s era internet lol. i absolutely loved it when i'd come across a youtube video back in the day when the description would be "I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING". cracks me up every time

[@aimelle3]

No copyright intended!

[@intraum]

@@aimelle3 this full episode of the sopranos is for educational purposes, all rights belong to HBO

[@mavrickindigo]

Original character do not steal

[@BonaparteBardithion]

As an AMV editor I breathe this. It does nothing to stop strikes or claims. Videos will be muted, have ads tacked to them or be straight up unavailable in certain countries no matter what the blurb says.

[@MisterSpeedStacking]

I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING. LITERALLY, I AM BANKRUPT. DONATE TO ME HERE

[@pliable-head]

The distinction between what was copyright infringement/illegal piracy/what have you and what wasn't is actually super interesting, thank you Jenna for this and also for acknowledging the wild ride of Gex

[@ghost-user559]

KZbin just asked me to rate your comment with a star rating asking whether I would “rate this comment”. You said too many legal terms. Sounds like KZbin is feeling a little bit sensitive about the skeletons in their own closet?

[@ZoeBateman]

legally speaking what I'm saying in this comment is a joke, but I think it's completely fine and good to download a copy of a game for emulation or otherwise if it's not available for purchase or available legitimately or easily anymore. emulation is great, and is also a good thing for kinda archiving things and keeping old stuff available to use

[@chrismanuel9768]

There's entire archives of NES games still available online right now. Nintendo barely even tries to remove them anymore, they care mostly about the newer games

[@tenacity25]

I also think that it's fine to download a copy of a game for emulation if you already own a physical copy and don't want to deal with the hassle of trying to convert it into a ROM. As a makeshift-self-port sort of deal. In case you, say, prefer using a control input that isn't supposed on the main console the game is on. Like if you prefer K&M controls for strategy games, but want to play fire emblem. But the way companies treat emulation leads to... well, a lot of sources not necessarily being the safest, especially for newer games.

[@karlhendrikse]

Technically, pirating a game when new copies are no longer available decreases the price of used copies because of reduced demand, and if people know the resale value in the future is going to be lower they're less likely to purchase a new copy when they are still available... so I don't think it's 100% fine and good. I mean, I still do it myself sometimes, but it's not an automatic "this is OK". There's also the possibility of a future re-release that you don't end up buying because you pirated the original version. For me, the golden rule is that piracy is OK if you can honestly say, hand on heart, that your purchasing decisions aren't affected by it. I'm planning to pirate Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door soon (because the only copies I can find are ridiculous prices that I would rather never play the game than pay), but if it's ever remade, I will purchase the remake (if it's good).

[@ryno4ever433]

I agree with you but without qualifying my statement as a joke.

[@william41017]

@@karlhendrikse there's no proof that your first claim is true. And even if it was, so what? Why should I be responsible for the price of someone's used copy of a game? That makes no sense

Jeez, that "bleem!" UI knocked the air out of my lungs and physically transported me back to my teenage years.

[@RidireOiche]

How many niche throwaway janky videogames that perhaps only a few hundred people ever played have now been lost to time due to a lack of readily accessible emulators. The kind of cheap weirdly enjoyable games only you seem to remember, from when you rented them those weekends someone else got there first and rented the only copy of the game you actually wanted and you couldn't go home empty handed so you had to rent something.

[@orijimi]

Not entirely for this reason, but Steel Battalion!

[@MonochromeWench]

Reverse engineering being legal is older than sega vs accolade, the original big lawsuit was ibm vs compaq, that established it was absolutely ok if you didn't copy code and is why the PC industry even exists today. Modern PCs are still based upon the efforts to reverse engineer the IBM 5170 AT in the 80s

[@longbeing]

My view on it is that if you cannot purchase the game from the publisher, it’s morally fine to emulate it, and I think copyright law should allow for this. Buying a physical copy would just give your money to a retailer (probably at a high markup) instead of the people who made it. (discontinued games with available remakes and/or remasters are tricky, since they blur the line between a re-release and a different game)

[@youtubeuniversity3638]

If the copyright holders have zero possible way to financially benefit from the copyright they're holding, then why let such a hold hold all us back?

[@jkid1134]

The viability of the secondhand market is one of those baked in assumptions that allow distributors to buy and stock extra games and not be scared if they don't sell them. It might not feel like it's in a very direct way, but it definitely all contributes.

