Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?
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@alturis outside of Sega and Homebrew I don't know of many if any services that allow to just purchase the ROM itself. Generally they package their emulators and roms up in a binary and sell that instead often as standalone ports of each game.
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To this day, I still don't understand why no companies legally sell ROMs from properties they own. One may answer "because they're already online illegally and none would pay" but that doesn't make any sense because... pretty much everything is.
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@matchaman to be fair it's a maze of licensing and distribution but even then it's much more profitable for Nintendo to sell you the same game in various forms of "remastering" in multiple throwaway consoles so it isn't transferrable to their next throwaway console. It's really actually quite brilliant- getting people to pay for the same game multiple times.
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@herb_fargus said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:
@matchaman to be fair it's a maze of licensing and distribution but even then it's much more profitable for Nintendo to sell you the same game in various forms of "remastering" in multiple throwaway consoles so it isn't transferrable to their next throwaway console. It's really actually quite brilliant- getting people to pay for the same game multiple times.
That's not at all how it works and "remastering" is far far more expensive than you realize.
The real answer is it opens them up to legal liabilities.
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@zerojay said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:
That's not at all how it works
So Nintendo doesn't charge you for the same game multiple times?
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@herb_fargus said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:
@zerojay said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:
That's not at all how it works
So Nintendo doesn't charge you for the same game multiple times?
That's not a remaster.
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There is a way to purchase "legal ROMs". The NES and SNES Classic Editions are examples of that. As are those Plug n' Play consoles with Pac-Man or Centipede on them.
Those products are licensed and tested accordingly. One reason for not having [your favorite SNES game] on the SNES Classic Edition is licensing. Chrono Trigger isn't available on that console because SquareEnix owns it. They would have to license its use on the SNES CE. They won't, because they believe they will make more money selling it again on the PS4/Xbone/PC/Cellphone, etc.
Part of the problem too, is that those emulators, no matter how simple, must be tested. You don't just wrap Dark Forces in a PS1 emulator container and sell it on the PS4's storefront. Same with the classic edition consoles, or the Plug n Play devices. It actually costs money to emulate old software correctly. Companies don't want to sell you a ROM without an effective way of running it. They don't want to support it's use on RetroPie, Snes9x for Windows, Android, or whatever. It's not profitable.
That's part of the SNES/NES Classic Edition's success. Damn good emulation with little to no issues. Just plug, and play!
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@piboy That and the Nintendo name alone guarantees you that it's going to be a reliable, user-friendly product. They can make some very disagreeable business choices, but I've seldom ever had a problem with their first-party products.
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@zerojay semantics
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@eldrethor said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:
They can make some very disagreeable business choices, but I've seldom ever had a problem with their first-party products.
Even the VirtualBoy (arguably their worst product ever) was very well made. It was just ill-conceived.
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