#and i grew up using an emulator so having physical/official copies just makes it more meaningful to me yknow

[hoodie-prince-kid]

ugh, i hate having to do this. but i guess i'm making a list for an emulator.

[tumblunni]

While Nintendo IS overzealous against the Rom Sites, lets not pretend that the Rom Sites are 100% guilt free heroes: some of them DID host Roms of the stuff Nintendo still actively distribute like 3DS games. There is a massive difference between hosting games that are rare/unlikely to resold/too pricey to buy and hosting games that are common/easy to buy. The problem is that Nintendo is attacking BOTH with the same zeal. Plus Nintendo needs to understand that not all people just want free games.

I dunno why you’re messaging this to me instead of the OP of that post, tho? Especially since I literally never said any of that? Like umm I completely agree with the fact that pirating games you could easily buy is bullshit, I never said it wasnt. Nobody arguing for emuparadise said this, as far as I know. It’s 100% “that was goddamn overzealous, you’re attacking both with the same zeal”.

Tho I have downloaded roms of modern games before, but only when its a game I already own and I just wanted a form of it that I could record for lets plays, cos capture cards are super expensive and there’s no shops as far as I know that do it for a european 3DS. Also sometimes have downloaded roms cos i wanna make rom hacks or just open them up and look at how they work to learn new things about my favourite series! Like there’s stuff like Boundary Break and The Cutting Room Floor who find unused content and interesting details that would otherwise have gone unseen. And TCRF paid loads to snag a rare pokemon beta rom cartridge off ebay and had hundreds of people working non stop to unpack it IMMEDIATELY and even translate all the japanese! This was content that would have never been seen by ANYONE if not for emulation communities!

Also like.. sometimes people do bootleg games without necessarily having evil motives. Like sometimes when i was really poor I made stupid decisions and downloaded bootleg roms of games that i couldnt afford. When I grew up and understood more about how wrong it was, I stopped! My dad was a really nasty bastard and he always used to rent games from blockbuster and then rip the roms or burn the discs to use on a chipped playstation, then just return them immediately and get a full game for £3. That was how we got ALL our games as kids, I was raised in that sort of stupid environment and those are definately the kind of rom-users that I don’t support.

But like still.. sometimes.. downloading like one rom when you’re legit broke is maybe not so evil. Whenever I did that during my one year in and out of homelessness, i always used to treat it like an “unofficial demo” and like.. impose limits on myself so i wouldnt allow myself to play the whole game and steal the whole experience. It was just ‘i cant afford it right now, i will try the first level and see if i want to buy it. And then I will buy it.’My rule is “if you ever pirated a thing, you have to buy it when you get the chance”. I spent the next few years just buying physical copies of all of those games/films, even the ones I didnt like! I used rom versions of RPGmaker for years and then as soon as i had a better financial situation I bought the newest most expensive version and three more copies for all of my friends! And like in the case of games that are out of print now but werent out of print when I pirated them, I’ll buy a bunch of other stuff that the company made in order to support them.

SO YEAH, Bunni’s Personal Rules of Roms!

* If you already own a legit copy of the game, you are allowed to download a rom of it. You already paid for it, after all.* If the game is impossible to buy anymore and roms are the only way to play it, there is nothing wrong with that rom.* Fan translations are in the same category, If it can’t be bought in your country then you really have no other choice if you want to play it. And from experience, whenever these games finally get dubbed years later they get a huge amount of sales from everyone who played the fan translation! Like i still cannot believe they finally released Princess Maker in english like 15 years after the original DOS version?? The official translation was really grammatically bad but i was still so happy to be able to support the official company!* Rom hacking is fun and cool and do lots of it, yes. Its a fan work and it comes from people’s love of the game! But still please only do it if you own a legit copy of the original game!* If you’re too broke to get a game and you’re being tempted to use a rom, treat it like a “demo”. You can play it now but you have to buy it when you do have the money! If you really love this game you’ll want to support the creator, yo! No matter how long it takes! It took me like five years to be able to finally buy rpgmaker and god damn it was satisfying to finally get that off my conscience, lol* Tho if the game’s creator is some sort of absolute fucknozzle that you dont want to support with your money, then its potentially arguable that it’s okay to use a rom. But trying to get a preowned copy or watching a lets play is still better! Also like don’t do this unless its a REALLY justifiable cause. Like not just “i dont like this guy” but “there is actual proof he has made holocaust denying tweets/used his fame to advocate for gay conversion therapy/taken nude photos of his coworkers/embezzled money to make the game/etc”.* Roms of demos or preview discs or other content that was already free = literally no reason why nintendo should take that down. It’s just an archive of important moments in the game’s history!* Roms of illegal bootlegs also make no sense to be taken down in this blanket ban. Like yo the console creators literally do not own those or make any money off of them, and its GOOD that people arent giving money to the bootleggers! (And, again, its the kind of videogame history that would be easily lost without rom dumps.)

Also lol srsly why cant nintendo just say ‘take down all the roms of games that are currently available for purchase, you can keep all the archived old ones’. Like that would solve the problem without pissing off the fanbase! or seriously yo just add more of those unavailable games to the virtual console...