treos2 no offence mate, but have you actually met a Nintendo fan (outside of the incredibly toxic Twitter)? I am a Nintendo fan. My (online) friend circle is full of Nintendo fans. We all hate the shit Nintendo keeps pulling on roms and emulators; they should probably know I only bought 3D Pokemon cos I was able to emulate the older DS titles; likewise with BotW, I emulated Majoras Mask which got me into the series. Not to mention Metroid, Mario, and all the other amazing titles they’ve put out. To summarise: Nintendo is amazing (mostly) when it comes to producing high quality, immersive games. What they are horrible at preserving those high quality games.
@treos2 There's nothing really inherently wrong i think with the original publishers reselling emulations of their games. I mean, it is "their" games. I definitely think its cheap and scummy (i mean, they're just doing it to get a quick buck), but its within their right i guess. I do think its stupid though that these game console publishers try to treat emulations and ROMs as taboo, especially if its not even really affecting the current profits of a company. What harm is there in me playing Melee or Mother 3 on an emulator using an "illegally" obtained ROM when both games have been out of circulation for about 15-20 years now? There needs to be some reforms in the legality of ROMs obtained through the internet (especially for older games, i can at least understand companies not wanting people to emulate their current games since that's actual piracy in the sense that its going to hurt their profit). At least in the case of Sony going after Bleem! during the late '90s - early 2000s, they had SOME warrant for doing so since game publishers could go through Bleem! to publish their games rather than having to pay licensing fees to Sony (which is how the Playstation brand made a lot of their money back then). But going after emulation in the form it exists in nowadays (ie: free emulation software whose target demographic is mostly retro gamers) is just fucking stupid. Its not like those emulators are stopping people from buying your current games.
@treos2 You need to differentiate. Emulation is legal, no matter how hard Nintendo was trying to tell people otherwise. Downloading rom files on the other hand is illegal, if the source doesn't own the copyright or has a license for distribution. The fact that Nintendo are among the very few who actually enforce their copyright on "old" titles, even those that haven't been commercially available for decades, might put them in a morally ambiguous (ymmv) position, nevertheless legally they have every right to do so. Can't blame them for following the law, can you? Outdated analogue age copyright law is the actual problem.
I'm more worried about the preservation of NEW games than old ones, because of the online-only requirement which is increasingly prevalent. Game companies can pull the plug on their games any time they want and even if you've BOUGHT THE GAME, you'll be left with nothing. But I think fighting this practice requires less Indiana Jones and more Ace Attorney.
Eh, even PT can't be deleted off of a console. Once you have the data, if you archive it it's permanently there. As long as you archive the data you have, if that's truly your goal, you'll have it. And as long as that data exists, emulation will eventually catch up and allow it to re-proliferate
I think it depends on the game... for games that rely entirely on online multiplayer, you can preserve them, even set servers for them... But if people don't play them like they used too it might be pointless to even try... I think you should be able to set up a match between friends for any games, but for mmos or those types of games Frank made a comment in the previous conference that maybe those game could be preserved more like baseball games, like individual historical events that you can learn all about them even if you can't necessarily experience them.
Yeah, there are so many dead online games were the only way of getting a glimpse of them is through a few TH-cam Videos. Hawken(PC) & Loadout were some games I have known myself. Tabula Rasa is something I only heard of, and there are many more that will be lost in time...
The problem with a panel like this is, the audience isnt the audience they need. It's the CEOs and the suits that think people need to pay for Mario Bros for the 10th time.
@@michaelfenell3602 and it probably won't be the one that is fan patched. Please Bethesda, just pull a Ubisoft and publish an improvement patch that is actually a stolen fan patch made by modders/fans. I can't stand you releasing Skyrim yet again in it's still broken official revision.
It wouldn't make a difference even if he was speaking at a game marketer's conference. They don't care. They know the pro's and con's of emulation, they know that it can rescue the history and legacy of their companies. The money is more important than the legacy to them.
With any game older than 10 years, the question has ceased to be "How can I get someone to pay for this?" and started to be, "How can I get someone to discover this?" Emulation didn't become popular because people couldn't figure out where to insert their credit card numbers for AAA product; it became popular because people who care about hardware, code, and history amassed the largest free library of video games to date, and it gave the poor, the nostalgic, and the curious a space to discover.
Unfortunately I think the question for most big publishers now days seems to be "how do I stop our 10+ year old games from stealing attention from our much more monetizable modern games"
A big part of classic gaming is price. Some of the popular games can cost hundreds of dollars, if you can even find a working copy. If someone wanted to charge me $60 for FF6, for the SNES, I would pay it. I'm not paying over a $100 on ebay for something that might not even work when I get it.
@@justsomenerd8925 A big part of classic *hardware* is the price. The SNES is pushing 30, so yes, if you want to run a game that didn't sell well in 1992 on an original machine with an original cartridge, it might cost you a pretty penny. Similarly, if I want to own a first edition of Les Miserables, it's not going to be cheap.....but if I just want to READ Les Miserables, I can go to my local library and check it out for free - because the joy of reading a classic shouldn't be limited to those who can afford the original version.
I mean, you can't say people wanting to play older games for free wasn't a factor in the success of emulation. I just think its retarded for console publishers to go after emulation. Its not like it's really hurting their profit margins. Like, 95% of people who use emulation are doing so to play older games. And besides, some people want to still own those games for their current-gen consoles regardless of if they already have it on another platform. Anyone who has ever bought over 3-4 copies of Skyrim across multiple platforms can attest to this.
In France the legal deposit, which is the obligation to submit copies of publications to a public repository, applies to video games. You can send your materials to the BnF (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
they wouldn't make it available to the public, and they certainly wouldn't code and fix broken old games or create emulators for them... this takes time and effort, so money... but yeah, for "history's" sake sure...
@@William-Morey-Baker As a matter of fact, they do make it avalaible to the public and they do use emulators for that. I am not sure for fixing broken games but they hire engineers to bypass DRM security, so I guess those would also be able to fix games
One other example of things being lost: Kingdom Hearts. The original Kingdom Hearts 1 source code. It doesn't exist anymore. Apparently after Square finished the game and made their final compiled versions, the source code was lost at some point. It's not the only game of theirs either, but it's the one I remember because there's an HD remake. Normally HD versions are a matter of going into the code and making a few tweaks and including HD textures and a few other such things - adding some polish, relatively easy stuff. But to do that you need the source code. The guys who did the HD remake of it only had the compiled game to work with. Everything had to be reverse engineered. Lots of that is fairly easy - all the audio, all the textures, and so on, are there in the compiled version, you just need to find them. It's work, but relatively easy. Game code, though....you've lost all the documentation since compilers ignore comments. You've lost all the exact values of things like how gravity was modeled for the platforming (which, as you may have noticed, varies substantially more in games than seems reasonable from a physics perspective), how the encounters are set up, how the AI works....that's all just...sitting there in machine language being unintelligible. I forget if they made best guesses at those and just compared their version to the original game until it matched the feel, or if they managed to decompile the code, but either way, that game took so much more work than it should have. (And, as someone who played it and got all the nostalgia feels from playing it, they did a damned good job of it)
@Sonic Hedgehog They probably did that too, but unless those devs kept private copies of their work, they probably wouldn't remember much in the way of specifics. They could probably name at least some of the AI algorithms they used and such, but to get a passable duplicate, you need to get the details right. Consider the last time you were out driving (or otherwise out and about. Do you remember the colour of every car you had to take note of in order to avoid a collision? You probably remember the jackass who cut you off and immediately slammed on the brakes, but how about all those normal cars that just were taking up space in a lane you wanted to use, or were in front of or behind you? Probably not. This is like that, bu trying to remember a thing from over a decade ago.
@Sonic Hedgehog As rashkavar was saying, those programmers would only be useful if they help with reverse engineering the game, unless they happen to have the source code lying around somewhere
@@chainswordcs Yeah, it was an issue for several remakes, from what I've heard. It's just that KH1 was the only one I could remember from the list. Probably because it's the one with fairly high end 3D models and complex spaces and platforming and active battle mechanics. FF8, honestly you could get most of the technical specs from just doing a deep dive on GameFAQs. The amount of technical documentation that exists for that game is remarkable. I must say, though, I do appreciate the fact that they kept the same janky old event RNG system that starts at the same point and spits out 100% predictable results based on how you advance it. (If you've not seen it, there's a GDQ run of FF8 that has a delightfully cool bit at the end of Disk 1 where they've worked out where they are in the RNG to predict a randomized code the game is going to give them and as they progress to that point the commentary is just eerily predicting all the randomized NPCs actions on each screen they pass through.)
@@chainswordcs I don't think it was 8, I believe what you may be thinking of is them losing the uncompressed background images for 9 and releasing it with terrible compressed backgrounds, and later using AI to upscale them
I would buy just the ROM. There are plenty of emulators out there and they will only get better with time. Just sell me the ROM legitimately so I can support its publisher if nothing else.
some people like sega do that with thier games on steam. others just make hd version which updates the art work but also makes it so people that would have bought it not be able to run it so they will just use an emulator anyways. capcom's ace attoenry trilogy is a recent example of the latter.
Yeah I agree selling just the rom for cheap should be even a standard option, no different from buying a digital copy of any movie in whatever service you prefer. Just let me buy the rom or even rent the rom, provide me with an open source emulator or give me the option to use my own.
