The State of Retro Game Preservation and ROM Sites

You're tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek. Hello and welcome to Altered Geek. I'm

your host, Steve Megatron Phillips. And jumping

into this episode, we're going to be talking

about some stuff of nostalgia. What are you talking

about nostalgia for? Well, we're going to be

discussing the importance of preserving history

and history of... things such as video games

or movies or content of that nature. So I, funny

enough, saw an article on Twitter about preserving

geek history in a sense and it kind of struck

me because we as a society are moving into the

digital streaming age, digital downloads, digital,

everything. So physical content doesn't really

hold a candle anymore, which is kind of surprising.

I mean, I kind of expected it, but at the same

time, not so much. But anyways, they had... This

discussion going, CNET posted something and then

on Twitter, Android Sophia was kind of talking

about staggering how much of video game history

is not preserved. Putting it in numbers, there

are 721 North American SNES games and before

the Wii Store shut down, only a meager 74 titles

were preserved on Virtual Console. That number

is now 51 on the Wii U. She says, for anyone

keeping track, that's roughly 10 % of the entire

SNES library preserved at its prime. And then

examples of games that were never re -released

on the SNES were like Illusions of Gaia, Goof

Troop, Top Gear 3000, Tiny Toon Adventure, Buster,

Buzz Loose, Metal Combat, Falcon's Revenge. And

then basically saying that the point is that

there are some amazing titles out there that

are not legally preserved in any means, and the

only reason we have preservation of them is thanks

to pirates and EMU devs. And it's really sad.

And this is coming after the light of Nintendo

kind of cracking down on emulator people, like

people that had... these emulator websites where

you could download retro games and what essentially

transpired is that Nintendo began cracking down

on retro game downloads seeking $150 ,000 on

a variety of different sites. I don't understand

why they want to completely erase them. Like,

I get it if they were selling this stuff, and

I get it that it's technically not legal because

they're emulated, but at the same time, if they're

going to do absolutely nothing with them and

people cannot buy them, not that people won't,

because people love nostalgia and love playing

old games, I just don't understand it. I mean,

I understand that it's their property, but at

the same time, I don't understand why they haven't

done anything else with it. So on one website

motherboard they said Nintendo's offensive tragic

and totally legal erasure of ROM sites this is

the damage that removing ROMs from the internet

could do to video games as a whole is catastrophic

and as somebody who used to own a emulator website

back in the early 2000s it I didn't really have

them up for Others per se it was more so for

fun in the fact that I had my own emulator site

And I didn't have to have them on my computer.

They were hosted housed on the internet So if

I was somewhere else I could download them or

whatnot. It was more so for that It was like

my own personal Google Drive with a cool website

that went with it Which cool website at the time

is not cool. I developed it in in Microsoft front

page But it was you know, I get I kind of got

exposed to it in the late 90s, early 2000s, and

I somewhere still have a CD with some of them

on it. I had the emulation archive, which was

started from my Dragon Ball Z website. Majin

Phillips and Beby Kilburn or Majin Vegeta and

Beby Gogito's Dragon Ball Z GT website. Very

long name. I later changed it to the Cyber Dragon

Ball, which again was going to be a podcast and

that got blown out of the water. But it was a

sidestep website from that and the Emulation

Archive was essentially all my favorite SNES,

Sega, Game Boy, and a couple of other games I

think. I had like Mega Man X, all the Mega Man

X games up to like X4 because I couldn't get

anything PlayStation and above or PlayStation

2. so uh but anyways kind of getting back to

this it says in july nintendo sued two popular

rom sites love roms and love love retro .co which

tells you how long i've been out of the game

because i've never heard it either um for what

it called brazen and mass scale infringement

of nintendo's intellectual property rights both

sites have been shut down another big 18 year

old rom site emu paradise which That one I know.

