How do you feel about ROMs and Emulators?

[Artemis]

What do you think of ROMs and Emulators? Do you think they help or hurt the video game industry? I was wondering if this board considered them illiegal and shouldn't be discussed just like bootlegs and pirating. This thread should help determine if that's true.

[Zapages]

They help the old game market like atarie and older systems, which are not available anymore IMO.

But emulators are not illegal IE. Bleem....

Roms are illegal if you don't own the actual game......

But I think they are illegal but in some third world countries there are no copyright law against it so there you can go and buy them...

BTW: We need a mod to look at this post to decide if this post is legit or not...: nothing against you Artemis.

[Mr. Obsession]

Like Zapages pointed out emulators are perfectly legal, ROM's are not.

I personally don't have a problem with ROM's for dead systems and use emulators to play fan translations of games that never made it to the States, mostly NES, SNES (Sieg DeJap!), and Genesis.

But anyone who uses ROMs of games that are still commercially available is evil and makes Baby Jesus cry.

[BLACKHEART]

I love roms. They brings back memories.

They should be free. It's not like Nintendo is going to make money on them anway.

I also only have games that I once owned.

[Psycho Fox]

Well it depends it is one thing to download old Genny roms but totaly diffent to download Game Boy roms.

Just use your head if you can't pick it up anywhere then downloading a rom isn't as bad.

[BLACKHEART]

Yeah. I don't think you should download PS games either. They might want to raise the prices on us.

[Dark Spider]

I feel ROMs are only legal if they are of an old game that is not in the mainstream market anymore. Its not like Atari or Nintendo are gonna gain anything from it, and if they do, its only chump change.

[Gyro]

I'm OK with people downloading old Nintendo games since it's hard to find them anywere, and it's not like it's costing Nintendo any money. But it is illegal, so that's a problem.

[Evil Dr. Reef]

Like everyone else here, I think that if a game is no longer available to buy in a store (that benefits the company that made it), you shouldn't be hassled about downloading it. Otherwise people might forget about wonderful games like Castlevania: Bloodlines (one of my favorite old-skool games).

[RogueMartian]

Roms aren't that bad, and most modern games are so big now they really can't be downloaded by the general public. Most people that want roms want old atari, nintendo or sega genesis games. I see nothing wrong with that, If I want to play the original Legend of Zelda or Pong, it would be extremely difficult to get ahold of an original NES or Atari and the game cartridges.

[James]

I think the purpose that most here use them - to collect games which are either nostalgic/out of print or simply not available is the problem for which emulators present.

We are talking about an issue where games are being emulated that are currently released on new or available platforms. As of such are possibly depriving software programmers/companies of the money incentive to make these games.

I have downloaded many spectrum games, and games from older systems for nostalgia or because at the time, I couldn't obtain them. Roms are a great link to the past!

However, back to the issue, do downloading any roms damage the industry? Hmm, I hope not. Downloading the SNES version of FF6 - a game I never thought would be reissued has not stopped me purchasing the original copy so I wouldn't say that downloading roms prevent companies getting their money. That said, the reissue had some extra features which was an incentive.

Perhaps software houses could follow this nostaglic trend and release some of these older games with a few updates for bugs/graphics etc. I'm sure money could be made there.

[BLACKHEART]

1 thing about ROMs. A lot of SNES games suck without a control pad. Try playing Mortal Kombat 2 with a keyboard.

[bfmusashi]

Emulators are perfectly legal, ROMs aren't. Personally, I feel that there's nothing wrong with downloading ROMs for the older systems, like the SNES, Genesis, NES, etc. However, downloading ROMs and EXE files of newer PSX and Dreamcast titles are probably illegal. (Believe it or not, there are SOME Dreamcast ROMs out there... They're incredibly huge files...) I myself use a PSX emulator to play all my PSX games, but PSX emulators actually require you to buy the game CD. (My PSX emulator does run PSX ROMs, but I've never used that feature. PSX ROMs are massive, and about 70% of them never work.)

[Web Head]

1 thing about ROMs. A lot of SNES games suck without a control pad. Try playing Mortal Kombat 2 with a keyboard.

