"Why does this look like RPG Maker?" Because it's Unity.

I love how I'm quoted first, and All-Star Hardcore Gamer Magazine second. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm actually not up on Switch releases; my knowledge of the system is that it has about 5 new games, and hundreds of old games that have been out for years, but people are acting like they're brand new now. So yes, my Switch knowledge is atrociously outdated; I know they've gotten some new stuff since launch. I actually have my eye on Kirby: Star Allies and the new Smash Bros., so a Switch may be in my future. We're broke as hell, so it'll be more Cube and less Akira. </lame Live-A-Live joke> Hudson Soft would be tricky, since they no longer exist, and Konami seems hell-bent on sitting on those IPs until they hear peeps under their asses... and then a disheartening silence. Chicks need oxygen and all that. You're right, though: a Hudson collection would be a hard sell to all but oldschool players, since even the older Bomberman titles were kinda... ich.

Well, I never did realize how backwards Nintendo's online services were until I got a PS3, and PSN isn't even that great. Hopefully, it will, and even though I've been fairly cynical toward Nintendo since the N64 came out, I think this might be a good service. People thought they were being dicks when they took down Another Metroid 2 Remake, even though it was released for free, and there hadn't been any kind of buzz around Metroid 2 for ages. Not long after that, Samus Returns comes out; they probably issued it because they were making their own Metroid 2 remake. I'd believe that that's what this sudden crusader burst against rom sites was all about, but maybe it was only that. Doesn't mean I'd like it, but it'd be a bit more understandable, at least.

I think it's okay to mention; I asked Drumble way back when my account was fairly new about whether it was okay to discuss emulation (which will get you set on fire by mods at GameFAQs) and to list my rom hacks as part of my collection, and he said it was fine, just as long as you're not outright telling people where to find roms. I'm glad that you found one, though; NES music is the biggest pain in the ass to rip, and even to work with if you already have the raw data ripped for you. I don't know why they made the *.nsf format such a bitch to work with, either; not only is the entire soundtrack smashed into one file, but it's also more prone to all sorts of chirps and skips than any other format I know.

That's an interesting theory, and you may be on to something; Nintendo is a business, and if they see something to be considered competition or a potential loss, they'll act. There's also the whole YouTube monetization crap they were pulling, too.

A better example than The Pirate Bay would be Another Metroid 2 Remake. Remember when Nintendo brought down the project, only for people to immediately upload mirror downloads everywhere? The game even continued development through patches for quite some time, afterward. The internet simply can't be stopped, even by Nintendo.

I haven't heard of the Online Service... is it going to be the VC's replacement for the Switch? I wouldn't hold my breath for a vast library of games on it, let alone every game that was already on the Wii's and 3DS's Virtual Console.

Cosmic Star Heroine.

IT'S NOT EVEN THEIR PROPERTY! That's what pisses me off the most: anything Nintendo has been unavailable on Emu Paradise for YEARS, because it was protected by the ESA (formerly IDSA, which is an anagram for AIDS, I might point out), so what they went after is other people's shit; they had no reason to be in this fight. Their entire Abandonware archive is gone, too; Nintendo doesn't even sell PC games, so they had no legal right to that, either. You want to file an injunction to protect things that you made? Okay. Even though I don't necessarily agree with that for older things (we're not there yet, but we will be in our lifetime), that law has changed, because Disney's greedy claws ruined public domain laws forever: [Link] Even if I don't agree with the law, I can't argue against enforcing it.

Will it blow up in their faces, though? No; if history has taught us anything, it's that no matter how shitty a video game company's business practices are, the players will tolerate almost anything for that game that they want. The community at large is never going to boycott Super Mario Odyssey, God of War: Germanic Mythology Edition, or Halo: Whatever the Fuck the New One is. People are too goddamn impulsive to ever stick to their guns, and that's why companies like Ubisoft and EA still exist and do whatever they want: they know they can get away with it, no matter how big a backlash, because they'll still get your money. Nintendo, especially, because they have one of the most devoted fanbases in video games; talk shit about them, even when you have a legitimate gripe, and you're "salty" (not what that means) or "edgy".