That's where I got majority of my stuff back

in the day. Said it would no longer be able to

allow people to download old games due to potentially

disastrous consequences, even though Nintendo

has every right to enforce its copyrights. Some

of the people say that it's sad to see the company

go after ROM sites for the acronym for read -only

memory, which hobbyists dumped from the original

cartridges onto computers to create ROM images,

digital copies in other words. And it's kind

of sad that that they did this It says some of

them are sent directly to their their hosts initially

to get them shut down Same time like I kind of

think it's crap that Nintendo's even doing this

And like I said I get that they own the intellectual

property for the games when people pirate them

instead of buying them Especially when it comes

to games on like a Nintendo Super NES classic

edition or You know downloading a copy from one

of its digital storefronts, you know, then they're

actually losing money, but They're they're essentially

saying that it's gonna have potential significantly

damaged tens of thousands of jobs when they aren't

for sale So there's really no way that it's Damaging

unless it's something that's currently being

sold Yeah, it's just I don't get that I'm not

sure what you guys think on it, but I think it's

kind of crap like if Nintendo's not gonna publish

them It's kind of it's kind of crap so It it

kind of just throws me for a loop that this is

the world we live in This is most of what MU

Paradise was hosting was worked by companies

that are now defunct and which have little or

no chance of being legally sold And that's kind

of where I think we stand with this is that You

can't play any of these anymore Which if Nintendo

was smart they would kind of Get them back is

like some kind of a Legal way of playing it For

instance, like they say, there's a company called

Retrocade, which has a device which legally licensed

and resold games from developers like Capcom

using emulation software, RetroArch, designed

to run illegal ROMs. Many of the official re

-released Lucasfilm point -and -click adventure

games ran on the SCUMM engine, now use the fan

-made free SCUMM VM engine. And so on. Yeah,

I don't know. I think this is just kind of a

crap shoot that Nintendo is just like, oh, how

can we get free money? It's because again, I

don't see the terrible difficulty in doing this

if you're not. Selling the product that people

want. It's like when you record those movies

off of like back in the day when you could record

the movies off of like family family channel

and There was no way ever of getting these DVDs

because they never went to DVD they always were

just a special that played once a year And that

was the only way you could see it so like there

was one year My wife had told me about a movie

called Christmas Every Day, and it's your typical

Groundhog Day, but with Christmas, and it was

one of the first ones that kind of were out in

the 90s, where it looked, you know, low budget,

looked family channel budget, but... It was entertaining

and at the same time like you couldn't get it

And so I ended up having to search the internet

and somebody had it recorded off of the channel

And burn to DVD and I was able to purchase it

that way for I think it was like eight bucks

or something Plus shipping and and it was worth

it because again you couldn't find it But I still

would pay for it Because I couldn't find it and

it's like a lot of old TV shows that are out

you know ones that aren't on Netflix or Hulu

or any of these other streaming services and

You can't watch any other backlogs of some of

these shows or old shows in general or purchase

them And so like in that instance those people

that have them Granted they're not legal to be

selling them in the first place, but at the same

time How are you supposed to get them? That's

kind of the conundrum I see this as. If they're

that worried about losing money, why not republish

the game digitally, or republish the show or

the movie digitally? I just don't see the logic

in their whole attack. It says that in continuing

on this, you know, Nintendo crackdown on the

BBC site, they even have a different kind of

perspective that, um, you know, the Emmy paradise,

which was doing this, had voluntarily shut down

following the legal action, uh, by Nintendo against

two similar online portals. Um, because Nintendo

is seeking 150 150 ,000 for each Nintendo game

offered and up to two million dollars for each

trademark infringement And so that they could

not risk potentially disastrous consequences.

So they shut down It says that they run any paradise

for the love of retro games and for you to be

able to revisit those good times Unfortunately,

it's not possible right now to do so in a way

that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of

trouble wrote their their founder and so yeah,

it's Again, this is both sides are now closed

but offered games originally designed for a number

of classic consoles, including those by Sega,

Sony, and Atari, which we're not going after

them. It's unfortunate, but I have a feeling

you're going to see a lot more of these things

start popping up on torrents just because people

are trying to obtain these ROMs in order to play

the retro games. And, you know, with them being

decades old, obsolete hardware, obsolete software,

and No way of getting them I mean it's you're

gonna see a lot of that start popping up and

probably a lot of people get sued for it on the

top of it Just like movies and television shows

So I don't know what you guys think on this like

it's it's kind of a slippery slope of of this

Whole system playing out the way it is at the

moment, and I'm not quite sure what to think

about it But I think that it could have kind

of disastrous elements to it down the pipeline.

