Project Famicom Museum - The VRChat world that never was
A few years ago, I had the idea to develop a museum world in VRChat that was all about the Nintendo Famicom. This project was known as simply "Project Famicom Museum" though it was intended to have a different final name had it been finished.
Development officially began in mid-2023. While I was considered the "director" of the project, the actual development of the world itself was done by another user, said user was best known for their work on the Majora's Mask VRChat world at the time. Several other users also assisted in providing assets for the world as well.
So why a museum and doing it all around the Famicom? Well for starters, I was inspired by a VRChat museum world that was about Chinese internet memes. The world as you can guess, was in Chinese but even without the written context it was a fascinating world to explore. I wanted to try doing something like that but with my interest in a console you might be familiar with, just in a different perspective.
I'm gonna assume to those reading you are already familiar with this Nintendo console. In the west, it is often referred to as the "Japanese NES" but this console actually predates the NES by two whole years. The Family Computer (Famicom) was released in Japan in 1983 and was Nintendo's first console with interchangeable cartridges. Two years later, Nintendo of America redesigned and rebranded the console as the Nintendo Entertainment System and released it in 1985. Much has been told about the story of bringing the Famicom to America and the influence the NES had in the region, but what about the Famicom in Japan?
This curiosity and other factors would lead me into founding FamiWiki in March 2023. I wanted to expand my interests into doing a VRChat world about the Famicom, and I thought doing a museum felt like a good approach to the idea. I wanted to share the knowledge I had gained to a new audience that otherwise would have probably never been exposed to it.
Now let me drill into what was developed, I would estimate about 20% of the world was finished. Users would start on the bottom in a vertical hall. This hall would be an introduction to the subject with basic information and trivia before entering the main area in the center. On the bottom right side was the "credits room" where we planned to put all the credits for both the world and the sources we used for some of the assets that weren't created by our team. In the middle, users would be presented with 4 sections, each representing a slice of the historical timeline of the subject. Starting with the establishment of Nintendo as a company in 1889 all the way to after the Famicom was discontinued in 2003. At the end of the museum was a "gift shop" that we planned on decorating with various jokes and gags relating to the subject. One of which I created ahead of time and even shared publicly.
Outside of the museum building was actually a big open development area where various ideas for the museum were tested for use in the actual museum. Some things we managed to pull off included a demo of the Famicom 3D System working in VR, a functional Disk Writer kiosk, and a Famicom hooked up to a TV where by inserting a cartridge would play a video of that game. It was a lot of neat stuff that I wouldn't have been able to pull off without the help from this developer.
Then... things screeched to a halt on March 6, 2025 when the developer informed us that the Unity project file had been lost. They had lost several files from a corrupted hard drive which included this project. That meant if the team wanted to continue the project, we had to start from scratch. For reasons that I won't get into here, it was decided to quietly shelve the project. There was so much I think could have been done differently, especially from my end that might of resulted in the world being finished and uploaded, but I am past the 5 stages of grief by now and would rather start a new project instead.
I am still interested in doing a museum project in VRChat, though I don't think I am gonna try doing one about the Famicom again. I think I would rather put my energy into the subject fully into my wiki website instead, even if that means losing out on reaching out to a new audience. That said, there is another Nintendo related subject that in hindsight I should have focused on first. It's something that I am kind of shocked nobody else has tried doing in VRChat but I will go into that if any new developments happen.
How to update the firmware to the Open Source Cartridge Reader (OSCR)
I needed a way to post publicly on how to update the firmware to the Open Source Cartridge Reader (OSCR) for folks like myself that have the device but can't figure out what to do. I hope this gets embedded in search results so any poor souls who need to do this can get what they need. Below is an image that goes step by step in the process.
The following guide was written on November 2, 2025. Future updates to the software may result in certain steps in the process becoming outdated.
I presume folks who are reading this are familiar with Nintendo. You've probably learned something about the history of the company whether that's watching YouTube videos or reading into related topics in books or on wiki sites. These resources usually have the best intentions on informing users, but sometimes errors slip in the cracks and it can take quite a while for them to be addressed. Even when those errors are addressed, some resources continue to publish information with the same errors in-tact. This post will mainly be going over a few examples of Nintendo related trivia that you may have seen floating around one way or another.
❌Nintendo once operated love hotels
Let's get the most infamous one out of the way. The story goes that during the 1960's Nintendo's third president Hiroshi Yamauchi led the company to various business ventures. These included instant rice, a taxi service, and most important to this story: love hotels. This is probably the most famous story from this period of Nintendo's history and unfortunately it is an urban legend, not fact.
The story has been repeated many times and if you dig into where it came from, the earliest mention of it comes from the 1993 book Game Over by David Sheff. I won't drill too much into this book here but basically in recent years it has garnered a reputation for its poor sourcing and questionable claims. Video game historians these days consider Game Over to be a bad source but back when this book was relatively new, nobody questioned it! It was once praised for highlighting Nintendo history which is probably why this love hotel story spread.
But what about the instant rice and taxi services? Unlike the love hotels, we actually have evidence for those but it's not what it's cracked up to be. The taxi service was an investment Yamauchi made and Nintendo kind of got roped in as a result of said investment. The instant rice was a partnership between three different companies of which Nintendo was one of them. Nintendo would eventually get into toys and evolve into the video game company we know of today. (Source)
❌Power Punch II is a sequel to Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!
This accepted "fact" is well known to Punch-Out!! fans but lets address the elephant in the room. This is a third party game for the NES. Developed by Beam Software and published by American Softworks. So how in the world would a third party game be a sequel to a first party Nintendo game? That's because of one connection: Mike Tyson.
Let's quickly run through the early history before drilling into the alleged story. Punch-Out!! was originally an arcade game released in 1984. In 1987, Nintendo R&D3 was developing a Famicom adaptation of the boxing game which notably included future champ Mike Tyson. Nintendo had a three year licensing agreement to use his likeness in the game. It would later release that year for the Famicom and NES under the title Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. When the licensing agreement ran its course in 1990, Nintendo released a modified version under the title Punch-Out!! that replaced Mike Tyson with an original character called Mr. Dream.
Now onto Power Punch II, the story goes that Nintendo commissioned the game as a follow-up to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! but disowned it after Mike Tyson got into very hot water. Development was handed over to Beam Software and was later released without the likeness of Mike Tyson.
Some version of this story has been circulating around since the early 2000s but I want to focus on one particular resource that has spread this: English Wikipedia. The very first revision of the Power Punch II article features this story with no sources to back it up. Since then it has spread around with hardly anyone challenging the story or giving it thought. Even some of your favorite YouTubers have mentioned this story!
So what really happened? For one thing Nintendo had zero involvement this game outside of approving it for release. Remember that Nintendo lost the license to Mike Tyson in 1990. The game published by American Softworks was first shown off at CES 1991 under the title Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch which means they snagged a new license after Nintendo's expired. Presumably when Mike Tyson got into hot water before its release, Nintendo may have requested American Softworks to forgo the Mike Tyson license before approving its release, which would line up with Nintendo requesting changes in third party games before their release! The game would eventually release in June 1992.