I'm not sure how emulators became demonized as game companies who make consoles generally make more profit from the games that are sold for them. If the attach rate of video games to consoles is high, it shouldn't matter much that the console is a physical or virtual manifestation. Or whether or not the console is created from a third party.
yeah they don't want to do that though, it becomes harder to re-sell you the same old games 5 times over multiple platforms. But you're right that it should be standard.
I love that guy ! Beyond being a historian of video games, he should start describing himself as a curator-restorer of video games, the same way that people actually take a beautiful painting and restore it with all the historical knowledge that they have of the pigments that were used at the time, the intent of the artist, the multiple layers of paint with sometimes widely different versions underneath the final painting, and knowing the effect that time and light has had on the painting to undo that effect. There is a strong parallel to be made here I believe.
This is why it's completely morally OK to pirate any and all Nintendo games. If they had their way, they'd gladly see all other retro games lost forever just so they could resell you SMB or A Link to the Past for the 20th time.
Exactly. It's not like you're ripping off an indie dev struggling to get noticed on steam, these are pieces of history being drip-fed for us to buy multiple times. If anything we're getting ripped off.
It's morally OK to pirate any game as long as said game has sold enough to at the very least "pay itself" If a game already generated enough profit they aren't losing anything to piracy, they're just not getting money, that's it. Look at RE4 or Skyrim, at this point those games have made much, MUCH more money than it was invested on them. Piracy is not like stealing, when you steal from someone, that someone LOST a product, it's one less product they can sell, it's one more product they have to replace if they wanna sell it, and it will cost them money to replace it, when downloading a game doesn't remove a copy of said game from the stores catalogues. So fuck it, you should still pay for the games you play if you can, but if you can't, that's not a serious problem really, provided the publisbers/devs made that money back, you're taking as much money away from them as you would if you just decided not to play the gsme at all...
@@rickydo6572 you nailed it. There's a morality to it, I have torrented SOOOOOO many albums from 1900-2015 but I purchase new albums to support musicians that aren't filthy rich. I can't go buy the original fallouts and tactics, don't have a ps2 or GameCube and can't afford wind waker but I'll be damned if I haven't enjoyed emulating it and finally experiencing it! Nintendo doesn't make a penny off the used switch or skyward sword I bought on the Wii anyway, but we should honestly all support them and Sony and pirate from Microsoft for them attempting to monopolize the industry.
No mater what companies say Intellectual property doesn't help creators it just stops us saving things and stifles creativity as creatives often get their start copying and tweaking stuff.
@GamingTV I think my view on this is influenced by my general distain for capitalism as a whole. I'm of the opinion that the competition and encouragement of accumulation that comes with capitalism just makes things worse, sure we "get" nice things from capitalism like games and iPhones etc but even in a capitalist system we wouldn't get them without collaboration and poorly rewarded hard work of academics and enthusiasts and we'd probably have more of them without capital gating access to creation. I think that without the burden of capital accumulation and the increased inequality that comes with it creators would be more free to collaborate and create.
@GamingTV Companies don't make games; they hire creative people to do all the real work and then say "I paid all these people 20 years ago, so it's MINE!" It's like your parents taking all the money you make in adulthood because they paid for your food back in the day, making you their intellectual property, so you can have a 2% cut of your salary after they take their share. It's only fair, you wouldn't exist without them.
What makes the mention of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap particularly interesting, is that according to a dev interview, the game is implemented with emulation: A heavily customized Master System emulator (based on Meka) running a heavily patched Wonder Boy III ROM.
It's hard to find the actual article now, but I did find a Reddit comment by Sebastien Ronsse on the Nintendo Switch reddit. Unfortunately TH-cam shadow-deletes any comment that contains a link. The thread was called "We are Lizardcube & DotEmu, developers of "Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap". Ask Us Anything!"
I think the "easiest" thing that developers can do to old games that pirates will never have or not in great quality is online connectivity. Like recording your times and uploading them to official speedrun leaderboards online, maybe you can share easily your results online, accessible online multiplayer to games that were only coop, matchmaking. And accessible is really they key, I know a lot of communities have maintained fan servers online and added these features, but only the most hardcore know all this stuff and know how to set it up. When I found out that I could play online coop for halo 1 and 2 with my brother outside of the country like we used to do as kids, that was an instant buy for the master cief collection. Even just making these games work with your friend list is awesome, thats exactly what steam did. I hate the argument that no one can't beat illegal piracy or that the only way is to persecute people that only want to play old games in convenient ways
Pirates do that. All the old COD games can be played online on crack servers like Plutonium, REKT, X Labs, etc. And with Acti still wanting 20-50 dollars for these old games just to play with hackers on servers that are ill maintained, there is basically no reason NOT to play the cracks.
slippi for super smash brothers melee :) and fightcade for loads of other fighting games it's absolutely not feasible for every game or every player but it's there and it's so cool that it exists
but project cartographer and halo custom edition exist. sure port fowarding is a pain in the ass, but its still there for you. also not to mention wiimmfi, dolphin netplay, crack servers for cod, slippi, fightcade2, eldewrito, myneighborsushicat and coldsteel for psp games, xlinkkai, fivem, etc. all doing the work that the bigwigs should of or genuinely cant. sailor moon s, a cult classic fg where everything is batshit insane, is from a company that died and is never getting a rerelease because of it. hell mvc2 will probably not get rereleased because of all of the legal hoops they have to go through because of sony and the fantastic four and all that. fightcade hosts these games because they would be local only if it werent for them
That's always been the big killer. Valve is the best example of how to do this successfully and thus converting would-be pirates into paying customers for both themselves and Sega. Nintendo made a killing selling Super Mario Bros on the eShop for 3 generations in a row at $5 each time, imagine what they'd make if they sold it as ROMs on PC at that price? You know, the only device in as much as half of all homes worldwide? It wouldn't even be particularly difficult for them either. Just a combination store front and secure library manager to keep encrypted ROMs in. When the player wants to play a game, they pick it and a "Nintendo Approved" community made emulator, it decrypts the ROM to RAM, starts the emulator, and away we go. Since most computers these days have at least 8GB of RAM, you could get away with keeping entire dual layer Gamecube ISOs in RAM and still have far more free memory than the emulator could ever need.
This is the coolest guy ever. The gaming industry needs more people who think like this, I felt so reassured through the whole thing, especially when he talk about game collections or remasters that give you a worse experience than an emulator, and how many times they're lost opportunities to fix stuff in those games. I wish Capcom would've given them the rest of the MegaMan collections, the X collection especially could've used this level of attention to detail, and it could've been a great time to fix the broken mess that is Megaman X6
Yeah, it's heartening to know there are people out there that have a passion for preserving older games, and remaining as faithful to the original hardware as possible when re-releasing them.
For everyone that believes gathering physical copies of rare titles and letting it sit on a self is the "be all, end all" for preservation. I hate to break it to you, but... A large portion of collections, even sealed, never opened, never used copies will eventually cease functioning due to data rot/disc rot. (Which BTW, has become a massive problem for Laserdisc collectors) Nothing lasts forever. Unfortunately in this case. Father Time has caught up as we are seeing many physical media-optical discs for the most part succumb to disc rot as the adhesive glue holding back the data portion just below the label side deteriorates and oxidizes (rots out) the data tracks. Cartridge games might last a wee-bit longer but will suffer the same fate as bit rot goes. It's only a matter of time. As we are approaching the 15, 20, 30,even 40 year mark for many cartridges, floppies, and optical discs. Many have already been rendered useless. Look at how many 1970s/1980s floppies, SEGA CD/Saturn, PC Engine and even GameCube discs have "rotted out" even in the best optimal conditions just to name a few. At this point... The only true preservation method is emulation and uploading those games on the internet to archive before it's lost forever.
I have never had any cartridge game fail on me except a copy of Sonic for Genesis. Which was probably due to the previous owner mishandling the contacts. I've also only had one LaserDisc with noticeable disc-rot and it's from the first year of production due to crappy glue.
Important talk, important work, thank you for both! It's sad how much has already been lost for good. I'd be more than happy to pay for all my past favourites, if they came in a format which remained playable through the years, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Games are not perishable goods by nature and should not be sold as such. If I've bought it once, it's mine to play indefinitely. Porting old games to new platforms won't make me buy them again, I'll just keep playing them on the old ones till they break, and then they'll become forever lost for me too.
One of my favourite presentations going through a ton of these right now, clearly very passionate about conserving our history and super charismatic, that ''I'm not a cop'' was perfect.
I appreciate the note about the importance of the old console ports of arcade games. For example, if we ever get a retro TMNT game collection, I want the two arcade games, their NES and SNES ports, plus TMNT 1 and 3. Hell, add Hyperstone Heist and all the versions of Tournament Fighters. If you wanna go beyond preservation, make a “complete” version of Tournament Fighters with all the characters.
I still think there's no good justification for recent compilations to offer so much less content than the PS2-era ones. You used to get 20-30 games, not a tiny handful.
I'm so glad to hear other people with this mindset. This is such a fascinating artform and industry and arcade games are such an important part of it. I love the work people put in to these emulators and collections. The idea of these definitive versions of games he talked about is just awesome as well. Great presentation!
Nintendo only released Starfox 2 AFTER, and a long time after, 'pirates' had taken it, dumped it, released it to the world, translated it for English and other audiences and the emulation world had run it into the ground with all kinds of upgrades. Let's not at like Nintendo were doing anyone a favour here. The horse had bolted years previously.
What a damn cool video. I didn't think I'd enjoy this as much as I did. Good job Digital Eclipse, M2 and all the retro rescuers out there, you are amazing.