And that's exactly it: if we can't expect them to have games like Dragon Warrior 4 or Metal Storm, then they have no right or reason to have them taken down; shit or get off the pot, as they say. Well, they say that out here in East Bumblefuck, anyway. I might also add, that people who've looked at the coding of the things they've sold on their Virtual Console service have software comments that prove that they downloaded these as roms to sell them.

AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING! Well, similar thing to above... They don't sell video game music, so to take down sites that provide it is asinine. I LIKE YOUR FUCKING PRODUCT, ASSHOLES; SELL IT TO ME! That said, I feel that if you buy the game, you should be able to have its soundtrack for free, especially with USB ports in consoles. I rip my own.

We've never really spoken so I don't want to seem like I'm "piling on" but... well, I feel strongly about this.
Many different cases were made below, so I'll add the spite case, and [Link] this here.
TL;DW, if they won't respect the rights of others (and fair use), then why should we respect theirs? (There are other points but [Link] is the main takeaway.)

Nintendo's persistence on the subject is the only thing I criticize them for with legitimate anger. And like Mr. Sterling in that video, I'm quite the longtime fan of theirs. They're one of the few "good guys" left in the industry at this point, who actually care.

Like any other form of media, if you have an original copy, you should be allowed to have a backup and use it however you see fit. Unfortunately there is no way to enforce this, so it's always been a grey zone.

Regarding emulation consoles, yes, Nintendo owns the rights to the contents of those machines. But of course, this would have been less of a problem if they had made more than 5 of the frigging things and not forced people to seek alternatives. Yes they are legally in the right on that front, but I can't say I have any sympathy for them.

All of this is within Nintendo's legal right, to be sure, just like every BS copyright claim that's ever been made was perfectly "legal". But there's a difference between "legal" and "moral".

I'm with Mystagogue, MotherKojiro and Lilith; when it comes to video game preservation, roms and emulation are where most of the effort is, not to mention the romhacking scene. Lagrange Point, Esper Dream 2, MegaTen, Mother 3... you're not ever going to see Nintendo make an effort to preserve these, localized. We most likely wouldn't ever have had half of the translated patches out there, if it weren't for emulators.

So, then, why would Nintendo strike down entire sites, rather than just pull their own IPs? Despite not being their IPs, it could be likely that they also see downloaded Genesis, TurboGrafx, etc. roms to also be potential lost sales, given they've been selling them on the VC for quite some time... and thus, putting an effort into ending the use of all roms on the internet.

Well, it's a wasted effort on their part; once something is on the internet, it is on the internet. Remember The Pirate Bay? There were immediate replacements as soon as they were gone. It's no different here - when romsites go, new ones will go up. Backups and archives will always be out there. This current situation is only a brief inconvenience, and if anything, Nintendo has only raised awareness of the importance of preserving these games.

Emulation sites shutting down like this wouldn't really matter or at least not be as much of a debate if Nintendo actually rereleased ALL their games, not just Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. They'd have to actually preserve their backlog and let people have access to it, the cost of lack thereof of piracy was never the real reason people did it.

The cost of most good games second hand, even games by Nintendo themselves (such as Path of Radiance) also discourages people from buying second hand and encourages piracy.

They flat out have zero argument because not only are they not even seeing any money, but if not for emulation, lots of lesser known games will be lost forever, because the cost of some of these games second hand is simply too much. I am confident in saying that people would turn away from emulation if Nintendo themselves released their entire library in some sort of digital service. That'll never happen though, Nintendo has always been in the stone age compared to Sony and Microsoft when it comes to online anything.

I agree with Mystagogue; yes, Super Mario World will always be around, because it's a popular game and people remember it from their childhood. What about games like Run Sabre? Trog? Sigma Star Saga? Games that exist only on physical media are doomed, because some day, that will break down and be unusable. Are roms piracy? That's certainly up for debate, but if these companies don't give a shit about these games (or don't even exist anymore), then roms are our only hope for playing them in the future. Nintendo's just on the other end of a Video Game Apocalypse, now that so many games require you to be online just to play them (even some single-player games do this), and when the company decides that they're no longer profitable, they shut down the servers, and you can't play your game anymore, unless pirates managed to crack it and emulate the game on a private server.