As for Power Punch II, it's pretty obvious that it was trying to cash in on the success of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! with its similar gameplay. However just because another game shares similarities with an existing one doesn't make it a sequel. It's like saying A Kitten's Story is a sequel to Super Mario Bros. cause it shares similar gameplay, when that was also a cash in along with the many other Super Mario-like clones that came out afterwards!
But okay that might be an unfair comparison since this story's one connection with both boxing games is Mike Tyson's likeness and somewhere along the way it got misinterpreted as Nintendo being involved in the development of Power Punch II. As of the writing of this post, the English Wikipedia article for Power Punch II still claims Nintendo was involved! That site is generally good but examples like this is why you should never take it at face value. (Source)
❌Nintendo downloaded pirated ROM files for their Virtual Console line
The final story I want to share has been corrected many times but is still repeated even to this day. This is mainly due to Nintendo's reputation with ROM sites and their stance on unofficial emulation, and so this alleged story is used as a "gotcha" against Nintendo. Regardless on your stance, you should be hearing the facts first.
In 2016, preservationist and historian Frank Cifaldi gave a talk at GDC regarding the challenges of distributing older games. He briefly showcased two ROM files of Super Mario Bros. that came from different sources. One was downloaded from a ROM site while the other was ripped from the Wii Virtual Console release. Frank highlights the iNES header present in both files and mentions said header originated from unofficial software emulation in the late 1990s. In 2017, Eurogamer published an article that claimed Nintendo downloaded said ROM file of Super Mario Bros. from the internet and "sold it back to you".
Nintendo's stance on emulation has always been a rigid one. As far as the company is concerned, if you're downloading a…
Here's the problem, this claim comes from assuming why that iNES header is present in an official Nintendo re-release. The reality is that Nintendo actually worked with the developers Tomohiro Kawase and Hideaki Shimizu who had previous experience with iNES and thus their work made it into official Famicom and NES emulation which included those headers. I won't go into too much detail here and redirect you to this excellent write-up by LuigiBlood which touches on this topic. But the most important thing to note is that their work has been present since the Nintendo 64 days. (Source)
And that should about do it for my own write-up. I hope I did my best to inform on the corrected record. These are just a few examples of known Nintendo related stories that have known obvious errors in them when you dig into the details. Nobody is perfect, mistakes happen! The best course of action is making sure to set the record straight when you can and to not take trivia like this at face value.
An addendum to when was TETRIS originally created? (2025 edition)
Around 2022, I wrote a post regarding the supposed creation date of the original version of Tetris. Here's a quick recap for those who haven't read that or aren't caught up to speed on the situation. Long story short, the "official" story according to The Tetris Company is that the original version of Tetris for the Elektronika 60 was created on June 6, 1984. However prior to 2009, sources actually claimed the creation date was 1985. A forum discussion was created by user necrosaro and concluded that the claimed 1984 date was fabricated by The Tetris Company for an event in 2009 which just so happens to be when the claimed creation date was revised.
So what has changed 3 years after I made that post? Well for one thing the Wikipedia article for Tetris has since changed the creation date to 1985. They even feature this note to go along with it clarifying the situation.
"The Tetris Company celebrates Tetris's anniversary based on its apparent creation date on June 6, 1984, though various sources, including copyright records, indicate that the original version was completed in 1985."
The linked source for this note leads to a TimeExtension article that goes into detail regarding the situation. Since this article's publication, a lot more people are now aware of what's been going on. The article would be later updated with input from Henk Rogers and claims to be going by Alexey Pajitnov's recollection of events.
"We can only go by Alexey’s recollection about this. His recollection is that he first developed it on the Electronica 60 in 1984. It was a time when copyright notices were not a thing in the Soviet Union. The Electronica 60 was a "mini-computer" (copy of PDP 11). It was not used for much more than scientific research, so Tetris did not get very far.In 1985, according to his recollection, the IBM PC version came out. This version was widely copied behind the Iron Curtain. All of the rights were clarified in 1989 when I brought Arakawa and Lincoln to Moscow to lock down the console rights. What was formalized at that time was that Alexey give his rights in the game to the Computer Center for a period of ten years (1985-1995). I think the date 1985 came from this documentation."
So let's try breaking this down. Relying on a recollection of events is a bit flimsy within the realms of putting things on a timeline. Not to mention this conflicts with the email from Vadim Gerasimov who claims to have not worked on computers until September 1984, over 3 months after the claimed June 6, 1984 date!
"You are right. Pajitnov's version of Tetris's birthday is off by 1 year. Not sure why. I first visited the computer center and started working with computers in September 1984. So, the "official" June 6, 1984 birthday just ain't possible. I'm also not sure what exact competition did Tetris win in 85. I believe Pajitnov is the only source of this information. I have never heard about this competition from any other independent source. 3.12, by the way, is a fudged number. We didn't have accurate versioning or build numbers and just picked a plausible number for the final official version." (Source)
But lets put that aside since memory isn't strong enough evidence on its own. What about the copyright situation? This is likely in regards to how the Tetris copyright starts with 1985 which is still the case with new Tetris releases (Tetris Forever screenshot shown below).
Henk later mentions Alexey giving the Tetris rights away to the Computer Center for a period of ten years and speculates that's where the 1985 year date came from. I'm gonna go ahead and take his word on this one since I am not deeply familiar with how the copyright system works but I'd welcome others who are more experienced to dig into this aspect.
Moving on, odd detail I noticed is how the "IBM PC" version of Tetris is claimed to have been created in 1985. If you were to look up the release dates for it you'll notice it's actually claimed to be 1986!
What makes this even more interesting is the year on the title screen itself. You can see that it says right there 1986. There even exists a prototype version (as documented by The Cutting Room Floor) which also features the 1986 year date. To my knowledge there doesn't seem to be any version of the "IBM PC" game that has a 1985 year date on it. What's even more hilarious is how Tetris Forever also features this 1986 year date for this particular game so clearly there's some tomfoolery going on.
And that's basically it from Henk Rogers. He doesn't attempt to address what happened in 2009 nor the other evidence that has popped up in recent years. The Tetris Company continues to claim that Tetris was created on June 6, 1984 and it looks like they have no plans on revising that date. Despite that, the date has been corrected to 1985 elsewhere. I've already mentioned Wikipedia but other sites have also made the correction like MobyGames.
I do wonder how long The Tetris Company can keep up this fabrication given that as more people look into the history they're inevitably going to learn about this situation.
Hello! It's been a while since I've last posted to Tumblr, but rest assured I have not forgotten about this place. I just haven't had anything interesting to post that would fit here. But let's not dwell on my absence for long, cause I want to talk about a project I've been working on for over 2 years as of writing, FamiWiki.
What is FamiWiki?