I came here from the original talk from a few years back and am loving this one. GDC always has great content but this is so interesting and he's such a great speaker. To add a personal example of game preservation and emulation, I wanted to play Symphony of the Night and the only option was to buy it on PS4, but that version was inferior, so I stuck with PSX. Same with Rondo of Blood. I'd love to buy them properly, but the currently released versions are inferior to simply emulating them. Still waiting on SNES and GBA titles to come to Switch so I can officially play all the Metroid titles, too!
Honestly, I know it might be a bit "stupid" to hear. But for example Metal Slug on GOG (the Linux version at least), comes with the whole MAME romset. So naturally, I found it easier to buy the GOG version and pop that in, give a bit more than 5€ to the publisher and call it a day.
This is difficult, I can view photos of a piece of art and at least gather some of the details from it. Video Games are art but you have to play them and experience the mechanics which no photo/video/let's play will completely cover. Are let's plays really the best we're going to have 10-15 years in the future of the art?
I couldn't actually find that paragraph on Nintendo's website, but the one I did find was honestly a lot worse. They have like an FAQ where they directly address the question of emulating games that aren't being distributed anywhere else, and their response is essentially "We don't care, it's still illegal and we're the only ones with with the right to distribute those games"
I was looking over a complete list of SNES roms and it just took my breath away to the point of looking up documentaries on who some of the people behind these incredible preservation efforts are. Wasn't able to find anything on the roms themselves, especially some of the rarest ones and how and when they got ripped, but a couple results on emulation at least. I've been taking this stuff for granted for too long, and now that I'm older, I really stop and appreciate the time, care and effort behind it all.
I'm happy to be one of the original pioneers of emulation on the PC back in the 90s up until now, most of the work I did with demo, zsKnight, and Martin Korths lead to a lot of the emulation you guys enjoy today. We spent a lot of time documenting the undocumented trying to optimise on a pentium II 266Mhz what I wouldn't give to get back to those days, it was such a fun time just going to high school and coming home to reverse engineer the SNES, GBA NEO GEO
CRT emulation in shaders is getting pretty good. The only real issue is our HD screens are barely enough to get the effect to a spot that it begins to work. 4k is just starting to become convincing. 8k is probably the end of the road for the raw resolution push, but will it be enough?
I have actually participated in this talk and I am thankful that I got to ask the question about Eric "ShouTime" Chung, the hardcore arcade board preservationist and collector in addition to being founder and CEO of Exa Arcadia, the new upcoming platform. The decision to go with physical cartridges like Neo Geo helps extends the life of video games in physical format, and they are completely playable offline.
As a long-time SNK fan I of source bought the 40th anniversary collection as soon as I could - please do it too so they can dump and patch in the Micon Block. It's so weird that the founding block of SNK's game-making career is not available...
This is why I still keep a nice fat folder of GBA roms on my pc. Grew up with those games. And seeing as how Nintendo gladly throws decades of gaming history away while burning down any website that tries to preserve it.. I’m more than happy to keep and expand my “illegal” collection.
On the topic of the last question and remixes of games, I'm dying for a real definitive version of Persona 3. Persona 3 FES+ I believe has extended cutscenes and some added content, Persona 3 Portable has a female protag route to play but doesn't have the FES+ features and a much worse overworld. Don't get me wrong, if they remade P3 with a modern engine, that'd be awesome, but I would be more than content with a modern FES+/Portable all in one definitive experience.
As far as emulating fan-localized content that has never been localized before, I'm looking forward to playing the Mother 3 localized rom, I wish there was something like that for the Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan and Ishin games. I've been loving the Yakuza games and would love to experience the samurai counterpart to those games
Another example would be an HSFA that includes the Alpha 3 Upper/Double Upper/Max newcomers (preferably redrawn in CPS2 style) as well, plus maybe the ability to select any version even for characters who didn’t have those versions.
20:00 I wonder if he knows about "run-ahead", sw emulation can have lower input lag than the original hw 57:23 id software released theirs 20y ago as educational resource, but yea new for library system for sure
@@MrSapps You are right those input lags are unattainable with modern hardware, I have an usb kb with 1.3ms input lag suppose I have a monitor with 3ms gtg transition, I have ~5ms input lag, these are high and computer hardware's btw, average kbs even "gaming" (more like RGB) have ~25ms lag not to mention those shitty office monitors, that can sum up to 50ms input lag. While the original controller was probably interrupt based and the crt tvs lag were measured in microseconds, that combo was instant.
I have to mention that, as a kid, I played MSX games on the famicom. I only found out they were MSX games (and MSX itself existed) literal decades after that happened. I'm still trying to track down those cartridges. I'm not sure they exist anymore.
"I think [source code as an educational resource] is kind of a new concept". Surely Richard Stallman would get infuriated by that claim. Joking aside, he did say "for games, at least" which is true. Great presentation overall.
This gave me an idea of a game: arcade sim. You play a guy in an arcade and get to walk around playing the games, all the while you also interract with other people in the arcade getting into various situations. Seems like an interesting way of serving these classic experiences in a way worth buying.
This is very VERY interesting. Think about it. We cant even figure out how things were a FEW DECADES AGO. It is VERY good insight into just how... maybe ... wrong? Archeologists of 1000 year old things must be. When we cant even figure out how things were mere decades ago.... Its a great insight into how humans try to fill in the gaps and definitely is a good case study of just how humans may influence their interpretations on things that are gone. If theyre filling in so much on things from 1970s.... then wtf are we filling in for things in ancient egypt, mayans etc??? Very cool. This is super awesome and i hope we get more like this
You raise a very good point. I feel the saying "history is written by the victors" goes hand in hand with the creative interpretations which are applied to history. Control the narrative of the past, present and the future.
awesome, had no idea this collection had remapped controls so games like Ikari Warriors can be played like they were meant to be!! So many good arcade games from the old days that are just difficult to play in a way that feels natural enough to be worth it. Thinking of games like Assault and APB. Loved them in the arcade back in the day.
I feel like the Loop Lever translation onto a controller missed out on using shoulder triggers for the "rotary" movement. That would feel perfectly natural for L rotate left and R rotate right (especially if it's an analog trigger). No need for all actions being mapped to thumb buttons and 2 joy sticks and needing to use a claw grip or anything
It would be great if companies put this kind of effort into rereleasing old console games with special features and reinventions for original, clone and FPGA systems on cartridges
Speaking of emulators, someone much more competent than me should tackle the problem of virtual pet emulators. I was amazed to find out how difficult it was to find anything resembling that in 2020 still! My idea was that since each virtual pet probably had different CPU and hardware, it would be too difficult to produce an emulator for each version of each VPet, so the emulation community could produce a generic virtual pet simulator but with so many customization features that you could then just provide the configuration files for each version of each virtual pet which would be the equivalent of roms.
At least with them to play them most of the time you only need the rules and how the board and other cardboard pieces looked like. Everything else can now be 3D printed even if its not ideal...
Great talk, but I find it ironic that the SNK 40th Anniversary edition is only available in a few consoles, meaning that, when those consoles become obsolete, the collection itself will be in need of rescuing. Hopefully they'll eventually release it on PC (releasing through GOG would be rather beautiful)
What's funny is that they released it on Steam literally one day after you posted this. :) store.steampowered.com/app/865940/SNK_40th_ANNIVERSARY_COLLECTION/ It's not GOG like you hoped, but it's at least a PC release.
The other problem with the "legal" emulation offering is its quality. Why would I buy a game that is basically a rom and an emulator with a colorful frontend if it does the job worse that what I can acheive with just a bit of tinkering by picking my own emulator? Why would I buy these official mini-consoles running software emulators when there are independant FPGA based equivalents that are better in every way? They release these cheap mini consoles with preloaded games, but why don't they also release cartridges containing these games that will work on the original consoles? The legal emulation market today is just a quick cash grab, it's not about preservation or providing a high quality gaming experience. There are still way too many quick and dirty "remasters". Take the Final Fantasy rereleases on Steam for instance, you have to mod them in order to get the best audio because Square didn't bother working on that aspect. And as much as like titles like Sonic Mania, Freedom Planet or Shovel Knight that try to stay true to the 8/16 bits aesthetics I was disappointed when I tried to play these games on a 640*480 PC CRT monitor to enjoy their low res graphics at their best and discovered that they were only available in a 16:9 ratio. These games look better on CRTs because of their low resolution but at the same time they aren't fully compatible with these screens, so you have to play them on your modern LCD and "enjoy" either square pixels the size of a fist (Which is not a genuine retro feel, it's just a raw emulator feel. Games didn't look blocky like this) or use a dirty filter/shader that fails to replicate the picture produced by a crt. There's still a lot to do to make the legal offer appealing. I know that I may sound like some sort hardcore old school fundamentalist, but if you're not setting some quality standards retrogaming/emulation will remain a market only relying on nostalgia to make sales. If it's being sold, it has to be at the very minimum on par with the unofficial scene especially if the product relies on open source emulators.
The CRT shit _so much._ Pixel bleed FTFW. Scan gaps can burn in Hell, though. Plus, hardware filters introduce lag. Modern displays REALLY need multiprocessing to pull off those.