[@karlhendrikse]

People are more likely to purchase a game from the publisher if they know the resale value won't drop to zero as soon as the game goes out of print. So it's a bit less than morally fine.

[@longbeing]

@@karlhendrikse I don’t think that argument holds much water, considering the huge success of Steam, a platform which does not allow you to resell the games you purchase with it. Also I’m not sure the state of video game resale is healthy. Portal 2 and Pokémon Black were released within a month of each other in my region. I paid just ten dollars to play Portal 2. I would liked to have bought Pokémon Black. However, the game alone starts at $80 on Amazon, and since I do not own a DS, that would bring the buy-in up to around $230.

[@BonaparteBardithion]

@@karlhendrikse I've never once in my life sold a game. They're not collector plates or a new car. Most people don't buy games with the resale value in mind, they buy them to play them. Let's not make this a Beanie Baby situation.

[@LexVexation]

Region lock in Australia was a killer in the 90s/00s, having to wait MONTHS for a new release 😫

[@kashiichan]

If not years, depending on the popularity of the game. :(

[@KlooKloo]

The real crime? Polygon firing Jenna today

[@lelsewherelelsewhere9435]

There's also a slight caveat that is interesting: functionality is not copyrightable, even if it involves COINCIDENTALLY using the same code. if there is only 1 way to do something (or it's the best, most obvious way, and you got there *independently*), such as using the trademark name "sega" as a password, then it is ok to do that despite "sega" being a trademarked name and your code being the same as the copyrighted code. There was an earlier important non-gaming case in early home pc days when compaq was cloning ibm hardware so as to allow compaq pcs to run ibm software. Compaq had 1 group look at the ibm pc and describe the functionality, and another group look at the description only and create hardware/software based on it. If there was overlap (compaq results being identical to ibm's machine/code), it was therefore proven it coincidental and simply the best or most applicable way to do that functionality, AND NOT actual copying of ibm's work.

[@Michael_Lindell]

Emulator, Alligator! Not for a while, Crocodile! (Because they ran out of discs.)

[@greenhowie]

Sony had their own damn emulator and yet still copied an open-source project for the PSXmini. And could offer the entire PS1 back catalogue for digital sale on PC just like Metal Gear Solid is on GOG. They do not like to make financially logical decisions.

[@chickensangwich97]

Remember that this exact same IP chicanery, which artificially restricts access to games for profit purposes, is also applied to life-saving drugs and medical devices…

[@TheGlooga]

i have fond memories of zsnes' snowy screen. this was a really interesting video! it also clarified something i was confused about, which was why emulation teams didnt hop onto the nintendo gigaleak. its apparent given the whole reverse engineering thing that it's because that would be stepping on actual copywrite

[@ashlandwithouttheshd]

Funny Easter egg about zsnes, if you open the emulator on Christmas it was automatically turn on the snowy UI

[@hopeym5337]

the real crime is Vox's treatment of it's employees. Thank you Jenna for all your amazing work💛

[@KRUSH-R]

Can you please elaborate?

[@lilyhope432]

@@KRUSH-R Jenna was laid off from Polygon a few months back for seemingly no reason

[@ed4165]

Thank you for all of your hard work! The polygon team knows how to ask (and answer!!) some really neat questions.

[@ambermiller3751]

The opening text for bleem! after the lawsuit did make me laugh

[@xersys2556]

Hilarious that the games crash of the 80s is blamed on third party unlicensed developers (indies) but the modern game market is only still around because of these indie developers.

[@eye776]

Part of the crash of the 80s market was the glut of low effort, low quality carts on the market. A less than stellar 5$ title on steam doesn't have the same impact as a 20-40$ cart. Also during the 80s consoles actually competed against home computers, something that doesn't really happen today. It was a complex market dragged down by a multitude of issues.

[@AntiCliche]

A rare win for ppl actually trying to share and preserve knowledge hahaha

[@wdfinbllngsly]

Polygon's videos are so interesting, but on such specific topics, I want to know how these creators found these topics

[@Rippertear]

@Xenia © no that's something else

[@RhizometricReality]

@@Rippertear thats a bot

[@Rippertear]

@@RhizometricReality I know, that was a joke. sorry

[@nvrndingsmmr]

@@Rippertear I knew it was a joke, that was a good one, don't worry about it.

[@johnjone965]

LoL polygon hires professionals. they're reporters paid to dig up info on the game industry all day

[@EnforcerErik]

"if you can't beat them, consume them!" I'm going to try to apply this adage to more areas of my life

[@Bitchpleasistan]

Are you a corporation?