FamiWiki (famiwiki.net) is a wiki site that primary covers the Famicom in a Japanese first context. You're probably already familiar what a wiki site already is if you've been on the internet for long enough. For those who don't know what "Famicom" is, it is an abbreviation of Family Computer, which is the name of a home video game console Nintendo released on July 15, 1983 in Japan. You'll likely be familiar with the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES which is a rebranding and redesigned version of the Famicom that released two years later outside of Japan. But why "Japanese first context"? Part of this has to do with primarily covering Japanese material but also it is what makes FamiWiki unique from all other English-based wiki sites on the internet as even when covering Japanese material, it is usually written with the assumption that the western perspective takes priority including things that have never officially released outside of the country.
Why FamiWiki?
I started getting into collecting Japanese video games in the 2020s. I not only got hooked on the "cheap" prices but also the opportunity to learn something completely new from the games I was importing. Something that has always rubbed me the wrong way is how collecting older video games tends to be done for the sake of nostalgia, which is something I never fully agreed with. Sure it's a factor at play and for some a very important one that got them into this hobby but that said, it shouldn't be seen as the only way people can get into this stuff. I got into older video games for the sake of learning about them and being able to sit back and play a relatively simple game compared to modern offerings is a nice bonus. It also helped that this in a way let me engaged with the past since I was born in 2002 and didn't get to experience what it was like back decades ago so older video games are in a way tools to allow me to experience what it was like back then to a certain degree.
Anyways as for why this site exists, long story short I got a bit fed up with how people were covering Japanese video games as it was almost always within the western perspective. That said however, my searching would lead me to discovering a relatively unknown YouTube channel at the time under the name RndStranger. At the time when I discovered their channel, they were still uploading daily videos covering Famicom cartridge software in the Famidaily web series. Needless to say, I have a lot of respect for his work because he gives a spotlight to a particular Japanese game for however many minutes and goes over the context, reviews, and reception all within a Japanese perspective. His videos really opened my eyes to how much we were missing out when not discussing or even mentioning these details elsewhere on the English internet which alongside a few other dominoes that fell, led me to the idea for a Famicom-based wiki site with a Japanese first perspective.
How is FamiWiki?
FamiWiki went online in March 2023. As of the time I am writing this, there are 1,712 content pages, 5,809 pages overall, 2,569 uploaded files, and a total of 25,708 page edits with a 4.43 edits per page average. The site is hosted by The OpenWiki Project who also hosts other wiki sites such as Fire Emblem Wiki, Hard Drop, and WiKirby to name a few.
Currently, FamiWiki has pages for every single commercially released Famicom cartridge software from 1983 to 1994. Now granted the vast majority of those pages are still blank, with a few that are properly covered. Here are a few examples of what to expect from polished software pages.
Gimmick!
Nuts & Milk
Super Mario Bros.
Speaking of which, one of the biggest accomplishments the wiki site has achieved is featuring what I believe to be the most accurate list of Famicom software on the English internet.
List of Family Computer software
English Wikipedia actually used to have its own list of "Famicom games" but then merged it into the "NES games" list. But even so, it seems that Wikipedia list doesn't account for the weird edge cases of certain software not technically being for Famicom. What do I mean by this? There are certain releases that came on smaller cartridges that would need to be plugged into an adapter cartridge which is what actually plugs into the console. So things like the Datach Joint ROM System library often gets mistakenly included when really it should be separate. What makes the FamiWiki list different is that we define what media type is covered. The main list comprises of software that was commercially released on 60-pin Famicom cartridges. There are certain releases that did release on 60-pin cartridges but not to stores so those do not count towards the main list. The same goes for prize cartridges as well. Currently, the count on FamiWiki is 1041 60-pin Famicom cartridge software. Eventually I'd like to get around to making a similarly detailed list for NES cartridge software.
"Wait, NES? I thought you were only covering the Famicom!"
Truth is, the scope for FamiWiki actually goes further than the Famicom. It's actually both the Famicom and Super Famicom, but a more accurate description would be 8-bit Nintendo and 16-bit Nintendo coverage from all regions, but with Japan being priority. It didn't feel right to not include the NES and SNES since having that coverage would provide context for the Famicom and Super Famicom coverage as well. So even if you aren't into specifically Japanese games, you'll probably find something in FamiWiki in the future that will be of your interest in some way. There is a LOT to cover just from Nintendo's 8-bit and 16-bit home console history and I've pretty much been the sole major contributor to the site since it first went online over 2 years ago. I would very much like to get help from others especially in areas that I am not familiar with. It's also embarrassing to admit that despite running a site covering the Japanese perspective... my Japanese is pretty poor at the moment. I have been slowly learning since the site went up and I plan on being "fluent" enough to be able to better contribute in the coming years.
Until then, if any of this sounds remotely interesting to you please consider registering an account and contribute to the wiki site just a little bit. Any edits big or small would really help out. There are a couple of updates to the site that I am currently working on and hope to roll out soon but hopefully within the next few years we will have more coverage on these Japanese games than we did back when the internet was in its infancy.
To end things, here is one of my personal favorite pages on the entire site.
Little is known about the history of Nintendo in other regions of the Asia Pacific outside of Japan. We’ve seen how Nintendo and Hyundai teamed up to introduce the NES to the South Korean market as trade disputes and tensions persisted between Japan and South Korea in the 80s - leading to the subsequent Korean embargoes on Japanese goods at the time, and even all the shenanigans involving iQue in Mainland China introducing wacky Nintendo consoles such as the iQue Player to now become Nintendo’s de facto Chinese localization house for modern Nintendo games.
The story of Nintendo down in the Southeast Asia is just as niche as any other history of Nintendo in the Asia Pacific outside of its home country, and just as worthy to tell. We’re going to explore deep into the history of how the Big N attempted to enter the region over the decades.
THE DISTRIBUTORS
Nintendo products have been distributed in the region for longer than many people thought. A Kobe-based company called Active Boeki K.K. (アクティヴ貿易株式会社) is responsible for distributing Nintendo hardware and software in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. According to their outdated website, they’ve been distributing Nintendo games since the Game and Watch period, which basically means Nintendo’s semi-official presence in Southeast Asia started in the early 1980s.
The back of a Southeast Asian packaging for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, showing Active Boeki’s address and status as a distributor.
Source: A shot from a Nintendo 64 Asian Version (Singapore-Malaysia-Indonesia Version) service manual. (Consolevariations.com)
Back in the 80s and 90s, Active Boeki’s Southeast Asian subsidiaries first mainly operated in the Malay-speaking regions of Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. They had what seems to be three separate subsidiaries for each country: A. Active Pte. Ltd. for Singapore, PT. Active Exim Indo for Indonesia, and A-Active Sdn. Bhd. for Malaysia. Not only they’re responsible for distribution of Nintendo consoles and software in the region, but they’re also responsible for warranty and service for all the consoles sold in the region. They are responsible for importing consoles from the NES up until the Game Boy Advance SP, while skipping out on the GameCube for unknown reason.