Let's put this into perspective. Say you bought this great pair of sneakers; you absolutely love them. Well, Nike doesn't make them anymore, BUT as long as you take good care of them, you still have your sneakers. The online thing is like when they go out of style, someone goes to your house, rips them off your feet, and tosses them into a goddamn wood chipper, and the Nintendo thing comes in from the other side, outright banning you from taking pictures of them or anything for the hope of making a new pair just like them. If you try to reproduce them, you'll be fined and/or thrown in jail. For sneakers you bought 20 years ago, and the company doesn't deem profitable to keep making. This level of bullshit doesn't really exist in any other consumer product that I can think of.

Now, I do not condone people downloading brand new Switch games for free, but if they've also paid for the game, there is absolutely no reason that they shouldn't be allowed to have a back-up copy, in case something goes wrong. If consumer rights weren't so horribly abused in this industry, there'd be no need for piracy.

They've already made their money from those games in their initial creation and distribution. The purpose of intellectual property, which is a modern contrivance, is to facilitate artists getting paid for their work and society getting art. Having quasi-permanent IP exclusivity doesn't do this and your mention of Disney is actually quite apropos considering they're the ones who are constantly tweaking and funding the changes of IP laws of the US. Not to mention Disney's works are mostly aped from free domain works and even scenes/visual framing devices copied from Toei Animation (Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc.). There would be no Disney animated films if there were exclusivity rights to most of their initial stories.

And we can't even trust Nintendo and other video game creators/publishers to archive their own works, so the proliferation of ROMs, assuming they're ripped properly, does help archive a lot of games. Not that I care for most of the sites doing this since they're mostly virus-laden or profit-driven and unprofessional.

Nintendo having to compete with the other emulation boxes is actually better since they already have name-brand recognition/loyalty anyway so they have to compete with them on services, build quality, etc. as opposed to exclusivity rights over ROMs.

PCWorld: Nintendo's ridiculous war on ROMs threatens gaming history.

How would it, exactly? It's not like they'd somehow tarnish gaming history just by cracking down on ROMs and emulation. That'd be as asinine as saying "Disney's ridiculous war on movie piracy threatens film watching history."

On another note, I do remember that one of the reasons they're doing it is "unfair competition." I believe I can understand that from their perspective. When the SNES Mini was announced, there were one or more companies trying to 1UP them by either having devices that had more games or allowed them to put more on it, because what was available on it wasn't good enough, apparently, and then vitriolic article makers report on them saying something along the lines of "Forget the SNES Classic, this third-party device is better!" That's where the "unfair competition" bit comes in.

In my new quest to finish my games, I've decided to devise the following tactics.

1. For non-current-gen games, take two systems and alternate between the two by having one ascend alphabetically, and one descend alphabetically. It would be best if I started with the PS2 and Saturn, starting with Willy Wombat (overdue for a playthrough) and then Dark Cloud 2 (even more overdue.) If I stick with this, the / count should rise slowly, but surely.

2. Given the limited amount of time I have to play, a game that is arcade-y, or perhaps sports/racing wouldn't be a bad idea. Playing a single game all day long hastening for / gets really draining, so something like Lode Runner or WipeOut would be recommended to break away the tedium.

3. Absolutely no replays for quite some time, unless meant to be a palette cleanser game like Wrecking Crew or, again, Lode Runner. With all that I've replayed the past several months, my hunger for replays should very well have been satisfied.

And that's that. With around fifty games, the defeat of Bak'laag seems so close, yet so far. But after months of being lax with finishing games, the desire to finish them is stronger than ever. Wish me luck!

Been playing WarioWare Gold in secret because I haven't really had time to communicate with Backloggery lately. Life's sorta crazy right now.

But you're right. This is probably a better WarioWare than Twisted, even, and that's in my Top 10 favourite games ever. I stayed up all night the day of release and just played until I beat it, then I kept playing some more.

Agreed 100%! That scene made me want a Luigi's Mansion game in Dracula's Castle real bad.

Obligatory comment regarding recent Direct.

WHOO! CASTLEVANIA!

Also, I think it's cool that there's an option to listen to the 800+ songs available in handheld mode. You won't need to rip mp3s!

On another subject, I bought the new WarioWare last week for my trip, and I've actually played it more than Shining Resonance Refrain, which hasn't exactly hooked me yet despite its decent battle system. It's the best WarioWare yet! Highly recommended.