Well a lot of old school games sold in steam like the sega genesis collection or pretty much every DOS game, you can just go to the files, pick the rom and run it with whatever you want. Which I agree is a great option, maybe something that should be standard. Asking companies to release games in cartridges for all consoles is kind of asking movie studios to release movies on vhs... I mean some developers do it, but almost allways in small quantities as collectors items, and for good reason. Setting a plant to mass produce anything is expensive, and in case of original hardware the potential costumers are not in large numbers... very pationate but a minority nontheless. Modern costumers might even feel cheated if nintendo is selling cartridges but not modern NES to play them, and then even if they were to sell NES they wouldn't sell CRTs to play them. No one is making new CRTs. I agree the emulation market has a lot to work on. My biggest problem is that the majority of releases are in compillations... which means that if you only care for one or two games you have no option but to pay for things you don't want or not to play what you want. But I believe things are getting slowly better through steam and other services, even if Nintendo, which is the biggest player in the retro scene is unlikely to join
Nintendo: "Emulation is the greatest threat to video game publishing" Also Nintendo: *uses emulation to re-brand and resell SM64, Sunshine, Galaxy, and Skyward Sword on the Switch*
You do realize you now have the same hypocrisy right. You: emulation is what we need to preserve gaming history. Nintendo: ok begins to emulate games and re sell them. Also you: eww I would never buy an emulated game.
@@kylehalpern6695 when did I ever say that? I pre-ordered Mario 3D All-Stars lol. Nice try, but your "gotcha" doesn't apply to me in any way whatsoever. I buy re-releases and ports constantly. I've bought KH1.5+2.5 twice, both on PS3 and PS4, let alone the originals. I've paid for Final Fantasy IX more times than a sane person could reasonably conceive of doing. I have no problems whatsoever with playing emulated software, and I'm not sure where you got the notion that I do from this single interaction you've had with me lol
@@kylehalpern6695 oh, I see. You think that my indicating that Nintendo are hypocrites that I somehow have a problem with them preserving their legacy by re-releasing their titles onto newer hardware. LOL. What an absolutely shameful miscalculation on your part. I'm not faulting Nintendo for emulating. I'm faulting them for emulating after CALLING EMULATION THE GREATEST THREAT TO GAME PUBLISHING.
The rerelease of Skyward Sword got me to research texture packs and found TH-cam videos of a user who compared his versions of the games to the official Nintendo "remasters." I was so impressed that I went straight to his website and saw tons of different packs for almost every modern Zelda game. I'm like 30 hours into Twilight Princess for GameCube that's been widescreen hacked, 4x texture resolution, 16x anisotropic filtered, and fxaa enabled and am blown away with how good it looks. Kinda sad when your everyday person makes a product with higher quality and more passion without pay than the corporation responsible for it. Hope to one day see major companies invest a bit more into the process of modernizing and preserving games. I would definitely be more inclined to purchase said product.
@@micksterminator3 100% agree. It's a real shame that people have to go to such lengths as "breaking laws" by modding to provide the community with quality versions of beloved titles. It's not preventing me from buying every last lackluster re-release Nintendo pushes out, because I'm a console gamer and am extremely reluctant to jailbreak my Switch and risk bricking it, but I'd definitely prefer them to provide quality content.
The games industry isn't more open to emulation any more than they were. Once they realized there was market for retro games they jumped on it. But they will attack emulation if they can't profit off it. How many games are lost to time because of this? How many more games could be lost to time?
It's not just the games industry. With the switch to predominantly ebooks, those come with licenses that effectively "destroy" the copy after they've been lent out by libraries a certain number of times. If everyone follows the IP laws, we'll end up with an actual Dark Ages due to a large portion of late 20th and early 21st century knowledge just being missing, libraries mainly exist to preserve knowledge, and then to proliferate it.
@@n8pls543 DRM certainly is a good tool to destroy culture. Personally I avoid it like the plague. I do not mind paying for stuff, but after I bought it I want to actually own it. If I need permission from the seller to use it and to keep it, and if the seller can erease it or edit it whenever he wants, then it is not really mine. DRM is like buying a car but the seller gets to keep the keys so that you have to ask for his permission each time you want to drive and any day he might just drive away in "your" car and you will never see it again.
Now if we could get a 30A patch to get ST speeds to default to the one that's closest to arcade original :'( Capcom & DE pls, the setting is there, just patch it to be default.
Obviously there will always be some people that just want stuff for free, but imo if emulators or front ends like launchbox were licensed in some sort of manner and worked similar to a platform like steam (eg think retroarch replacing steam in this case) .. you pay a subscription and nintendo/sega whoever gets paid from that, or u must log in to the emulator and then download the games for $2-3 a pop(in the case of old NES and SNES games), then I think most people would use a service like this instead of downloading roms. I get there will be issues with expired licenses in the case of disney games marvel games etc etc.. but im sure if marvel and disney were benefitting financially, then its better than piracy, which i think will always exist if there isn't a legal alternative for playing classic retro games.
I think what we need is someone that could do with the videogame industry what Steve Jobs did to the music industry, that industry saw digital distribution as a pirate Dreamland but Jobs showed them (if not a bit by force) how to actually take advantage of that, make it profitable but also a way consumers instead will just go and buy songs than pirating them, the same could happen if we get a centralized emulation platform where you only have to buy the roms individually and for an affordable price so people in a consumer friendly platform and game publishers can forget about the fear of loss of revenue from ROM sites, but Nintendo says they're the devil and other's just follow their drum...
Problem with that is that it would make it too easy for companies to destroy all the games because no one would own those games. The preservation effort would depend on a few large companies who only care about profit, not about preservation. As soon as, for whatever reason, it becomes profitable for them to erease the collections, the collections would be gone. Game preservation would best be done by multiple individuals. But alas, copyright is long enough for games to be ereased from existence before they enter the public domain. Copyright is destroying culture. And to what end? To give content creators a motivation to create content? Would a monopoly for e.g. 10 years not be enough to do that? What good game is not profitable within 10 years but only gets profitable after 10 years? Personally I believe monopolies like copyright are not necessary at all (and IMO thousands of years of human history without copyright proves me right), but even if you think copyright is important, could you really make an appealing argument for a copyright duration of longer than 10 years? I think no one can. Games need to enter the public domain so that they can be preserved and used as inspiration for newer works. The public domain is our culture, not the private domain (unless you are willing to share illegally but preserving gaming culture in a reliable way ought to not be illegal IMO).
52:00; As cheap as backup memory is these days, it is baffling that publishers and developers do not do a better job of archiving their source code. You spend all that money and time developing these games and you won't spend the pittance it takes to keep them archived safely.
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RUBmYqs1jZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
Like it or not, the people who publishers refer to as "pirates" are some of the only people who care about preserving games
treos2 no offence mate, but have you actually met a Nintendo fan (outside of the incredibly toxic Twitter)? I am a Nintendo fan. My (online) friend circle is full of Nintendo fans. We all hate the shit Nintendo keeps pulling on roms and emulators; they should probably know I only bought 3D Pokemon cos I was able to emulate the older DS titles; likewise with BotW, I emulated Majoras Mask which got me into the series. Not to mention Metroid, Mario, and all the other amazing titles they’ve put out.
To summarise: Nintendo is amazing (mostly) when it comes to producing high quality, immersive games. What they are horrible at preserving those high quality games.
@treos2 There's nothing really inherently wrong i think with the original publishers reselling emulations of their games. I mean, it is "their" games. I definitely think its cheap and scummy (i mean, they're just doing it to get a quick buck), but its within their right i guess. I do think its stupid though that these game console publishers try to treat emulations and ROMs as taboo, especially if its not even really affecting the current profits of a company.
What harm is there in me playing Melee or Mother 3 on an emulator using an "illegally" obtained ROM when both games have been out of circulation for about 15-20 years now? There needs to be some reforms in the legality of ROMs obtained through the internet (especially for older games, i can at least understand companies not wanting people to emulate their current games since that's actual piracy in the sense that its going to hurt their profit).
At least in the case of Sony going after Bleem! during the late '90s - early 2000s, they had SOME warrant for doing so since game publishers could go through Bleem! to publish their games rather than having to pay licensing fees to Sony (which is how the Playstation brand made a lot of their money back then). But going after emulation in the form it exists in nowadays (ie: free emulation software whose target demographic is mostly retro gamers) is just fucking stupid. Its not like those emulators are stopping people from buying your current games.
@treos2 It seems your problem doesn't lie with Nintendo, or zealous fans, but with current copyright law itself.
@treos2 You need to differentiate.
Emulation is legal, no matter how hard Nintendo was trying to tell people otherwise.
Downloading rom files on the other hand is illegal, if the source doesn't own the copyright or has a license for distribution.
The fact that Nintendo are among the very few who actually enforce their copyright on "old" titles, even those that haven't been commercially available for decades, might put them in a morally ambiguous (ymmv) position, nevertheless legally they have every right to do so.
Can't blame them for following the law, can you? Outdated analogue age copyright law is the actual problem.
This statement is not completely wrong. If you think about how Konami lost Silent Hill 2 and 3's final builds.
I'm more worried about the preservation of NEW games than old ones, because of the online-only requirement which is increasingly prevalent. Game companies can pull the plug on their games any time they want and even if you've BOUGHT THE GAME, you'll be left with nothing. But I think fighting this practice requires less Indiana Jones and more Ace Attorney.