During the NES and SNES era, there were two other distributors in Singapore responsible for importing consoles. One of which are Gan & Beng Trading Co., as well as Uptron Computer Pte. Ltd., which interestingly share a similarly close next-door address with Active Boeki’s Singaporean division, A. Active Pte. Ltd.
Source: (Top to bottom) The bottom part of an NES Asian version distributed by Gan & Beng in Singapore (Imgur), and a back of the manual for a Southeast Asian version of Super Mario Land. (Game Boy Database)
At some point around the early 2000s, all of these three Active Boeki subsidiaries have ceased to exist for unknown reasons. But according to the Singaporean ACRA listings, in 2004, Singaporean-based Maxsoft Pte. Ltd. was established, and it is now the new singular subsidiary representing Active Boeki responsible for distribution and events on all the three previous Southeast Asian countries, plus Thailand and the Philippines. Maxsoft is still around until today and they are responsible for distributing Nintendo consoles and software from the Wii and DS era up to the Nintendo Switch.
Despite covering five Southeast Asian countries in distribution, Maxsoft’s role in promoting, distributing and establishing service centers in Southeast Asia has been more directed towards Singapore. Many Singaporean Nintendo fans have complained about the lack of discounts and sales provided by the distributor.
Although times have changed, and Nintendo announced that it was opening official website and e-commerce stores in Singapore in October 2021, Thailand in December 2021, and Malaysia and the Philippines in February 2022. And with it came changes to the distributor channels as Active Boeki/Maxsoft is no longer the sole distributor in these countries, with Nintendo now working directly with local distributors on a per country basis.
Convergent Systems Pte. Ltd. are in charge of Singapore and Malaysia, VST-ECS is in charge of the Philippines, and Synnex is in charge of Thailand. All of these companies worked directly with Nintendo of Japan in not just distributing, but also establishing onsite events, promotion campaigns, providing customer support and service centers, as well as in charge of running official Nintendo-approved online store presences in e-commerce sites such as Lazada and Shopee in their respective countries. They have been doing a better job at doing promotion, events and sales than Maxsoft does, as Nintendo now has the flexibility of working directly with each Southeast Asian countries directly through a local distributor based in one country in charge of the region. This marked the end of Active Boeki/Maxsoft’s more than 35-year monopoly in Southeast Asia.
For some reason, Nintendo still has yet to work with a local Indonesian distributor to establish official online stores and launch an Indonesian-language Nintendo website. There’s a room for a lot of speculation over this, one of it being the tight regulations imposed by the Indonesian government on the video game industry recently, from things such as high import/customs taxes and Kominfo’s recent shenanigans.
The Indonesian government’s approach to the video game industry has been a mess of bureaucratic hurdles and rather antagonizing. A Kominfo spokesperson in October 2023 recently criticized how the local game industry loses a lot of money from what it calls “foreign video game sales” (despite Indonesian gamers have been paying an 11% VAT on game purchases made through Steam and even from local game stores). Kominfo has even threatened to ban games in Indonesia if they are not rated by the Indonesia Game Rating System (IGRS) and do not have an official subsidiary within their borders. This leads to Kominfo issuing a new ministerial law Kominfo Ministerial Regulation No. 2 2024 on Game Classification, regulating and revamping its game rating system and consequences for what they call “electronic system providers” (a legal way of calling Indonesian game companies and subsidiaries) had they refused to do so.
This prompted criticism from Indonesian game developers, with a notable criticism comes from Kris Antoni from Toge Production, the developers of Coffee Talk and the publisher for The Game Awards 2023 nominee A Space for the Unbound. He pointed out the complex bureaucratic process such as opening a private subsidiary as a foreign company, and concerns about conflict of interest between big multinational game companies and indies regarding local talent. All are reasonable concerns, not to mention the hurdles his company has to go through previously against the Indonesian customs on getting a clearance for their Switch devkit. Knowing the petty protectionist policies done on behalf of the Indonesian government, it’s understandable why companies have been giving fake promises, waiting, or avoiding from expanding their operations in Southeast Asia’s largest market. Time can only tell whether or not Nintendo will bite the bullet.
THE HISTORY OF THE CONSOLES
History of Nintendo in Southeast Asia began in the early 1980s. During this time period, the Game and Watch was first introduced to Indonesia through rental services in front of schools. These kiosks were available throughout major cities such as Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya, where schoolkids would pay them a reasonable fee for them to rent and enjoy these consoles on a short period of time. Game and Watch also entered Thailand around the same time period, but what is contrasting between these two countries is that many people actually own Game and Watch consoles in the mainland Southeast Asian country. Game and Watch consoles are often called as “Press Games” by early Thai gamers due to its gameplay mechanics.
Source: Escuadrat Indonesia on YouTube
Source: RetroAsia.com (1), (2)
In 1986, Nintendo officially brought the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Southeast Asian market with the NES Asian Version. It looks similar as the one made for the Hong Kong market, as shown by the light grey-colored trim along the controller ports closer to the rest of the system’s upper hand body instead of black found in NES consoles sold in North America and Europe.
These consoles were made to play official Asian region PAL NES games, and the game boxes even have similar dimensions to other PAL games sold in Europe and Hong Kong.
Source: u/samiam1337ish on r/RetroGaming
It is not known the exact figures for MSRP on these consoles, but it was reportedly pretty costly for most Southeast Asians that only those who are wealthy enough can afford them, and those who can’t afford them plays them on their friend’s house who has one or visit in gray-market video game rental places that rents out Famicoms or NESes.
Some even opted out for bootleg multicarts and Famiclone consoles, and brands that gained enough traction in Southeast Asia are Spica, which even has their own official branch and service centers in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia.
Source: @/hallyvorc on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hallyvorc/status/1271482823245885440, https://twitter.com/hallyvorc/status/1271486620990967808)
The Super Nintendo was launched in Southeast Asia in the 90s, and the region officially received a PAL SNES console that takes PAL SNES/Super Famicom-sized cartridges. But the existence of these PAL consoles presently is quite rare and are far off between, as North American SNES consoles are more prevalent and more common thanks to its larger cartridge slot size. Game stores would even trim the protective tabs out so that it can take PAL SNES/Super Famicom-sized cartridges - which is what most bootleg SNES game cartridges came in back in the days.
Unlike the NES, the Super Nintendo didn’t receive much influence in Southeast Asia as more people are more familiar with NES games more. But it was popular enough that there are more US SNES consoles for sale in multiple secondhand markets nowadays many years later. During this time period, the Game Boy also entered the region as well, although not much is heard about its history.
The box for the Southeast Asian version of the Nintendo 64. Notice the small block of text written in Traditional Chinese notifying that it is a Singaporean/Malaysian/Indonesian console from top to bottom. Guess Active Boeki forgot that Malaysia and Singapore use Simplified Chinese.