I agree with your assessment about Grandia II. I enjoyed the more light hearted tone of Grandia compared to constant religious tones of Grandia II. But, the battles are still incredibly fun and I love leveling the different spells, skills and abilities.

I remember you having like 4 different categories at one time under Miscellaneous. See, I used to have specific days where I would play specific games, so I respect and admire any person that can come up with a unique way to play games. I love to see people's systems and see if they work for anybody else.

I mean, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII are pretty bad games. When I started my new job in November, I went back to basics. It made life easier and I was able to beat games faster as well.

Still need to play Grandia II, I do have it on the PS2 and DC. Preferably will play the DC Version over the PS2 Version. However I still need to at least the first game on PS1 to this date. Originally started streaming it but I will go ahead and finish it off stream for my personal enjoyment.

Finished my replay of Grandia II.

I can honestly say that I still think the first game is better. The worst parts are the occasional slow, meandering dialogue and tiresome spell effects, even if they look good for 2000. I also still think the cast of characters from the first game were more vibrant and less stiff compared to the cast in the second (although I do enjoy witty banter between Ryudo and his bird buddy, as well as Ryudo's brother, who's a complete badass.)

Only thing that the second game has better than the first are more challenging battles. On the other hand, Digital Museum has that too, but most people haven't played it.

Einhander is my favourite space shooter, actually. Its just dripping with that late 90's Square style. Game's really fun too.

Thanks! I'm excited for Phantasy Star II next, despite my gripes with it. Being able to play Phantasy Star III and IV afterward will be reward enough for enduring it.

That's a pretty good tip for Hard Corps; I'll remember that! I'm sure I'll get good at it, just as I am with the NES games... I can already beat Contra 1 without the lives code or continues. Super Cyborg now has a demo on Steam [Link] and it's looking to be a promising contra clone, if you're interested. I still have yet to try the demo, though.

I was ready to vote Einhänder last night, but it seems you're already playing it. It's pretty tough, but you're better at the genre than I am. It's SquareSoft, so the visuals and music are top-notch for the PS1... I'm just looking to find a physical copy before I do a proper playthrough, myself.

If the Recommendation Station is still open, I'll vote for Strider 2! It's a really short and easy one, not quite as good as the original, but still a lot of fun.

Back to the backlog ketchup theme, I see.

I'm not sure I've ever heard that one before, but watching the official video makes me wonder if I'd have wound up as a sideshow freak in a travelling circus if I'd been born in the 1920s or so. Guess I'm just in a strange(r) headspace today.

I don't necessarily know that it would; I'd think that reproduction makers would already have all of the roms that they need. That is, of course, unless Nintendo goes after the reproduction makers, themselves. It'd be nice if they didn't go after rom hacking sites, though; there's a lot of real quality content coming from those. I've been playing Mega Man since the '80s, and just about every damn hack that Anandastoon makes of them blows my mind.

I didn't; the first one left such a bad taste in my mouth that I just never looked into it. I'm told it's a lot better, but the gameplay of 1 didn't impress itself upon me as anything special, either, so it's not just a matter of hating the characters in this case. Long portions of dialogue don't bore me, so long as the overall plot is interesting; if it's some samey, overly political Medieval prick-waving contest that's just about the petty squabbles of 2 imaginary kingdoms (maybe with an overusedarching "war is bad" message), I can't usually be bothered to care about characters prattling on about whatever. Generic "legendary hero of lore vs. evil big-bad of darkdeath malevolence" is fine with me, though; I have a soft spot for that particular trope, but in those days, RPGs weren't exactly text-heavy, so maybe it would still put me off.

Umm... obviously, the Evolution duology! Yeah, I'm just joking; nobody remembers either of those. I'd probably agree, but I think I've heard people talk about each of them relatively equally. Wasn't Grandia 2 ported to the PS2 or something, though? Unless you mean specifically that Skies of Arcadia was ported to a Nintendo console, in which case, I wouldn't say that brand has much to do with it, since the Game Cube wasn't exactly a smash hit. I didn't even know it existed until my sister got one, and I never did get one; all of my Game Cube games are played on my Wii.