Eh, even PT can't be deleted off of a console. Once you have the data, if you archive it it's permanently there. As long as you archive the data you have, if that's truly your goal, you'll have it. And as long as that data exists, emulation will eventually catch up and allow it to re-proliferate
I think it depends on the game... for games that rely entirely on online multiplayer, you can preserve them, even set servers for them... But if people don't play them like they used too it might be pointless to even try... I think you should be able to set up a match between friends for any games, but for mmos or those types of games Frank made a comment in the previous conference that maybe those game could be preserved more like baseball games, like individual historical events that you can learn all about them even if you can't necessarily experience them.
@@user-mp4xd4tn8l The award for the shittiest take of all time goes to you!
@@user-mp4xd4tn8l so we shouldn't preserve E.T because its bad?
Yeah, there are so many dead online games were the only way of getting a glimpse of them is through a few TH-cam Videos. Hawken(PC) & Loadout were some games I have known myself. Tabula Rasa is something I only heard of, and there are many more that will be lost in time...
The problem with a panel like this is, the audience isnt the audience they need. It's the CEOs and the suits that think people need to pay for Mario Bros for the 10th time.
The moment you realize that everyone is secretly a Todd Howard.
@@four-en-tee Everyone shall have 10 copies of Skyrim. I am surprised he has not tried to sell Skyrim on a smart fridge yet.
@@michaelfenell3602 and it probably won't be the one that is fan patched. Please Bethesda, just pull a Ubisoft and publish an improvement patch that is actually a stolen fan patch made by modders/fans. I can't stand you releasing Skyrim yet again in it's still broken official revision.
It wouldn't make a difference even if he was speaking at a game marketer's conference. They don't care. They know the pro's and con's of emulation, they know that it can rescue the history and legacy of their companies. The money is more important than the legacy to them.
@@michaelfenell3602 You'll have to play from the inside of the fridge to get the true experience.
With any game older than 10 years, the question has ceased to be "How can I get someone to pay for this?" and started to be, "How can I get someone to discover this?"
Emulation didn't become popular because people couldn't figure out where to insert their credit card numbers for AAA product; it became popular because people who care about hardware, code, and history amassed the largest free library of video games to date, and it gave the poor, the nostalgic, and the curious a space to discover.
Unfortunately I think the question for most big publishers now days seems to be "how do I stop our 10+ year old games from stealing attention from our much more monetizable modern games"
A big part of classic gaming is price. Some of the popular games can cost hundreds of dollars, if you can even find a working copy. If someone wanted to charge me $60 for FF6, for the SNES, I would pay it. I'm not paying over a $100 on ebay for something that might not even work when I get it.
@@justsomenerd8925 A big part of classic *hardware* is the price. The SNES is pushing 30, so yes, if you want to run a game that didn't sell well in 1992 on an original machine with an original cartridge, it might cost you a pretty penny.
Similarly, if I want to own a first edition of Les Miserables, it's not going to be cheap.....but if I just want to READ Les Miserables, I can go to my local library and check it out for free - because the joy of reading a classic shouldn't be limited to those who can afford the original version.
@@exquisitecorpse4917 I'll just pirate it. Also, first edition is a one off anyway. You can make infinite carts if you have the original file.
I mean, you can't say people wanting to play older games for free wasn't a factor in the success of emulation.
I just think its retarded for console publishers to go after emulation. Its not like it's really hurting their profit margins. Like, 95% of people who use emulation are doing so to play older games. And besides, some people want to still own those games for their current-gen consoles regardless of if they already have it on another platform. Anyone who has ever bought over 3-4 copies of Skyrim across multiple platforms can attest to this.
In France the legal deposit, which is the obligation to submit copies of publications to a public repository, applies to video games. You can send your materials to the BnF (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
they wouldn't make it available to the public, and they certainly wouldn't code and fix broken old games or create emulators for them... this takes time and effort, so money... but yeah, for "history's" sake sure...
@@William-Morey-Baker As a matter of fact, they do make it avalaible to the public and they do use emulators for that. I am not sure for fixing broken games but they hire engineers to bypass DRM security, so I guess those would also be able to fix games
@@Ilhuin dang, well, good on em'... If true that's an impressive dedication to preservation
What about those night trapish adult games for the 3do. ? Remeber seeing those.
@@Kenbomp those will be preserved too
One other example of things being lost: Kingdom Hearts.
The original Kingdom Hearts 1 source code. It doesn't exist anymore.
Apparently after Square finished the game and made their final compiled versions, the source code was lost at some point. It's not the only game of theirs either, but it's the one I remember because there's an HD remake.
Normally HD versions are a matter of going into the code and making a few tweaks and including HD textures and a few other such things - adding some polish, relatively easy stuff. But to do that you need the source code. The guys who did the HD remake of it only had the compiled game to work with. Everything had to be reverse engineered. Lots of that is fairly easy - all the audio, all the textures, and so on, are there in the compiled version, you just need to find them. It's work, but relatively easy. Game code, though....you've lost all the documentation since compilers ignore comments. You've lost all the exact values of things like how gravity was modeled for the platforming (which, as you may have noticed, varies substantially more in games than seems reasonable from a physics perspective), how the encounters are set up, how the AI works....that's all just...sitting there in machine language being unintelligible.
I forget if they made best guesses at those and just compared their version to the original game until it matched the feel, or if they managed to decompile the code, but either way, that game took so much more work than it should have. (And, as someone who played it and got all the nostalgia feels from playing it, they did a damned good job of it)
@Sonic Hedgehog They probably did that too, but unless those devs kept private copies of their work, they probably wouldn't remember much in the way of specifics. They could probably name at least some of the AI algorithms they used and such, but to get a passable duplicate, you need to get the details right.
Consider the last time you were out driving (or otherwise out and about. Do you remember the colour of every car you had to take note of in order to avoid a collision? You probably remember the jackass who cut you off and immediately slammed on the brakes, but how about all those normal cars that just were taking up space in a lane you wanted to use, or were in front of or behind you? Probably not. This is like that, bu trying to remember a thing from over a decade ago.
@Sonic Hedgehog As rashkavar was saying, those programmers would only be useful if they help with reverse engineering the game, unless they happen to have the source code lying around somewhere
Same deal with Final Fantasy VIII. They had the source for VII and IX if I remember correctly, but had to reverse engineer and remake VIII.
@@chainswordcs Yeah, it was an issue for several remakes, from what I've heard. It's just that KH1 was the only one I could remember from the list. Probably because it's the one with fairly high end 3D models and complex spaces and platforming and active battle mechanics.
FF8, honestly you could get most of the technical specs from just doing a deep dive on GameFAQs. The amount of technical documentation that exists for that game is remarkable.
I must say, though, I do appreciate the fact that they kept the same janky old event RNG system that starts at the same point and spits out 100% predictable results based on how you advance it. (If you've not seen it, there's a GDQ run of FF8 that has a delightfully cool bit at the end of Disk 1 where they've worked out where they are in the RNG to predict a randomized code the game is going to give them and as they progress to that point the commentary is just eerily predicting all the randomized NPCs actions on each screen they pass through.)
@@chainswordcs I don't think it was 8, I believe what you may be thinking of is them losing the uncompressed background images for 9 and releasing it with terrible compressed backgrounds, and later using AI to upscale them
I would buy just the ROM. There are plenty of emulators out there and they will only get better with time. Just sell me the ROM legitimately so I can support its publisher if nothing else.
some people like sega do that with thier games on steam. others just make hd version which updates the art work but also makes it so people that would have bought it not be able to run it so they will just use an emulator anyways.
capcom's ace attoenry trilogy is a recent example of the latter.
Yeah I agree selling just the rom for cheap should be even a standard option, no different from buying a digital copy of any movie in whatever service you prefer. Just let me buy the rom or even rent the rom, provide me with an open source emulator or give me the option to use my own.
I'm not sure how emulators became demonized as game companies who make consoles generally make more profit from the games that are sold for them. If the attach rate of video games to consoles is high, it shouldn't matter much that the console is a physical or virtual manifestation. Or whether or not the console is created from a third party.
I'm also cool with this solution.
yeah they don't want to do that though, it becomes harder to re-sell you the same old games 5 times over multiple platforms.
But you're right that it should be standard.
I love that guy ! Beyond being a historian of video games, he should start describing himself as a curator-restorer of video games, the same way that people actually take a beautiful painting and restore it with all the historical knowledge that they have of the pigments that were used at the time, the intent of the artist, the multiple layers of paint with sometimes widely different versions underneath the final painting, and knowing the effect that time and light has had on the painting to undo that effect. There is a strong parallel to be made here I believe.
This is why it's completely morally OK to pirate any and all Nintendo games. If they had their way, they'd gladly see all other retro games lost forever just so they could resell you SMB or A Link to the Past for the 20th time.
Exactly. It's not like you're ripping off an indie dev struggling to get noticed on steam, these are pieces of history being drip-fed for us to buy multiple times. If anything we're getting ripped off.
It's morally OK to pirate any game as long as said game has sold enough to at the very least "pay itself"
If a game already generated enough profit they aren't losing anything to piracy, they're just not getting money, that's it.
Look at RE4 or Skyrim, at this point those games have made much, MUCH more money than it was invested on them.
Piracy is not like stealing, when you steal from someone, that someone LOST a product, it's one less product they can sell, it's one more product they have to replace if they wanna sell it, and it will cost them money to replace it, when downloading a game doesn't remove a copy of said game from the stores catalogues.
So fuck it, you should still pay for the games you play if you can, but if you can't, that's not a serious problem really, provided the publisbers/devs made that money back, you're taking as much money away from them as you would if you just decided not to play the gsme at all...