As we step into the Nintendo 64 era however, little is heard about Nintendo’s entry into 3D gaming in the region. Alongside the existence of the Game Boys, and the GameCube, mid-90s till 2000s gaming in the region is slowly becoming consumed by Sony’s entrance to the gaming market with the PlayStation. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis that hit the region, not much was heard of Nintendo until the Wii and DS eras, where these consoles are surely catching up against PlayStation and a rising PC gaming dominance of the time. During this time period, the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance hit the region as well - a perfect time as the late 90s also marked the beginning of the Pokemon fever throughout the region.
The box for a black RVL-101 Wii Family Edition released in Southeast Asia. Notice the “Malaysia/Singapore Official Product” seal on the top left of the packaging.
With the somewhat late release of the Nintendo Wii in the late-2000s in Southeast Asia, I think this is where we began to see a pattern of Maxsoft releasing US versions games and consoles for the region, ultimately making Southeast Asia a de facto region served under US/North America. This practice continues to be seen today, where you’d find so many Southeast Asian versions of Switch games with an ESRB rating system in many game stores across the region. Which we’ll talk more about later on.
The box art for the Southeast Asian version of Pokemon White for the Nintendo DS. Despite having a “UAE/Saudi Arabia/Malaysia/Singapore Official Product” sticker on the left, it carries an ESRB rating symbol and a US version of the game inside.
Nintendo’s potential for the Southeast Asian market grew during the Nintendo Switch era, where Maxsoft officially launched the console on March 3rd, 2017 - along with the rest of the world. Southeast Asian gamers complained about Maxsoft’s approach to the Switch preorder process, such as forcing the purchase of Zelda Breath of the Wild and 1-2 Switch! alongside the console, ultimately raising the price of the console in the region.
The Switch era proved to be a brand new, exciting chapter for Southeast Asia. During Nintendo’s November 2020 investor Q&A event, the company has seen a 152% rise in sales for what they call the “other” market, which encompasses Oceania, the rest of East Asia outside of Japan, and Southeast Asia. This report has convinced Furukawa to essentially expand their localization efforts in the Asia Pacific. And with the release of the new Super Mario Bros. Movie, in February 2024′s investor Q&A, Furukawa officially stated that the company was intending to expand into Southeast Asia, by introducing more people to Nintendo IPs via movies, mobile games, theme parks, and much more in the hopes to convince them to buy a Nintendo Switch.
Source: Escuadrat Indonesia on YouTube. The bottom side of the box for a Southeast Asian version of Nintendo Switch OLED Mario Red Edition. Notice the “ASI - For sale and use in Singapore” sign on the right and the text on the left that it comes with a European power plug. Wait, didn’t Malaysia and Singapore use a British power plug?
Alongside the launch of brand-new Nintendo distributors in Southeast Asia after some more than 35-years on a per-country basis as previously mentioned, Nintendo even announced that they are removing ESRB rating symbols from first party published Southeast Asian Switch game box arts starting in 2024. Which might seem as a weird decision, but it’s nothing new for the region as Sony has been releasing Southeast Asian PS4 and PS5 games in the region without the rating system for a decade now. Sources say that the main reason for this is for Nintendo to comply with Infocomm and Media Development Authority (IMDA), the Singaporean government media watchdog that also serves as the country’s game rating system, as G-rated games do not require having a rating symbol applied on the box art. For games rated ADV 16 and M18 however, require having a simple paper sticker slapped on the rating box that’s relatively easy to peel off.
The cover art for the rating-less Southeast Asian version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake.
At the same time, I would argue this move can also be seen as a fact that Southeast Asia does not have a unified regional-wide game rating system ala PEGI in Europe. So far, only Singapore and Indonesia are the only two countries in Southeast Asia with a working game rating system, and many countries in the region still needs to catch up with their rating system.
An image of a Southeast Asian version of Bayonetta 3 Trinity Masquerade Edition. Notice the IMDA M18 rating sticker on the bottom left of the packaging.
And I think that’s pretty much it about this brief history of Nintendo in Southeast Asia! I’m sure there’s much more to talk about, but this is primarily looking from an Indonesian Nintendo fan perspective and with the information that I know about, as information regarding SEA Nintendo seem to be pretty obscure out there on the internet.
The future for Southeast Asia and Nintendo while looking promising and is full of potential, don’t expect the existence of an official Nintendo Southeast Asia division in charge of promotion and localization ala Hong Kong and Korea, as I think Nintendo will have to think their strategy very thoroughly in the region before fully committing to that. As I’ve explained before in the NES part, console gaming regardless of platform, has always been accessible to mid-upper classes of Southeast Asian society due to its high entrance fee from buying the consoles and games alone in contrast to the average amount of income Southeast Asians make monthly.
This is the main reason why lately mobile gaming, and free-to-play games has taken the spotlight in the region due to its accessibility. And Nintendo knows this very well, as their strategy for Southeast Asia so far seems to attract people to Nintendo IP through movies and mobile gaming first in hopes that they could convince people to buy their consoles and games. Although I would argue the lack of regional pricing (which is pretty commonly seen in console gaming throughout the region), and the existence of a local Southeast Asian eShop using local currency and QR-based digital wallet payments that has been all the rage in the region would be a hindrance to promote Nintendo consoles to more parts of Southeast Asian society.
Time will only tell if Nintendo will fully commit themselves to it. In the meanwhile, this is where I’ll be wrapping things up. Expect more developments coming soon in the region.
Further reading:
Wolf, M. J. P. (2015). Video Games Around the World. In The MIT Press eBooks. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262527163.001.0001
The answer to this question you'll find is the year 1984 or more specifically June 6, 1984. It's widely known that's when the first version of Tetris was created, but is that date accurate?
As of 2022, sites such as Wikipedia and even the official Tetris website cite that Tetris was created in 1984 which when you dig into the sources for that date, it's actually incorrect and the story behind Tetris being created in 1984 is bizarre.
Before we can get into that though, we need to ask when Tetris was actually created. Unfortunately while we don't have an exact date, sources from before 2009 cite that Tetris was created in 1985.
Not only that, but the copyright for Tetris has its creation date listed as 1985, and you can actually see this copyright year in modern versions of Tetris such as Tetris Effect: Connected.
So with prior sources and even the copyright lining up with the year 1985, what resulted in the year getting "corrected" to 1984? Well a post on the Tetrisconcept forum by user necrosaro did some digging into this all the way back in 2014 and concluded that the June 6, 1984 date came about from a marketing campaign to "celebrate Tetris's 25th anniversary" in order to raise awareness of the Tetris brand.
User cgwg also points out that the public dumps of the original computer version of Tetris have build dates ranging from April 1985 to April 1986.
Now you could argue that 1984 is in-fact the actual date and the 1985 date from sources before 2009 were wrong. Well that doesn't hold much water as an email was sent to Vadim Gerasimov (one of the original co-developers of Tetris) asking about the discrepancy.