[@Silver_light77]

always remember the 3 e's embrace their innovations, extend the functionality, and extinguish the competition

[@EnforcerErik]

@@Silver_light77 An improvement on eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate

[@ChrisJBT2]

I got an anti-piracy ad on this video. I don't think I've seen an anti-piracy ad in like 20 years.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

No matter if it's legal or not, they have enough money already, so it's morally okay.

[@SmokeyChipOatley]

Imagine Steve Jobs’ reaction if Sony decided to release a Mac OS clone for PS1 back then… Something tells me Apple would immediately change their tune about less-than-official emulation. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly support fan emulation for old out of print games/systems. I just don’t understand how they thought they would get away with it without a huge lawsuit from Sony

[@Sifeus]

Polygon absolutely foolish to lay off Jenna

[@YuriHabadakas]

Right, but as you pointed out, emulators persist to this day, and as everyone (but publishers) knows piracy is unstoppable. As it happens, I played Breath of the Wild on my PC, exclusively. I don't own any Nintendo hardware. I did actually go to a shop and buy a physical copy of the game, which is still sitting on my kitchen counter unopened, and which I'll donate to a childrens' hospital or something when I have the chance.

[@franciscogarcia7466]

wow now i hate the video game industry even more

[@John-Doe-Yo]

For what reason?

[@lpnp9477]

@@John-Doe-Yo every reason is reasonable when it comes to this garbage industry

[@AlphaOblivion7]

Great vid!! Very informative, and you did a great job explaining it

[@ILoveEvadingTax]

the halo thing coming to mac was actually a huge act of loyalty and respect on the part of Bungie for the fans of Marathon, a Mac-exclusive FPS, who were eagerly awaiting Halo as it was part of an elaborate AR game on the forums and understood to be a spiritual and possibly canonical sequel. Realise it's a commercial blunder but I think that's pretty meaningful they did that for fans of the series, something you really don't get any more and I believe it should be celebrated

[@colbyboucher6391]

Yeah, a lot of that early stuff is archived on the Marathon fan site's story page. I honestly really hope someone can get all of the files to preserve it because it's one of the cooler websites I've seen for something as obscure as Marathon and I'm gonna be *really* sad when it disappears.

[@AphidKirby]

This is so fascinating!!! Really cool piece of history that I'm glad got covered!

[@pedroscoponi4905]

....Remasters and re-releases and ports etc that are often extremely overpriced and/or just straight up less stable than the original, too! Hmm 🤔 And that's to say nothing of games that are innacessible, either because they never released out of Japan, or because they fell into some sort of licensing or availability limbo...

[@Victor-kh5rh]

Massive flashbacks from this video. From playing all of the OG Pokémon games on a windows 98 machine to spending ungodly amount of times to get Bleem! to work. Emulators were such a huge part of the early 00s.

[@oriongurtner7293]

Ooooh, heres a fun game that managed to _completely_ skirt Nintendo’s legal team by making the game entirely in-house: Zelda Classic It’s a game-maker originally designed around rebuilding the original 8bit Legend of Zelda for NES, and has managed to expand over the last two decades into a 16bit-256bit general game maker (with a built in custom code editor) that can make virtually ANY game, from pong to Super Mario 64 (to be fair, SM64 would take immense amounts of time and effort to make on ZC, but it is possible), and play them If I recall correctly they’ve gone at it a couple times with Nintendo’s legal team, but the game is entirely proprietary and doesn’t use ripped assets, just nearly identical custom assets, and it specifically creates the games it plays, so nobody can use it exactly like an emulator (which are, as shown in the video, tenuously legal in nature anyway) It’s a fascinating journey, from what was basically just a passion project for custom ‘Zelda Quests’ to a full-blown game-dev application

[@golden_starlight_]

it's crazy that emulation was tecnically fair use and now we can't even put 2 seconds of some songs in a youtube video without a strike. that asterisk sure does it's job

[@charliericker274]

That is youtubes policy though. Nothing to do with law. They can take down whatever they please and they will always side with claimants in order to protect themselves from potential law suits because, technically, they are the ones distributing the copyrighted materiel. A youtube channel isn't something you own, youtube owns it, they host the data, they send it out to people.

[@lmeeken]

"A giant Asterix in the corner" is a truly chilling image.