You can buy a gamepad for your computer for about $20 if you want. I've got one, because if I didn't then I wouldn't be able to play the classics, like Contra or Tyson's Punchout

[Mr. Obsession]

Originally posted by SJJ
However, back to the issue, do downloading any roms damage the industry? Hmm, I hope not. Downloading the SNES version of FF6 - a game I never thought would be reissued has not stopped me purchasing the original copy so I wouldn't say that downloading roms prevent companies getting their money. That said, the reissue had some extra features which was an incentive.

I don't think ROM's of games that will never see the light of day in your specific speck of dirt on the globe will hurt the company that made them, unless of course they finally decide to make a version (including porting it to whatever system and translating it if necessary) than it's a question of if you're just a cheap bastard or not.

For years I've had ROM's of FF games 1 - 6 (fan translations of 2 - 5), and Crono Trigger, but when Square decided to release FF 4, 5, 6, & CT on the PSX I deleted the ROM's and went out and bought the games because: (1) I love the games and (2) I wanted to make sure that Square and Sony got compensated for releasing the games, which made me very happy.

And now that Square has the opportunity to port their SNES library over to the GBA (which they've been drooling to do for awhile now) and Sega having announced Phantasy Star 1 - 3 will be on the GBA, I'll be very happy to pick those up and free-up a little bit more space on my hard drive.

Perhaps software houses could follow this nostaglic trend and release some of these older games with a few updates for bugs/graphics etc. I'm sure money could be made there.

It'd be nice, but most companies don't make add-ons for older games as the costs are to high and the returns are way to low.

The only area you'll probably ever see this is in console gaming.

Originally posted by SLIPKNOT
1 thing about ROMs. A lot of SNES games suck without a control pad. Try playing Mortal Kombat 2 with a keyboard.

You can buy game pads designed for the computer, most emulators allow you to customize the imput controls to work on a game pad. I even bought an adapter that allowed me to hook-up one of my PSX controllers, now I used it with all my emulators, it's super nice.

Originally posted by bfmusashi
Emulators are perfectly legal, ROMs aren't. Personally, I feel that there's nothing wrong with downloading ROMs for the older systems, like the SNES, Genesis, NES, etc. However, downloading ROMs and EXE files of newer PSX and Dreamcast titles are probably illegal. (Believe it or not, there are SOME Dreamcast ROMs out there... They're incredibly huge files...) I myself use a PSX emulator to play all my PSX games, but PSX emulators actually require you to buy the game CD. (My PSX emulator does run PSX ROMs, but I've never used that feature. PSX ROMs are massive, and about 70% of them never work.)

There are at least two PSX emulators now that can run ISO's (an image of the CD). I've tried a few PSX emulators, but the require too much tweaking compared to emulators for older systems (I found I had to re-adjust the settings for almost every game, a time consuming process). So now I just use the best PSX emulator available for all my old PSX games, the PS2.

[Psycho Fox]

Originally posted by SJJ
Perhaps software houses could follow this nostaglic trend and release some of these older games with a few updates for bugs/graphics etc. I'm sure money could be made there.

Some do like the Sega, Hasbro (Atari), Namco. They all released game packs of their older games

[BLACKHEART]

Mr. O where did you get that adaptor and what is it called?

[Lightwave]

ok.heres the deal.

roms and emulators are illegal,but the company doesn't generly mind if its for a rare and outdated game,cause they don't get the money for it anymore.but if its for,say GBA,then its illegal because you can still buy it.

if this was stated already,im sorry.

[Mr. Obsession]

Originally posted by SLIPKNOT
Mr. O where did you get that adaptor and what is it called?

http://www.zophar.net/store/fdesc.phtml?psx-joyconv

[Mr. Obsession]

Originally posted by hyperknux88
ok.heres the deal.

roms and emulators are illegal,but the company doesn't generly mind if its for a rare and outdated game,cause they don't get the money for it anymore.but if its for,say GBA,then its illegal because you can still buy it.

Nope, emulators are perfectly legal. If they weren't Nintendo would have shut down groups like ZSNES a long time ago, and SEGA wouldn't have bought GENS from the guy who created the program.

It's not that the companies don't frown on emulation, it's just that they can't legally do anything about it. What they can go after, however, are ROM's which are technically illegal. It's just that there's a lot of debate over whether the older games (any that fall between 8 - 10 years old) are classified as abandonware.