That pretty much explains itself, he didn't even start working with computers until September 1984 yet the reported creation date for Tetris is June 1984. Coupled with the dates on the public dumps of the original game and it's clear that Tetris was created in 1985.
To this very day, June 6th 1984 is still widely reported as when Tetris came out, but I strongly advise you look into those sources and ask where that date came from cause the truth is, it was merely fabricated for an event back in 2009.
The source of the video game bleeps and bloops in media
Have you ever wondered what the source of those specific video game bleeps and bloops were from? Odds are if a show or movie had a character play a video game or if a scene takes place in an arcade than it's very likely that it uses the same distinct sound effects that originally were sourced from the Atari VCS (2600) ports of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. These ports are already historically important with Donkey Kong being one of the few Nintendo games to be released on non-Nintendo hardware and Pac-Man being one of the most anticipated releases for Atari at the time. Today these ports are often mocked for how butchered they are to the arcade originals but at the time these were fine ways to experience these arcade games at home.
So why are the sounds from these arcade ports used so often in media? You can pretty much thank the widespread use of a particular sound effect library and in this case the Series 1000 Sound Effects Library which initially released on tape in 1979 and released on CD in 1983. A good chunk of this library contains the same sounds found on another sound library called the Network Sound Effects Library.
The Series 1000 library however includes audio recordings of gameplay from these Atari games. Ever since then, these sounds have been used for many years and continues to be used to this very day. Before I showcase some examples of media using these sounds I would like to present the recordings from these games. The following is sourced from the Series 1000 Sound Effects Library which feature sound effects from Atari arcade ports.
If you're familiar with these ports than you can make out the specific sound effects present from these recordings. The distinct walking and jumping sounds in Donkey Kong and the dots being eaten and game over sounds from Pac-Man are the more identifiable sounds you hear. With this in mind here are a handful of examples of these sounds being used in media.
(Note: Due to Tumblr restricting one video per post I have compiled all the example clips in a single video so feel free to read below for the specific sound bytes used whilst the video plays.)
Arthur (1996)
The season 1 episode "Arthur Accused!" has Buster investigating an arcade which features sounds from Pac-Man as it eats ghosts and a faint sound of Pac-Man dying from a ghost.
Drake & Josh (2004)
The season 2 episode "The Bet" has Josh playing your typical video game but features several seconds of audio from Donkey Kong. Weirdly music from the Nintendo NES version of Tetris (Type-A specifically) can be heard when Josh is playing on his "handheld" which is clearly a red Game Boy Advance SP.
SpongeBob SquarePants (2007)
The season 5 episode "Atlantis SquarePantis" features a segment of Sandy in a retro inspired environment. The puzzle game segment features various cut up sound bytes from Donkey Kong including jumping over barrels and the walking sounds.
Chowder (2008)
The season 1 episode "Sniffleball" features a brief sound effect from Donkey Kong of Mario jumping over a barrel. (also what is this retro nonsense?)
Ted (2024)
The season 1 episode "Just Say Yes" features Ted and John playing Super Mario Bros. on the NES. For whatever reason no footage of the game is shown and the audio used is from, you guessed it those Atari games. Donkey Kong sound effects can be heard while brief snippets of Pac-Man can also be heard mixed in.
I could keep going but you get the idea. There are plenty of other examples you can find and I highly recommend checking out the Sound Effects Wiki if you're curious to see what other examples are out there. Linked below are the articles for the other sources for these Atari recordings.
Sound Ideas, ARCADE, VIDEO GAME - VIDEO GAME: ELECTRONIC SOUNDS, AMUSEMENT PARK, FAIR 01
Sound Ideas, ARCADE, VIDEO GAME - VIDEO GAME: ELECTRONIC SOUNDS, AMUSEMENT PARK, FAIR 02
I guarantee most folks nowadays aren't even aware that these sounds are from actual Atari games cause out of context they sound like generic bleeps and bloops. That's probably why it's so common to hear these sounds in media as unless you're a nerd like myself this is something you're likely not going to think about and I'd imagine the folks working with audio aren't gonna stop and think about where particular sounds come from outside of the library they're featured in.
Reproductions are just Counterfeits with a different name
Since the dawn of time, video games have been copied illegally and sold on the second hand market without the endorsement of license holders. However it was pretty easy to tell the difference between a legit copy of a game and a bootleg. You couldn't fool anyone that this was a legit copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, right?
They were often sold for cheap, or in some cases were able to be rented. However as console gaming moved from cartridges to discs these bootleg cartridges slowly started to fade away in western markets. They didn't completely disappear but the prominence of them dwindled up until the 2000s. Then slowly but surely, we started to see cartridges pop up that look like the real deal but are actually counterfeit.
These are often called "Reproductions" or "Repros" for short. Despite the new name, the purpose of these cartridges still serve the exact same purpose as those bootleg cartridges from decades ago. Except this time these repros were made to look real to the point where it can fool people who don't know any better. Sure the hardcore collector can easily tell which is real or counterfeit, but everyone else?
But wait! There are also cases of "reproductions" being made of games that technically don't exist. Here we have a copy of Kid Dracula on NES which... hang on a minute! This was a Famicom game that never left Japan which never saw an NES release. This also seems to contain an English fan translation which I doubt the manufacturer of this cartridge got permission to use that for this cartridge. So wait why even call this a reproduction to begin with? This isn't mimicking anything that exists, it's no different to any other counterfeit cartridge.
There's also folks who consider modern cartridges such as this to be "reproductions". This is not trying to replicate anything that exists. It's a bootleg multicart, it's also not a "fake" game. The games on this cartridge are very real but the cartridge itself is worth next to nothing due to it being counterfeit.
There's also a huge issue with "reproductions" being sold for an absurd markup. Even if its not trying to replicate an existing game, why would you spend around $40 for what is essentially an unlicensed cartridge that realistically is worth dirt. If your argument is because this allows you to play these games on original hardware then invest in a flash cartridge or anything that lets you run rom files on original hardware which negates ever considering purchasing any of this.
I'm not a huge fan of calling all these newly manufactured cartridges reproductions when there are many which clearly do not fall under the actual definition of a reproduction. For something to be labeled as a reproduction it must replicate the original such as this EarthBound cartridge.
It's clearly based on the real thing and without further inspection looks close enough to the authentic cartridge. Compare that to other cartridges such as this seemingly innocent North American cartridge of Animal Crossing. The thing is that this never left Japan at least on the N64. So would you call this a reproduction?
Going by the actual definition it does not qualify due to it not replicating the original cartridge but instead mocking up what an American copy would look like. Since its distinct from the original cartridge I find it hard to call it a reproduction when it isn't even reproducing anything outside of the core game within (with a stolen fan translation might I add). If you were to give it a label it's simply a counterfeit or unlicensed cartridge despite the fake ESRB and Nintendo seal on the cartridge.