[@ThatShaggyMatt]

There's so much Gex in this video, I half expected a Scott the Woz cameo.

[@NikELbErGErBergel]

Thats some good content, thank you polygon

[@GreenBunny.]

Your voice is calming subscribed!

[@CHAOSMOVEMENT]

You are a wealth of gaming knowledge. Subscribed for life!

[@DeviantEdspear]

I think I *had* the weird mac "official" emulator thing. My dad was able to play one of the armored core games on the mac (I think), it was what led me to believe as a dumb kid that I could totally play games on the computer by just popping a gamecube disc in a CD Tray... and thereby scratching a few discs over time.

[@joffa99m44]

The monopoly Nintendo has with its exclusives is like a shoot in the foot. They are the only ones who has Zelda, Mario and Pokemon. With their marketing strategy, restricting it to there consoles, never putting there stuff on a reasonable sale and reminding us of nostalgia and forcing us passively to realise ( the only way to see there stuff is to submit, much like Disney). Hence the marketing strategy is going to allways be filled with emulators, since they are limiting themselves. They would make more money if they partned up every ones in a while with consoles but allways with pc. That way someone would allways buy there games. Personal story I've ownd a wii evrer since it got out and have waited years for Wind Waker to be remastered to a console that is not the Wii U. 16 stinking years. I will have it in one way or another, port it to switch damit.

[@LutraLovegood]

It's part of the brand image now, first party Nintendo games are all exclusives and never go on sale.

[@joffa99m44]

@@LutraLovegoodThanks for mentioning that. I know. Its like talking to a stubborn donkey or a 4 year old. Like no one is impressed by a person who sticks to there principles if they don't lead to anything of value. The real money is not to be stubborn, its buy making consumers worship you, evaluating flaws and improvements and make up for mistakes. -Don't say companies need to stick to there principles, Il copy paste above section. If YOU want an company to be a success. You need 3 things take risks, be realistic and moats important adapt to your surroundings weather you like it or not. See dead weight, consume it, sell it or improve it.

[@NightFlyStudio]

This seems to me like a very uninformed response. Accusing Nintendo of a "Monopoly" with the IP they created just sounds silly as hell. Sony and Microsoft have exclusives as well for their 1st party IP. Are they "Monopolies" too? Console exclusives have been a thing for a while now and this is the first time I've ever seen someone equate them to being monopolistic. There was also recently a huge Nintendo 1st party sale (It's actually still going on right now) and you can often find Nintendo 1st party software well below MSRP. But the reason why you never see their games go down to $5 like their competition is because the market finds their software worth the price. Their evergreen titles continue to sell like brand new games year on year. So like most businesses, what do you do? Sell 10,000 copies of Mario Odyssey at $45 or 10,000 copies of Mario Odyssey at $5? That just doesn't make any sense. Especially when the games are continuing to sell at a decent rate years down the line. I also hear a lot of people touting that Switch is pandering to nostalgia when the software sales paint an entirely different story. Take Zelda: Breath of the Wild for instance. Zelda as a series has never really topped 4-9 million sales per release. Even on the Wii and DS. However, Breath of the Wild on Switch alone has surpassed 27 Million sales. Now, where did those extra 20+ Million consumers come from? Couldn't have been nostalgia. They are creating new fans as well as bringing in old fans. Switch is home to the best selling 1st party Nintendo games ever. This is proof that they are not relying on nostalgia to support their products. If you want to steal their new games and pirate them, go ahead. I can't stop anyone from doing that. But it's not something I see worth bragging about or shouting from the rooftops like most people do. I choose to pay for something that brings me joy and let it count as a vote that "Yes, more games like this should be made".

[@onecommunistboi]

@@joffa99m44 My friend, you seem to be making this single mistake very consistently so I thought, I'd mention it, ignore me if you don't care about this kinda stuff You use "there" when you should use "their". Here are some examples to clear up the respecitve usages of these two words: My friend lost their glasses. They don't release their games on PC. The French and their food are weird. Is there any milk left? The exit is over there. There can only be one.

[@joffa99m44]

@@onecommunistboi Thanks grammar police;) No but seriously thanks, I need to improve and take it more seriously since I have dyslexia.

[@MakotoIchinose]

One of the flaw behind "emulator is illegal" stigma is that it assumes it comes with illegally distributed ROM/games to play, which is not the case at all. In the most legal case, you'd obtain the real hardware in modded condition, dump the BIOS and the games you have with that real hardware, and keep it to yourself to play with the emulator with enhancements and whatnot. The console's copy protection measure is often not implemented likely because it's not worth the effort to do so. In short: emulator is not the problem, the ROM piracy is.