And what I mean by disastrous is the fact that

you could end up with all kinds of crazy, tyrannical

decisions on old things being online. Oh no,

they have an old publicity shot. Oh no, they

didn't pay royalty for that. Oh no, there's a...

commercial from an old Toys R Us ad or you know

it just I don't know things could kind of get

weird granted these are full versions of games

so you know but the other option too that you

can do if you happen to have something like this

in your area which most places don't Nowadays,

I'm fortunate I have this place called Disc Replay,

or if you have a GameStop, but GameStop really

doesn't collect a lot of the old cartridge -based

games. So if you're looking for like your Atari,

your Sega Genesis, your Sega, your Nintendo,

Super Nintendo, Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy

Advance, Game Boy Color, all those... cartridge

-based games really your only option is like

eBay or knowing somebody that has them still

or something like a disc replay and disc replay

for those that are not aware of them they're

kind of based around in different areas and They

have like the mother load of like movies they

sell electronics they sell They kind of have

You know not only the game consoles of like every

game console known to man Movies and TV series

they sell you know use tablets Apple products

whether it's computer tablets phones iPods, they

sell laptops, fitness trackers, smartwatches,

streaming devices, cameras, GoPros, Amazon Echoes,

water cameras, graphing calculators, gaming mice,

keyboards, microphones, speakers, Bluetooth speakers,

car speakers, sound bars, 1080p and 4k HDTVs,

flat screen monitors, As a matter of fact, I

traded in the majority of my DVD collection and

got a 27 -inch ASUS Flat -scanning monitor and

it's awesome It's much better quality picture

and color than my other monitor, which is nice.

It's HDMI And it was like 130 bucks, which you

know, not bad. I mean it was my monitors like

a $300 monitor so because it's gaming and They

sell my exact Blue Yeti microphone up there,

because I was just up there the other day. My

wife and I still had like $35 worth of credit

in store. And we were like, we need to spend

this, because we treated it in a lot of movies

and games and game consoles and everything else

in the past. And they, now mind you, disc replay,

mega replay, and disc traders, all the same business.

They exist in various locations. Basically they

exist in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and

Ohio. So if you're anywhere else, you're kinda

SOL. But they have... They have a ton of locations

in Michigan for instance a ton in Indiana telling

Illinois They're getting one in, Ohio. They've

got one in Iowa It's you know they they like

I said they have everything no demand and they're

digital they have controllers they have everything

And we bought our First or we bought our second

water camera there unfortunately lost that one

we bought our Kindle fire there. We bought my

monitor there and I just bought an 8 gig iPod

Nano. Mind you, I'm not an iPod fan or an Apple

fan, but I needed to use the credit, and it was

gonna give me the most bang for my buck, so I

got this iPod Nano, which was previously used

on a Mac, so I had to reformat it and then reinstall

it with iTunes, and then I was able to load podcasts

to it. Some of my music library So it's it's

it has its uses, but anyways So really these

are the only Options you have is Finding a place

like this and I know that disc replay isn't the

only option I know that there are other places.

I mean, it's basically like the modern -day Funko

land except it's modern It's not like a GameStop

light And like I said, they carry like Atari,

NES, SNES, and 64. Sega Master Systems, Genesis,

Saturn, Dreamcast, PS1, 2, 3, 4, Xbox 360, N1,

Wii, Wii U, and you know, like I said, just about

everything. I think they even have Commodore

64's in mine. Like it's, it's pretty wild. Sometimes

they go in there just to look. to be honest,

and then other times it's interesting to see

things. But they have posters, they have comics,

they have just a lot of stuff in there. And I

guess if you're gonna do it legally, that's really

the only way you can go about it is finding a

shop like this and purchasing from them. And

it's... it really is the only legal way to get

it. I mean, emulation, I always saw it as kind

of a gray area anyway. And it was more so if

you own this, you can use it as a backup. You

were never actually supposed to just pirate the

games outright. I used to have like, what was

it? I had all the Mega Man X games. I had every

Dragon Ball Z game that was pre... disc based

system, it was all cartridge based. I had all

the Pokemon games, I had Streets of Rage 1, 2,

3, Ninja Turtles, Hyperstone Heist, various other

ones like that. One of these days I'll have to

get out my Flash Drive because I converted everything

over to a Flash Drive and I think I still have

some of that. just to see what I have and maybe

pull up like a copy of it or at least the old

website that I used to have. I can't for the

life of me remember the old URL that it was under

to even bother looking it up. But yeah, it's

definitely a different time and it's unfortunate

but It's you know, we're kind of in that era

of You're just not allowed to do things like

that anymore. It's we're not in the internet

Wild West We're in the sophisticated era where

we have to do things that are right way every

single time and you know again I get Nintendo's

viewpoint, but I also get the other people on

the emulation side because again, it's just They

don't give you any options So it's either buy

it from somewhere that's reputable like that

or have it or buy it on eBay or it just goes

to the way of the internet junk file. It just

goes in the delete and the recycle bin and it's

gone and it's just part of history that you just

kind of have to remember. It's unfortunate but

it happens and so yeah. So until next time...

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