If I had to guess as to the reason why everything of this nature is labeled as reproductions is probably just to cover up the fact that these are by nature unauthorized copies of games which in return technically falls under copyright infringement. So its likely that this term is widespread to cover up that fact. That's not to say I'm completely against cartridges like this in general. I like collecting the odd bootleg cartridge every so often, but these newer cartridges don't appeal to me. I'll just stick to either buying original copies or play these games on flash cartridges.
I think it goes without saying that the Nintendo Switch Online (or NSO) service has been controversial to say the least. The fact that we now have to pay for what used to be free online and the lack of benefits you get to subscribing has led to this service being received very poorly at least at launch. It's been about 5 years since NSO launched and a lot of that controversy has seemingly dried up either by new additions to the game library or simply the fact that we're just used to it at this point.
Now don't get me wrong there are still detractors to NSO, but it seems as if this service has been accepted for what it is despite its flaws, although I do have to agree with some of the things said by folks regarding how the service launched and how it currently is.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I want to lay down some predictions regarding the future of this service as I've seen some wild things being proposed by fans that sound completely unrealistic and nothing Nintendo would ever regularly do. Starting with the obvious, what future platforms will Nintendo add to the game library?
First things first, GameCube is not going to happen at least for a long time. I suspect Nintendo may add it once the Switch's successor is out but at this very moment it is laughable to consider GameCube right now. The biggest main issue is the fact that Nintendo themselves has been rereleasing GameCube games as full price Switch games. Metroid Prime Remastered and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door come to mind. I know for the most part the whole "things releasing outside of NSO means it will never come to NSO" myth has more or less died at this point but GameCube tends to be a special case here since these games still feel modern enough to resell as new games.
Another thing is to completely throw out any consideration of any mainline Pokémon games appearing on the Game Boy apps. The spinoffs sure, but actual mainline games is a bit silly. If they were somehow to be added they would need to do a lot of backend stuff to get these games properly working and so players don't cheat with the regular tools NSO offers such as rewind and restore points. It's not impossible but I see this as too much work to be worth it if simply putting these out as digital eShop releases sounds much easier. Besides if every version was put out on NSO then you'd lose the magic of Pokémon just like that, and that wouldn't be fun would it?
Okay so what do I actually think NSO is gonna add to its game library? Well unless Nintendo puts out a Virtual Boy or a Game & Watch app then I suspect we will probably see more third party apps. One consideration I don't see a ton of people talking about is the PC-Engine and TurboGrafx-16.
Games from these consoles have appeared on Virtual Console in the past on Wii and Wii U and a very limited number of PC-Engine games did release on 3DS only in Japan. I wouldn't doubt that Nintendo would add this as apart of their Expansion Pack, heck maybe even regular NSO if we're lucky. I would just love to see more NEC love (or well Konami love now).
But why stop there when the Mark III and Master System could be added too? Sega is already on board with NSO with their Mega Drive and Genesis apps so this would be a great addition especially since these games have not been given enough love even by Sega. SG-1000 would also be cool but that might be a bit too niche for a service like NSO but who knows.
As for games, while there is quite a bit already on the service there are certainly omissions that are quite baffling so let's get some of the more obvious ones out of the way and in no particular order.
Gomoku Narabe Renju, Mahjong, Golf, Urban Champion, SimCity, Mario Paint, Super Smash Bros., Ridge Racer 64, Banjo-Tooie, Super Mario Land, Qix, X, Balloon Kid, Mole Mania, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, Pokémon Pinball, Densetsu no Stafy 1-3, Mother 3, and Rhythm Tengoku just to name a few.
So lets start with one that might not be interesting at a glance but would be a great addition to the service.
Tetris for the NES (no, not the Tengen version) is one of the more iconic versions of this beloved puzzle game, but why go back to this version specifically? I mean we already have Tetris on the Game Boy app and plenty of other Tetris games on Switch so what's the deal here?
Well for one, this version has never seen any kind of rerelease... kind of. This version in terms of how it played was ported over to Tetris Effect: Connected as a side mode but unless you knew about it I'd imagine not a whole lot of folks have dabbled with it and it's still technically not the original game.
But secondly, the main reason why this mode even exists and also why I personally would like to see it on NSO is purely to make the game accessible to a wider audience considering the competitive scene of this specific classic version of Tetris.
Being able to play this on NSO would mean a ton more people get to experience how this version plays and more importantly gives players another option of playing this without resorting to unofficial PC emulation. Obviously pro players are going to stick to original hardware but if you just wanted to practice or wanted a taste of this version then it's no wonder that having it on Switch would be a dream. Hopefully with the Game Boy version already being on the service this will increase the chances of this one happening.
So this next one is already planned to release for NSO in Japan but there's no word on it releasing internationally but regardless...
...Kaeru no tame ni Kane wa Naru or as its unofficially known as The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's an action RPG that's often compared to Link's Awakening to the point where in said Zelda game there's a cameo appearance featuring Prince Richard from Bell Tolls. This is one of the more well known Nintendo developed games that never left Japan and as of writing has never seen an official English localization of any kind and unfortunately there seems to be a trend with international NSO releases having Japanese games that have not been translated. So the likelihood of this not only releasing outside of Japan but getting a new localization for NSO is very unlikely but it's more than possible given Nintendo puts in the work to translating this in English. I'd imagine a remake of this game being far more likely to getting an international release if that were to happen and hey if it's in the style of the Link's Awakening remake that would be pretty cool.
So let's move away to one that might actually happen.
This one's pretty straight forward and don't be scared by this being Japan exclusive as outside of some story cutscenes this one's perfectly playable as its mainly a puzzle game. It has seen rereleases in the past on Virtual Console and if it were to release on NSO it's very likely that it would release internationally since the benefit of Nintendo not putting in effort to localize these games means they can just drop this on the SNES app no problem. Also good time to mention that this also includes the original Wrecking Crew so it would be funny to see Wrecking Crew on the service twice.
So let's end this game prediction saga with one that probably will never happen but if it were to happen I'd be curious how it would be implemented.
So let's get this out of the way, this is an M rated game. For a while it was believed that Nintendo would shy away from more mature games from appearing on the service but GoldenEye 007 on N64 at least in Japan indicates that Nintendo's solution is purely to bump up the rating of the overall app. So I'd imagine if this were to drop on NSO we'd not only see a rating bump for the N64 app but hopefully some kind of parental control option to stop players under 17 from playing this one. While it would be cool to see this on NSO in terms of being able to play it on a Nintendo platform again, I purely would like to see this get added just to see what they'd do to the app in response to this M rated addition to the service.
And there are my NSO predictions as of November 2023. I do wonder when the next Nintendo platform releases if we'll see an uptick in support for the service but its likely that this slow trickle of games will continue as usual. I'd normally would wish for more platforms to be represented on NSO but the problem is that some of the ones already on the service are very lacking especially Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Hopefully those libraries get beefed up soon.
You should check out Famidaily - 1041 episodes of every Nintendo Famicom cartridge release
Today marks the end of the longest running chronological YouTube series on a video game library with over 1000 releases. RndStranger has been uploading daily episodes of each Famicom release with new episodes dropping daily hence the name Famidaily (Famicom daily).