[@austinluther5825]

I remember having to rewrite code to get an emulation of King's Quest VI working. I think it was on DOS Box. Still had to look up how to climb the Sacred Mountain, though. You need the handbook that comes with the game to do itm

[@ThinkSnipser]

Great research as usual!

[@TARINunit9]

A reminder that when tech nerds opened up the NES Classic, they found metadata from emulation websites already inside.

[@NovaSaber]

There was also a pre-crash court case that's relevant, that involved reverse-engineering hardware. Coleco made an add-on for the Colecovision that played Atari 2600 games; Atari sued, and lost.

[@mystic_scythe]

I've seen some saying " if purchase doesn't mean own, piracy doesn't mean theft" They are referring to the fact that they can just unlist your games. You know because they went from saying you're purchasing this product to saying you're renting a license to use this product temporarily.

[@CanuckMonkey13]

This was a brilliantly informative piece! As a 45-year-old gamer, I already knew a lot about this subject in general. Even so, I learned a TON of new stuff from this video! VERY well done!

[@rionsanura]

also, this is a really interesting topic

[@Austin25254]

Notice in the crash bandicoot demo that the player is intentional avoiding the rewarding crates. It must of crashed the emulator if he hit them.

[@Antiphar]

I would love a two-hour companion video where Jenna explains all the detailed legal history and maneuvering found during research.

[@RobertDW1]

Rockstar was so desperate for money they filed a lawsuit against Remedy. Remedy’s Logo doesn’t look anything like the Rockstar logo. And the crazy thing is Remedy is developing games for Rockstar.

[@reedbalen]

Very interesting Jenna, great stuff

[@beatsbyandrew]

Wow this is a well written and researched explanation!

[@KevinVeroneau]

Some games are unfortunately never rereleased or remastered. For example, I'd pay for a full Quintet game library rerelease and/or remaster. At the moment, none of this classic SNES games were ever rereleased anywhere, not the Wii Virtual Console, nor the new shiny Nintendo Online Service. I think there needs to be more legal verbage for games which a developer and/or publisher has completely neglected and left in the 90s.

[@SlapstickGenius23]

Some games are never remade at all.

[@ItsCaramelToffee]

These videos are so amazing. Deep dives into the history of our culture are so important and meaningful. Thank you for making these things I watch.

[@dr.decker3623]

NES can have the block out chip clipped to play all regions, and every other Cart based console (snes, N64, Genesis) is only locked out by the shape of the cartridge/console cart slot, all you need to do for N64 / Snes is file down the parts that block the insert, or like the Sega, just use a game genie/shark which don't have physical lock out, and voila.

[@KillahMate]

Video game emulation is now _better_ than a 'real legitimate business' (a dubious distinction at the best of times, really): it's now a staple open source category. 'Real legitimate businesses' get bought out by Sony and are never heard from again. Open source projects live forever.

[@RoCkShaDoWWaLkEr]

Bleem and then Bleemcast were my first introductions to emulators ;but hand coding a working copy of X.M.U.G.E.N. (EVE copy with all characters and stages) including the select (dot) def file to make the best emulator work on my modded Xbox was the coolest.

[@Kane_the_Newschool_DM]

As you were fading out to the outro with the funny remarstered list I just heard Hbomberguy's "-and ISN'T THE VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY TOTALLY *NORMAL AND FINE?*" in my head

[@pacicidal]

More and more, the idea I had as an early teen of a unified gaming platform makes more and more sense.

[@mikegarwood8680]

This is why FOSS and copyright/patent reform must win. Copyrights & Patents should extend no more than 10 years, period. After that, it automatically goes into the Public Domain. No top secret technology extensions, or life of the author/creator + a million years. 10 years.

[@amandajas6287]

The best part of that famous anti-piracy ad was the IT Crowd parody of it.

[@kittavares4334]

Dreaming In Neon/Michael Saba did a video essay precisely about this just last week (under the guise of a Panzer Dragoon review), it's great.

[@jackawatkins87]

Pirating is my favorite way to game. My 3ds, PS3, Xbox1 are all modded and I recommend everybody do it. Having modded consoles makes it that much more difficult for these corporations to resell you the same game over and over again. Especially considering remakes are getting more bland. Modding and emulators are a huge space for gamers to take back control in the industry

[@stevencooper564]

I just learned about 3ds modding and how easy it is, I can't wait to get it set up and play all the ds/3ds games I missed out on.