@@rickydo6572 you nailed it. There's a morality to it, I have torrented SOOOOOO many albums from 1900-2015 but I purchase new albums to support musicians that aren't filthy rich. I can't go buy the original fallouts and tactics, don't have a ps2 or GameCube and can't afford wind waker but I'll be damned if I haven't enjoyed emulating it and finally experiencing it! Nintendo doesn't make a penny off the used switch or skyward sword I bought on the Wii anyway, but we should honestly all support them and Sony and pirate from Microsoft for them attempting to monopolize the industry.
@@danielp7394 You can absolutely buy the original fallouts and tactics and play them on pc.
You got a point there
No mater what companies say Intellectual property doesn't help creators it just stops us saving things and stifles creativity as creatives often get their start copying and tweaking stuff.
Also this talk is amazing and it's really inspiring to see such a passionate and thoughtful game historian
@GamingTV My heart is bleeding for the poor, oppressed publishers missing out on extracted profit. Intellectual property is a scam.
@GamingTV I think my view on this is influenced by my general distain for capitalism as a whole. I'm of the opinion that the competition and encouragement of accumulation that comes with capitalism just makes things worse, sure we "get" nice things from capitalism like games and iPhones etc but even in a capitalist system we wouldn't get them without collaboration and poorly rewarded hard work of academics and enthusiasts and we'd probably have more of them without capital gating access to creation. I think that without the burden of capital accumulation and the increased inequality that comes with it creators would be more free to collaborate and create.
@GamingTV I do.
@GamingTV Companies don't make games; they hire creative people to do all the real work and then say "I paid all these people 20 years ago, so it's MINE!" It's like your parents taking all the money you make in adulthood because they paid for your food back in the day, making you their intellectual property, so you can have a 2% cut of your salary after they take their share. It's only fair, you wouldn't exist without them.
Everyone should listen to this man.
Full Stop.
What makes the mention of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap particularly interesting, is that according to a dev interview, the game is implemented with emulation:
A heavily customized Master System emulator (based on Meka) running a heavily patched Wonder Boy III ROM.
Source?
It's hard to find the actual article now, but I did find a Reddit comment by Sebastien Ronsse on the Nintendo Switch reddit.
Unfortunately TH-cam shadow-deletes any comment that contains a link.
The thread was called "We are Lizardcube & DotEmu, developers of "Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap". Ask Us Anything!"
@@stanzacosmi They actually mention a Z80 core in the credits.
Mr Cifaldi's speech is once again of great quality. Top notch content. Thanks for sharing.
I think the "easiest" thing that developers can do to old games that pirates will never have or not in great quality is online connectivity. Like recording your times and uploading them to official speedrun leaderboards online, maybe you can share easily your results online, accessible online multiplayer to games that were only coop, matchmaking. And accessible is really they key, I know a lot of communities have maintained fan servers online and added these features, but only the most hardcore know all this stuff and know how to set it up.
When I found out that I could play online coop for halo 1 and 2 with my brother outside of the country like we used to do as kids, that was an instant buy for the master cief collection. Even just making these games work with your friend list is awesome, thats exactly what steam did.
I hate the argument that no one can't beat illegal piracy or that the only way is to persecute people that only want to play old games in convenient ways
Pirates do that. All the old COD games can be played online on crack servers like Plutonium, REKT, X Labs, etc. And with Acti still wanting 20-50 dollars for these old games just to play with hackers on servers that are ill maintained, there is basically no reason NOT to play the cracks.
You can do this already
slippi for super smash brothers melee :) and fightcade for loads of other fighting games
it's absolutely not feasible for every game or every player but it's there and it's so cool that it exists
but project cartographer and halo custom edition exist. sure port fowarding is a pain in the ass, but its still there for you. also not to mention wiimmfi, dolphin netplay, crack servers for cod, slippi, fightcade2, eldewrito, myneighborsushicat and coldsteel for psp games, xlinkkai, fivem, etc. all doing the work that the bigwigs should of or genuinely cant. sailor moon s, a cult classic fg where everything is batshit insane, is from a company that died and is never getting a rerelease because of it. hell mvc2 will probably not get rereleased because of all of the legal hoops they have to go through because of sony and the fantastic four and all that. fightcade hosts these games because they would be local only if it werent for them
That's always been the big killer. Valve is the best example of how to do this successfully and thus converting would-be pirates into paying customers for both themselves and Sega. Nintendo made a killing selling Super Mario Bros on the eShop for 3 generations in a row at $5 each time, imagine what they'd make if they sold it as ROMs on PC at that price? You know, the only device in as much as half of all homes worldwide? It wouldn't even be particularly difficult for them either. Just a combination store front and secure library manager to keep encrypted ROMs in.
When the player wants to play a game, they pick it and a "Nintendo Approved" community made emulator, it decrypts the ROM to RAM, starts the emulator, and away we go. Since most computers these days have at least 8GB of RAM, you could get away with keeping entire dual layer Gamecube ISOs in RAM and still have far more free memory than the emulator could ever need.
This is the coolest guy ever. The gaming industry needs more people who think like this, I felt so reassured through the whole thing, especially when he talk about game collections or remasters that give you a worse experience than an emulator, and how many times they're lost opportunities to fix stuff in those games. I wish Capcom would've given them the rest of the MegaMan collections, the X collection especially could've used this level of attention to detail, and it could've been a great time to fix the broken mess that is Megaman X6
Yeah, it's heartening to know there are people out there that have a passion for preserving older games, and remaining as faithful to the original hardware as possible when re-releasing them.
I'm so glad he came back with another talk on this subject. I really want to get into this kind of work.
Came here from KingK's video on Mario 3D All Stars.
Why? What did this KingK say about it?
and? you came here on a guy talking about emulation from the channel of a zoomer?
@@Zontar82
What's your problem?
Are people not allowed to say why directed them here anymore?
Same
For everyone that believes gathering physical copies of rare titles and letting it sit on a self is the "be all, end all" for preservation.
I hate to break it to you, but...
A large portion of collections, even sealed, never opened, never used copies will eventually cease functioning due to data rot/disc rot.
(Which BTW, has become a massive problem for Laserdisc collectors)
Nothing lasts forever. Unfortunately in this case. Father Time has caught up as we are seeing many physical media-optical discs for the most part succumb to disc rot as the adhesive glue holding back the data portion just below the label side deteriorates and oxidizes (rots out) the data tracks. Cartridge games might last a wee-bit longer but will suffer the same fate as bit rot goes. It's only a matter of time.
As we are approaching the 15, 20, 30,even 40 year mark for many cartridges, floppies, and optical discs. Many have already been rendered useless. Look at how many 1970s/1980s floppies, SEGA CD/Saturn, PC Engine and even GameCube discs have "rotted out" even in the best optimal conditions just to name a few.
At this point...
The only true preservation method is emulation and uploading those games on the internet to archive before it's lost forever.
I have never had any cartridge game fail on me except a copy of Sonic for Genesis. Which was probably due to the previous owner mishandling the contacts. I've also only had one LaserDisc with noticeable disc-rot and it's from the first year of production due to crappy glue.
So how was the 100-year figure born? The general life of plastic?
Important talk, important work, thank you for both! It's sad how much has already been lost for good. I'd be more than happy to pay for all my past favourites, if they came in a format which remained playable through the years, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. Games are not perishable goods by nature and should not be sold as such. If I've bought it once, it's mine to play indefinitely. Porting old games to new platforms won't make me buy them again, I'll just keep playing them on the old ones till they break, and then they'll become forever lost for me too.
One of my favourite presentations going through a ton of these right now, clearly very passionate about conserving our history and super charismatic, that ''I'm not a cop'' was perfect.
I appreciate the note about the importance of the old console ports of arcade games. For example, if we ever get a retro TMNT game collection, I want the two arcade games, their NES and SNES ports, plus TMNT 1 and 3. Hell, add Hyperstone Heist and all the versions of Tournament Fighters.
If you wanna go beyond preservation, make a “complete” version of Tournament Fighters with all the characters.
Maybe the 2003 series games too, and Manhattan Missions.
Damn this comment aged like wine
@@pedrodominguez8553 I’m so glad it did. Still hoping for an “Ultimate” version of Tournament Fighters though
I still think there's no good justification for recent compilations to offer so much less content than the PS2-era ones. You used to get 20-30 games, not a tiny handful.
I'm so glad to hear other people with this mindset. This is such a fascinating artform and industry and arcade games are such an important part of it. I love the work people put in to these emulators and collections. The idea of these definitive versions of games he talked about is just awesome as well. Great presentation!
Nintendo only released Starfox 2 AFTER, and a long time after, 'pirates' had taken it, dumped it, released it to the world, translated it for English and other audiences and the emulation world had run it into the ground with all kinds of upgrades.
Let's not at like Nintendo were doing anyone a favour here. The horse had bolted years previously.
The SNK Anniversary thing sounds awesome, I would love to see things like that for other studios.
Ah yes; Home Alone, starring Tim Allen.
"Kevin, we're going on vacation and leaving you home alone"
"aeuuughhhh???"
@@clipCommander101 it's tool time!
27:55 Oh!! That's Billy Butcher
What a damn cool video. I didn't think I'd enjoy this as much as I did. Good job Digital Eclipse, M2 and all the retro rescuers out there, you are amazing.
I came here from the original talk from a few years back and am loving this one. GDC always has great content but this is so interesting and he's such a great speaker.
