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0 pointsNobodyNada6y ago0 comments

Nintendo's official development manual is available at archive.org [0]. However, AFAICT it is rather low-quality and incomplete, and it pales in comparison to the wealth of documentation created by years of reverse-engineering effort from hobbyists like byuu.

I imagine that the official documentation was leaked rather than publicly released. Nintendo wants to make money selling re-releases of classic games, so they are extremely unfriendly towards emulator developers. Just look at the all the propaganda on their corporate website: "The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers [...] Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs." [1]

[0]: https://archive.org/details/SNESDevManual/mode/2up [1]: https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp

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10 comments · 1 top-level

tgsovlerkhgsel6y ago· 9 in thread

I would assume that from a practical standpoint, the SNES emulation 'war' is lost for all practical definitions of it - pirates can run everything they want in more than sufficient quality using any of multiple options.

So Nintendo doesn't have much to lose by letting the few geeks that want perfection for perfection's sake have it.

praptak6y ago

That's not how corporations work though. The default decision is "no" and an individual employee has no benefit from getting through all the red tape to get a "yes".

sparcraft6y ago

It is also about consistency. Let’s say for argument’s sake they decided to sue the creators of the emulators. If even one time Nintendo cooperated with and assisted the emulator developers, it is easy for the defense to argue that Nintendo implicitly endorsed the work and therefore why are they suing them.

naniwaduni6y ago

Third-party SNES emulator are more accurate than Virtual Console.

DCKing6y ago

It's worth noting that the Virtual Console SNES emulator doesn't really have a reputation for inaccuracy. For sure it's not as accurate as Higan/bsnes but by all accounts it's pretty decent. Of course it was made for running in different constraints. It runs many games very well on the New 3DS' 804MHz ARM11 or the Wii's 729MHz PowerPC G3. Bsnes won't run much in those constraints.

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lostgame6y ago

Wasn't Sony caught using an open-source PS1 emulator for their recently-released(ish) Playstation Mini?

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fiblye6y ago

If ever there's a law passed that allows Nintendo to get non-licensed emulators banned entirely, I have no doubts they'd do everything in their power to have them wiped from existence by the next day.

If they give up and give assistance to emulator devs, there's no going back on it.

SSLy6y ago

Luckily laws are limited to countries.

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shatnersbassoon6y ago

IANAL but my understanding is that while practically speaking the war is lost for SNES, corporations have to be seen to be defending their IP (particularly game characters in Nintendo's case) otherwise they run the risk of it becoming public domain in the long term. An example of this is brand names becoming generic names (e.g. dumpster, chapstick, escalator...). The corporations that owned these terms lost control of them because they weren't able to do enough to defend their IP. Since many of their modern titles are reliant on old IP it is vitally important that they retain a grip on it from a legal standpoint.

Retric6y ago

That’s specific to trademarks which don’t automatically expire. Copyright and patents are mostly enforced via lawsuits, but in theory are in full effect until the clock runs out.

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