[@jackawatkins87]

@@stevencooper564 friend.... the modded Pokemon games hands down the best in the series. Eternal X, Photonic Ultra Sun, and Renegade Platinum!!!! They legit correct every issue those games had.

[@bboyhanvzla]

I'm here waiting for the first comment to tell you that you are the most despicable human being on earth for modding your consoles XD

[@barkerbarks2537]

You’re the most not not not not not despicable person in the world for modding your console

[@ghostlyhousehorrors]

Probably best to back up the 3DS library, Nintendo's closing up shop for it (eshop), Off topic, but I own a limited release physical copy of a game (I bought it early at retail price before scalpers did) but getting those few and inflated priced of those copies is gonna be only way others can legally play the game after eShop closes, digital version will no longer be obtainable.

[@byebyecitybyebye]

fascinating as always, jenna!

[@Chris_W.]

Jenna’s sneaky EverQuest reference got me such 99-00s backlash. You wake up, it’s 2001, and instead of studying for your 7th grade science test, you log onto EQ to play your iksar monk while drinking a Mountain Dew® Code Red® for breakfast.

[@pumplesdorskiner]

I have often thought that the biggest obstacle to video games being appreciated as an art form is the fact that they're often tied to consoles. The day you can open up any old machine and pull out Call of Duty: Red Dawn Redemption Crisis and put in Banjo Kazooie is the day the beautiful craft will be available for the masses to scrutinize and uplift the select few into the status of art.

[@shockofthenew]

Yes! It seems to me like the entire existence of proprietary software which can only be played if you own certain pieces of hardware has only ever been for profit-driven reasons, but the end result is no ordinary person will have the ability to just access and choose between all games - you have to pick which piece of hardware you can afford (if any) and then be limited only to that catalogue forever. As someone who grew up too poor to afford a console, and is now an adult designing video games, it's really weird to feel like I just lack the vast majority of basic gaming knowledge/experience that my richer contemporaries had - whereas as someone who grew up poor and also wanted to make movies, at least I had the option to potentially rent/borrow any movie and be able to play it, or record any movie playing on tv. There weren't entire libraries of classic movies which were off-limits to me... although I guess with streaming services that's becoming more of an issue, but at least you can switch between streaming services without incurring any extra cost - unlike buying a new gaming console.

[@thatonecactus1878]

Dang, Sony really pulled the Kirby "if you can't beat em, eat em"

[@cemmy410]

4:00 celebrity cameo: horizontally spinning rat 😍

[@NoobGamer64-gj4ic]

Emulator is *ILLEGAL* Changed my mind.

[@Jokerxeno1]

No one cares about your opinion, go be a capitalist corporate sl@ve somewhere else

[@AceJohnny80]

I’ve started guessing who made a given Polygon videos before watching, and this topic felt very Jenna 😀

[@secureb00t39]

this is a very important message that very few people ever hear. So much miscommunication in this field.

[@artistwithouttalent]

Intentionally or not, you captured my thoughts on the matter in the last sentence: "... and REE-"

[@kilobytedump]

That was an excellent, funny and well presented, video. 👏

[@goddessblade]

This is a question from someone who knows nothing about coding and programming: so if you can reverse engineering without completely copying, does that mean there is more than one code for/way to code any game? Like I can technically write a code for super Mario that only bear some resemblance while yielding the same result as the original game released by Nintendo?

[@DUHRIZEO]

Absolutely. Starting from the code language used, to the actual written part to create a mechanic (like jumping or running) there can be dozens of ways to achieve the same end result.

[@zacharyheine4177]

The channel Codebullet does this in his videos if you'd like to check out an example of reverse-engineering the games themselves

[@lpnp9477]

Yup, this is how the pc ports of super Mario 64 and ocarina get away with it. It's all original code and you have to dump the art from a rom or cart yourself

[@AlexUnknown37]

I forgot all about that information. First off 1)we would be buying games from your platform and you wouldn't be loosing on consoles. And 2)we would need your consoles to play your games on your service so at some point someone would probably get your console if someone bought enough games. It's crazy, so many ways to get gamers money and they want to be butts about it.

[@Kokorisu]

Convinced that this entire video is just a subliminal ad for Jenna's eBay listing for the entire collection of Gex games.