To add a personal example of game preservation and emulation, I wanted to play Symphony of the Night and the only option was to buy it on PS4, but that version was inferior, so I stuck with PSX. Same with Rondo of Blood. I'd love to buy them properly, but the currently released versions are inferior to simply emulating them.
Still waiting on SNES and GBA titles to come to Switch so I can officially play all the Metroid titles, too!
29:43 I was already deeply taken by this talk, but at this moment, I knew I was in love.
Great talk. I love to see speakers who are genuinely passionate about their field.
Frank is one my heroes, what he does and continues to do for the gaming industry is immensurable. Really appreciate his talks in GDC :)
Here's Frank's previous talk at GDC 2016: th-cam.com/video/HLWY7fCXUwE/w-d-xo.html
"It's Just Emulation" - The Challenge of Selling Old Games
This has been enlightening, I had no idea of all these ways the enthusiast community has been reclaiming the past
Thank you for what you guys are doing! Keep up the great work!
Now I'm really interested in playing the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection!
Honestly, I know it might be a bit "stupid" to hear.
But for example Metal Slug on GOG (the Linux version at least), comes with the whole MAME romset.
So naturally, I found it easier to buy the GOG version and pop that in, give a bit more than 5€ to the publisher and call it a day.
This is difficult, I can view photos of a piece of art and at least gather some of the details from it. Video Games are art but you have to play them and experience the mechanics which no photo/video/let's play will completely cover. Are let's plays really the best we're going to have 10-15 years in the future of the art?
28:50 holy fuck this feature just sold me into buying that collection
I couldn't actually find that paragraph on Nintendo's website, but the one I did find was honestly a lot worse. They have like an FAQ where they directly address the question of emulating games that aren't being distributed anywhere else, and their response is essentially "We don't care, it's still illegal and we're the only ones with with the right to distribute those games"
I was looking over a complete list of SNES roms and it just took my breath away to the point of looking up documentaries on who some of the people behind these incredible preservation efforts are. Wasn't able to find anything on the roms themselves, especially some of the rarest ones and how and when they got ripped, but a couple results on emulation at least. I've been taking this stuff for granted for too long, and now that I'm older, I really stop and appreciate the time, care and effort behind it all.
If I can't buy it, it's ripe and ok for aquiring
I'm happy to be one of the original pioneers of emulation on the PC back in the 90s up until now, most of the work I did with demo, zsKnight, and Martin Korths lead to a lot of the emulation you guys enjoy today. We spent a lot of time documenting the undocumented trying to optimise on a pentium II 266Mhz what I wouldn't give to get back to those days, it was such a fun time just going to high school and coming home to reverse engineer the SNES, GBA NEO GEO
CRT emulation in shaders is getting pretty good. The only real issue is our HD screens are barely enough to get the effect to a spot that it begins to work.
4k is just starting to become convincing.
8k is probably the end of the road for the raw resolution push, but will it be enough?
Now when I get back into game development I want to submit large chunks of my work and code to them.
PC games using early DirectX versions are unsupported. Having the originals is useless.
I have actually participated in this talk and I am thankful that I got to ask the question about Eric "ShouTime" Chung, the hardcore arcade board preservationist and collector in addition to being founder and CEO of Exa Arcadia, the new upcoming platform. The decision to go with physical cartridges like Neo Geo helps extends the life of video games in physical format, and they are completely playable offline.
As a long-time SNK fan I of source bought the 40th anniversary collection as soon as I could - please do it too so they can dump and patch in the Micon Block. It's so weird that the founding block of SNK's game-making career is not available...
This is why I still keep a nice fat folder of GBA roms on my pc. Grew up with those games. And seeing as how Nintendo gladly throws decades of gaming history away while burning down any website that tries to preserve it.. I’m more than happy to keep and expand my “illegal” collection.
I can't believe this video and the other one 3 years ago doesn't have half a million views AT LEAST. Amazing work, really just amazing!!!
It's kind funny. he showed seiken densetsu 3 in his presentation and about 1 yearl later a full remake of the game was released xD
I am so proud of having used early builds of MAME to play metal slug, never knew it was so important
14:31 yup, there's no turning back.. I started out in 2012, never looked back.
It is rather ironic that _pirates_ **preserved games** by removing the copy protection!
The Holy Grail of classic games:
Tim Allen's Home Alone
On the topic of the last question and remixes of games, I'm dying for a real definitive version of Persona 3. Persona 3 FES+ I believe has extended cutscenes and some added content, Persona 3 Portable has a female protag route to play but doesn't have the FES+ features and a much worse overworld. Don't get me wrong, if they remade P3 with a modern engine, that'd be awesome, but I would be more than content with a modern FES+/Portable all in one definitive experience.
As far as emulating fan-localized content that has never been localized before, I'm looking forward to playing the Mother 3 localized rom, I wish there was something like that for the Ryu Ga Gotoku Kenzan and Ishin games. I've been loving the Yakuza games and would love to experience the samurai counterpart to those games
Another example would be an HSFA that includes the Alpha 3 Upper/Double Upper/Max newcomers (preferably redrawn in CPS2 style) as well, plus maybe the ability to select any version even for characters who didn’t have those versions.
20:00 I wonder if he knows about "run-ahead", sw emulation can have lower input lag than the original hw
57:23 id software released theirs 20y ago as educational resource, but yea new for library system for sure
how can it have lower input lag when the crt can respond halfway through a frame?
@@MrSapps You are right those input lags are unattainable with modern hardware, I have an usb kb with 1.3ms input lag suppose I have a monitor with 3ms gtg transition, I have ~5ms input lag, these are high and computer hardware's btw, average kbs even "gaming" (more like RGB) have ~25ms lag not to mention those shitty office monitors, that can sum up to 50ms input lag.
While the original controller was probably interrupt based and the crt tvs lag were measured in microseconds, that combo was instant.
I want another update on this topic
Really interesting subject matter! More people need to know ’bout this.
I have to mention that, as a kid, I played MSX games on the famicom. I only found out they were MSX games (and MSX itself existed) literal decades after that happened. I'm still trying to track down those cartridges. I'm not sure they exist anymore.
"I think [source code as an educational resource] is kind of a new concept". Surely Richard Stallman would get infuriated by that claim. Joking aside, he did say "for games, at least" which is true.
Great presentation overall.
Frank Cifaldi is a goddamn rockstar and is doing God's work.
This gave me an idea of a game: arcade sim. You play a guy in an arcade and get to walk around playing the games, all the while you also interract with other people in the arcade getting into various situations. Seems like an interesting way of serving these classic experiences in a way worth buying.
sounds like a solid VR pitch tbh
I look forward to MVC2 from you guys :D!
Is this confirmed?
This is very VERY interesting. Think about it. We cant even figure out how things were a FEW DECADES AGO. It is VERY good insight into just how... maybe ... wrong? Archeologists of 1000 year old things must be. When we cant even figure out how things were mere decades ago.... Its a great insight into how humans try to fill in the gaps and definitely is a good case study of just how humans may influence their interpretations on things that are gone. If theyre filling in so much on things from 1970s.... then wtf are we filling in for things in ancient egypt, mayans etc???
Very cool. This is super awesome and i hope we get more like this
You raise a very good point. I feel the saying "history is written by the victors" goes hand in hand with the creative interpretations which are applied to history. Control the narrative of the past, present and the future.
awesome, had no idea this collection had remapped controls so games like Ikari Warriors can be played like they were meant to be!! So many good arcade games from the old days that are just difficult to play in a way that feels natural enough to be worth it. Thinking of games like Assault and APB. Loved them in the arcade back in the day.
Didn't M2 cut their teeth porting Tengen's "Gauntlet" to the Genesis way back when?
Another great talk. Thanks, Frank!
Great talk!
I feel like the Loop Lever translation onto a controller missed out on using shoulder triggers for the "rotary" movement. That would feel perfectly natural for L rotate left and R rotate right (especially if it's an analog trigger). No need for all actions being mapped to thumb buttons and 2 joy sticks and needing to use a claw grip or anything
Thank you for this GDC Talk and I hope in 3 years time that the industry is better off.
Sorry to disappoint you.
@@dr.c2195 bruh
PC games from 1995 to 1999 have severe compatibility issues. An emulator is needed.
FINALLY thank you GDC for confronting this
You do great work, Digital Eclipse!
I can't imagine making a whole video game and it then finding out it was just gone forever. I'd be so upset.
It would be great if companies put this kind of effort into rereleasing old console games with special features and reinventions for original, clone and FPGA systems on cartridges
the watch feature is inspired on SNK collection
Speaking of emulators, someone much more competent than me should tackle the problem of virtual pet emulators. I was amazed to find out how difficult it was to find anything resembling that in 2020 still!
My idea was that since each virtual pet probably had different CPU and hardware, it would be too difficult to produce an emulator for each version of each VPet, so the emulation community could produce a generic virtual pet simulator but with so many customization features that you could then just provide the configuration files for each version of each virtual pet which would be the equivalent of roms.
I bet there are a lot of physical/tabletop games that are soon going to be lost as well
At least with them to play them most of the time you only need the rules and how the board and other cardboard pieces looked like. Everything else can now be 3D printed even if its not ideal...
This is amazing! I want this collection even though I'm not an SNK fan. And I wish that you got Rollchan...
Great talk, but I find it ironic that the SNK 40th Anniversary edition is only available in a few consoles, meaning that, when those consoles become obsolete, the collection itself will be in need of rescuing. Hopefully they'll eventually release it on PC (releasing through GOG would be rather beautiful)
What's funny is that they released it on Steam literally one day after you posted this. :)
store.steampowered.com/app/865940/SNK_40th_ANNIVERSARY_COLLECTION/
It's not GOG like you hoped, but it's at least a PC release.
if i purchased the game once i have the right to have it forever simple as that...