[@leoryzap]

great content, thank you

[@MattCraftDotDerp]

I saw the thumbnail and thought we'd be talking about the hit Game & Watch game _Mario's Bombs Away_ in which Mario serves in Vietnam, but alas.

[@speedtracker9556]

Why would I ever be wrong about emulators being illegal?!

[@nerithma9646]

Am I the only one being driven absolutely insane by them dodging all the boxes in the Crash demo

[@stone5against1]

They're Mac users, not gamers, so of course they didn't know any better.

[@mikemiles2241]

Mac user moment

[@veevolt492]

It most likely crashed the game (no pun intended) since the emulator wasnt perfect

[@adcaptandumvulgus4252]

Ah, EQ nostalgia, I think my last game disk was D&D online collectors founders box.

[@b1g_m00n]

there were a lot of people bringing up everquest when that doofus had that viral thread/ linkedin post about interconnected blockchain games. I'd love to get a first-person account of what *that* was like

[@scyence]

Gosh I love Jenna

[@florbz5821]

Gex 5: The next Gexeration is gonna be lit

[@skelejor]

as always, jenna made a video that fucking slaps. yall are so talented but jennas videos always hit my particular niche of weird history and style of analysis. keep up the good work

[@GabrielGSVSG]

Nice video, and a awesome FLUMINENSE shirt! I love it!

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

kkk ainda n vi tudo na vida

[@Rootsradical808]

EverQuest was so much fun, amazing for it's time. Never heard about this about playstation and mac

[@trinstonmichaels7062]

Trinston was here. .

[@JamesMSmithsDeadYouTubeChannel]

This is absolutely the most gamer thing I’ve seen all day. And I’m leaving it at that.

[@MaskedGuyCh]

Darksiders Warmastered Edition was such a great game. Easily my favorite of the trilogy. I hope Darksiders 4 will be more like it.

[@thedigitalodometer945]

“I haven’t seen an area so grey since the original PlayStation.” ~ Gex

[@flyingtoastr]

You can tell a lot of the commentors on here didn't actually watch the video, since Jenna (correctly) was very clear that while emulators (the software) are legal, copying and sharing ROMs (the games) is not.

[@dsproductions19]

Actually, copying for personal backup is perfectly legal as long as you don't sell or share the copy, the same as backing up music CDs in the early 2000s. But most people assume ROMs are always pirated since it used to require specific (and expensive) hardware, as well as often modifying the file afterward (like NES). This isn't as much of an issue for a while now, as many consoles can be hacked to make backups with just free software, but the assumption still stands.

[@mikemiles2241]

Copying is legal

[@PerkulatorBenny]

@@dsproductions19 Nobody said anything about copying for personal backup. He said copying *and sharing* is illegal. Besides, the personal backup argument is completely irrelevant anyway for one simple reason: Any ROM you can gain access to without those specialized, expensive, hardware is no longer only for personal backup the moment you have access to it, since you didn't rip it yourself from a product you bought, using that hardware yourself. Someone else illegally shared it. Even if there are legal roms out there, every ROM we can actually find isn't one of them because, again; the moment we can find it, it has been shared with someone who does not have the rights to it (i.e. us), making it illegal. As for the free software you mentioned. That requires hacking the console, which is illegal because you do not have the rights to modify it's functionality in such a way, and any ROM you dumped with it would also be illegal as you got it through illegal means. (Though that's basically a case of "it's not a crime until you get caught" since, if you don't share it, how is anyone going to actually prove your crime?)

[@dsproductions19]

@@PerkulatorBenny Hacking your own consoles would be Right to Repair, which is an ongoing debate that tech companies have been losing ground on over the past few years. For example, this video talks about a Supreme Court case from 2017 that heavily limits what EULAs can actually enforce. kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3WylJSVo5KssMk Also, not all of the tools to copy roms require hacking a console. CD games can be copied with most disc drives, and there are cheap kits out there for older cartridge systems that read them to a file directly.

[@PerkulatorBenny]

@@dsproductions19 "Ongoing", so in other words, "still illegal because that hasn't changed yet". And "not all of the tools" is pretty much a non-argument. Hacking the console is not legal (for now), so tools that don't require hacking the console are irrelevant as far as that goes. Same as how ROMs made for personal backup and never shared are completely irrelevant, when discussing ROMs that *are* illegal, because they *were* shared.