I really want to learn these programs but I don't know where to begin.
That Sega Ages Phantasy Star release on Switch is the definitive edition of that great game.
The other problem with the "legal" emulation offering is its quality. Why would I buy a game that is basically a rom and an emulator with a colorful frontend if it does the job worse that what I can acheive with just a bit of tinkering by picking my own emulator? Why would I buy these official mini-consoles running software emulators when there are independant FPGA based equivalents that are better in every way? They release these cheap mini consoles with preloaded games, but why don't they also release cartridges containing these games that will work on the original consoles? The legal emulation market today is just a quick cash grab, it's not about preservation or providing a high quality gaming experience.
There are still way too many quick and dirty "remasters". Take the Final Fantasy rereleases on Steam for instance, you have to mod them in order to get the best audio because Square didn't bother working on that aspect. And as much as like titles like Sonic Mania, Freedom Planet or Shovel Knight that try to stay true to the 8/16 bits aesthetics I was disappointed when I tried to play these games on a 640*480 PC CRT monitor to enjoy their low res graphics at their best and discovered that they were only available in a 16:9 ratio. These games look better on CRTs because of their low resolution but at the same time they aren't fully compatible with these screens, so you have to play them on your modern LCD and "enjoy" either square pixels the size of a fist (Which is not a genuine retro feel, it's just a raw emulator feel. Games didn't look blocky like this) or use a dirty filter/shader that fails to replicate the picture produced by a crt.
There's still a lot to do to make the legal offer appealing. I know that I may sound like some sort hardcore old school fundamentalist, but if you're not setting some quality standards retrogaming/emulation will remain a market only relying on nostalgia to make sales. If it's being sold, it has to be at the very minimum on par with the unofficial scene especially if the product relies on open source emulators.
The CRT shit _so much._ Pixel bleed FTFW. Scan gaps can burn in Hell, though. Plus, hardware filters introduce lag. Modern displays REALLY need multiprocessing to pull off those.
Well a lot of old school games sold in steam like the sega genesis collection or pretty much every DOS game, you can just go to the files, pick the rom and run it with whatever you want. Which I agree is a great option, maybe something that should be standard.
Asking companies to release games in cartridges for all consoles is kind of asking movie studios to release movies on vhs... I mean some developers do it, but almost allways in small quantities as collectors items, and for good reason. Setting a plant to mass produce anything is expensive, and in case of original hardware the potential costumers are not in large numbers... very pationate but a minority nontheless. Modern costumers might even feel cheated if nintendo is selling cartridges but not modern NES to play them, and then even if they were to sell NES they wouldn't sell CRTs to play them. No one is making new CRTs.
I agree the emulation market has a lot to work on. My biggest problem is that the majority of releases are in compillations... which means that if you only care for one or two games you have no option but to pay for things you don't want or not to play what you want.
But I believe things are getting slowly better through steam and other services, even if Nintendo, which is the biggest player in the retro scene is unlikely to join
Great speech.
Rest in peace author byou aka near
Nintendo: "Emulation is the greatest threat to video game publishing"
Also Nintendo: *uses emulation to re-brand and resell SM64, Sunshine, Galaxy, and Skyward Sword on the Switch*
You do realize you now have the same hypocrisy right.
You: emulation is what we need to preserve gaming history.
Nintendo: ok begins to emulate games and re sell them.
Also you: eww I would never buy an emulated game.
@@kylehalpern6695 when did I ever say that? I pre-ordered Mario 3D All-Stars lol. Nice try, but your "gotcha" doesn't apply to me in any way whatsoever. I buy re-releases and ports constantly. I've bought KH1.5+2.5 twice, both on PS3 and PS4, let alone the originals. I've paid for Final Fantasy IX more times than a sane person could reasonably conceive of doing. I have no problems whatsoever with playing emulated software, and I'm not sure where you got the notion that I do from this single interaction you've had with me lol
@@kylehalpern6695 oh, I see. You think that my indicating that Nintendo are hypocrites that I somehow have a problem with them preserving their legacy by re-releasing their titles onto newer hardware. LOL. What an absolutely shameful miscalculation on your part. I'm not faulting Nintendo for emulating. I'm faulting them for emulating after CALLING EMULATION THE GREATEST THREAT TO GAME PUBLISHING.
The rerelease of Skyward Sword got me to research texture packs and found TH-cam videos of a user who compared his versions of the games to the official Nintendo "remasters." I was so impressed that I went straight to his website and saw tons of different packs for almost every modern Zelda game. I'm like 30 hours into Twilight Princess for GameCube that's been widescreen hacked, 4x texture resolution, 16x anisotropic filtered, and fxaa enabled and am blown away with how good it looks. Kinda sad when your everyday person makes a product with higher quality and more passion without pay than the corporation responsible for it. Hope to one day see major companies invest a bit more into the process of modernizing and preserving games. I would definitely be more inclined to purchase said product.
@@micksterminator3 100% agree. It's a real shame that people have to go to such lengths as "breaking laws" by modding to provide the community with quality versions of beloved titles. It's not preventing me from buying every last lackluster re-release Nintendo pushes out, because I'm a console gamer and am extremely reluctant to jailbreak my Switch and risk bricking it, but I'd definitely prefer them to provide quality content.
The games industry isn't more open to emulation any more than they were. Once they realized there was market for retro games they jumped on it. But they will attack emulation if they can't profit off it. How many games are lost to time because of this? How many more games could be lost to time?
It's not just the games industry. With the switch to predominantly ebooks, those come with licenses that effectively "destroy" the copy after they've been lent out by libraries a certain number of times. If everyone follows the IP laws, we'll end up with an actual Dark Ages due to a large portion of late 20th and early 21st century knowledge just being missing, libraries mainly exist to preserve knowledge, and then to proliferate it.
@@n8pls543 DRM certainly is a good tool to destroy culture. Personally I avoid it like the plague. I do not mind paying for stuff, but after I bought it I want to actually own it. If I need permission from the seller to use it and to keep it, and if the seller can erease it or edit it whenever he wants, then it is not really mine.
DRM is like buying a car but the seller gets to keep the keys so that you have to ask for his permission each time you want to drive and any day he might just drive away in "your" car and you will never see it again.
Can anyone link to the GDC15 Steal From Work talk?
Does anyone know what game is on the thumbnail?
i love frank cifaldi
Now if we could get a 30A patch to get ST speeds to default to the one that's closest to arcade original :'( Capcom & DE pls, the setting is there, just patch it to be default.
Obviously there will always be some people that just want stuff for free, but imo if emulators or front ends like launchbox were licensed in some sort of manner and worked similar to a platform like steam (eg think retroarch replacing steam in this case) .. you pay a subscription and nintendo/sega whoever gets paid from that, or u must log in to the emulator and then download the games for $2-3 a pop(in the case of old NES and SNES games), then I think most people would use a service like this instead of downloading roms. I get there will be issues with expired licenses in the case of disney games marvel games etc etc.. but im sure if marvel and disney were benefitting financially, then its better than piracy, which i think will always exist if there isn't a legal alternative for playing classic retro games.
we need a stable long term data storage. Lazer etched quartz?
Does anybody know if the thumbnail is taken from a game or is it just a pixel-art work?
the day emuparadise took down all their roms saddened me.
Vimm's lair is carrying that torch now
@@robovinefilms1811 wow, i've never heard of it before. thanks for the info.
CD Romance is also a great source for ROMs and romhacks.
I think what we need is someone that could do with the videogame industry what Steve Jobs did to the music industry, that industry saw digital distribution as a pirate Dreamland but Jobs showed them (if not a bit by force) how to actually take advantage of that, make it profitable but also a way consumers instead will just go and buy songs than pirating them, the same could happen if we get a centralized emulation platform where you only have to buy the roms individually and for an affordable price so people in a consumer friendly platform and game publishers can forget about the fear of loss of revenue from ROM sites, but Nintendo says they're the devil and other's just follow their drum...
Problem with that is that it would make it too easy for companies to destroy all the games because no one would own those games. The preservation effort would depend on a few large companies who only care about profit, not about preservation. As soon as, for whatever reason, it becomes profitable for them to erease the collections, the collections would be gone.
Game preservation would best be done by multiple individuals. But alas, copyright is long enough for games to be ereased from existence before they enter the public domain. Copyright is destroying culture. And to what end? To give content creators a motivation to create content? Would a monopoly for e.g. 10 years not be enough to do that? What good game is not profitable within 10 years but only gets profitable after 10 years?
Personally I believe monopolies like copyright are not necessary at all (and IMO thousands of years of human history without copyright proves me right), but even if you think copyright is important, could you really make an appealing argument for a copyright duration of longer than 10 years? I think no one can. Games need to enter the public domain so that they can be preserved and used as inspiration for newer works. The public domain is our culture, not the private domain (unless you are willing to share illegally but preserving gaming culture in a reliable way ought to not be illegal IMO).
I just downloaded the entire Nintendo library piracy lives
Torrents, I assume?
52:00; As cheap as backup memory is these days, it is baffling that publishers and developers do not do a better job of archiving their source code. You spend all that money and time developing these games and you won't spend the pittance it takes to keep them archived safely.
Has anyone asked why they weren't approached for LC2?