The series covers the often overlooked history and library of the Family Computer or Famicom for short. Documentation in regards to these 8-bit games on the English side of the internet tends to be in favor of the context of the NES rather than the Famicom. This has resulted in a very western biased history in regards to Nintendo's 8-bit console history and in many ways Famidaily illustrates just how different the game industry was in Japan compared to America and Europe. Not only that but a lot of Famicom releases which never saw the light of day outside of Japan are practically unknown to the rest of the world.
Each episode of Famidaily is 5 minutes on average with shorter episodes being less than 3 minutes and longer episodes being around 8 minutes or more. He then describes the content of the game, how its played, and most importantly the historical aspect and reception of the particular game in Japan. There is a surprisingly amount of influential releases, truly great games, and downright awful train wrecks that are covered in Famidaily that you almost never hear anyone else talk about which makes this such a fascinating series to watch. Considering the reputation of the NES in English speaking circles it's actually insane how little the Famicom gets brought up considering the influences those original releases left that did make their way outside of Japan.
These videos are not only fun to watch but they are an extremely useful resource when it comes to not only researching these games but also understanding the library and particular releases which makes playing and collecting them much more fun and interesting. If you popped in a lot of these releases with no context I'd imagine you would have trouble figuring out how to play and even if that isn't an issue just being able to get the proper context is truly refreshing.
Easily one of my favorite episodes hands down goes to Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti. Outside of Japan this game is well known as a hidden gem that was exclusive to the Famicom. But this episode highlights a story that I am shocked nobody else has ever brought up considering how historically important it is when it comes to the relationship with Namco and Nintendo at the time. It's notably Namco's final Famicom release for a good while after their original licensing contract expired with this game releasing just one day before said contract was set to expire. Understanding this also helps to explain why all of Namco's previous 1989 releases turned out the way they did. You truly learn something new when watching this series.
That leaves us to today on November 7, 2023 where the final episode of Famidaily was released covering the final Famicom cartridge release Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima IV, better known as Adventure Island IV outside of Japan.
I cannot recommend this series enough, it's absolutely worth your time even if you aren't interested in playing a lot of these games. RndStranger does plan on continuing to upload daily videos for the rest of the year and in 2024 he has plans to cover the Famicom Disk System with the series Year of FDS.
To wrap this up, I might as well mention the total runtime of Famidaily. On average it will take you 116 hours to be caught up with the final episode and that is not counting the dozens of bonus episodes that have also been released alongside the regular daily videos. So go out there and learn something new about Nintendo's original 8-bit cartridge machine and its library. You won't regret it.
Some thoughts about Nintendo Switch Online retro games since last time
This is essentially going to be not much of a post but I guess I could talk about a few things about its future since with all the updates that we got since last time.
We'll talk about UI code, Pokémon, NES, Fire Emblem and N64.
UI code upgrade
Literally the next day since my last post about it, on March 16th, Nintendo added new NES, SNES and GB titles. Under the hood, they did do a massive change to the user interface programming, bringing pretty much every NSO app to the latest user interface codebase that GB and GBA NSO had.
That said it brings absolutely no visible changes, NERD has just made sure to bring everything up-to-date. This is just more stable and probably easier to program and manage UI code.
Pokémon Stadium 1 & 2
On April 12th, Nintendo released Pokémon Stadium to NSO + Expansion Pack, and with no Transfer Pak support.
Of course, what did I even expect since there's no old mainline Pokémon titles yet (if ever?).
My opinion about Pokémon on NSO is that it will get stuck to only spinoffs. My worst case realistic scenario (aside from no rerelease) is Pokémon Company selling the old gens at $15 piecemeal (yes, $5 more than on 3DS Virtual Console).
Personally I expect Pokémon Company to be very strict about Pokémon management, and those games are highly abusable with glitches, honestly and are kind of region locked, too to some extent especially between japanese and international players, but they still bothered to rerelease them and supporting them with a way to transfer your Pokémons out of the games.
It's also abusable if you supported the Transfer Pak in Pokémon Stadium titles since they also work like extra boxes for your Pokémons and those support save states, which was explicitly removed out of the 3DS Virtual Console release...
They did also release Pokémon Stadium 2 this week, also without Transfer Pak support.
I did look at the emulator really quick and did find that they added new functions for Lua script hacking for the games, and it does kinda look like they rebuilt the entire thing from a new version at least.
I'll speak more about N64 emulation later.
Mystery Tower
Fast forwarding a bit, on June 6th, Nintendo added more NES, SNES and GB titles. One of them was Mystery Tower by Namco.
This bothered me, because I knew what this game was, but the title did absolutely not sound right. Turns out this title is actually brand new, they had this title in their collection, the original title was "BABEL" which is interesting since this means it is a first case of title change hacks on NSO. That said I did eventually find out that Japan also had a title change to "The Tower of Babel", which was also done in collections, but also the Wii U Virtual Console release!
Anyway please try this puzzle game, just keep in mind the direction and how you can turn around stuff based on how you face it.
Fire Emblem
On June 23rd, Nintendo released Fire Emblem for the GBA NSO app. But Japan also had Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, the actual first GBA Fire Emblem title, as we only started to get these games since the second GBA title.
I'll refer to them as FE6 (The Binding Blade) and FE7 (Fire Emblem) from now on.
This update was interesting for a couple reasons.
It just so happens that the japanese version of FE7 can link to FE6's completed save files to unlock a couple things in the game.
So now, when you go into multiplayer, after the first player selects FE7, the second player is allowed to select either FE7, or FE6 for "Link Cleared Save Data" (official english text). Another player can simply share their save files to another player.
This also means that the GBA app now has the ability to load different games for each player depending on the choice of the first player who serves as the host.
(This screenshot is me messing around with the functionality.)
However this is not the only noteworthy thing to happen, because it wouldn't feel fair for a single player to not being able to transfer their own FE6 saves to FE7. Well, they did actually implement a hack for single player too!
They actually reimplemented the linking process inside the emulator just to avoid emulating a second GBA for it, and it would seamlessly transfer the save data just fine.
If you're wondering about what it unlocks, a quick read made me figure out that it skips Lyn's story, and add new scenes to the epilogue and other small additions as well.
Those new epilogue scenes are available in the US version by default, but not in the EU versions for some reason.
They can also be accessed in the JP version without a save transfer by finishing the game 9 to 11 times (what the heck).
This functionality working as it is really cool, honestly, and it makes a process less painful to do like it was back then, and it did make me feel confident in the transfer of data between games like with Golden Sun & Golden Sun: The Lost Age or the Zelda Oracle games... speaking of...
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons
Those two games ended up randomly coming at the end of July this year. They are known for being two parts of a fuller story if you link each of them from whatever order you start them with.
And that's where my disappointment came in to remind me of the terrible reality that is Nintendo Switch Online.
It is doable for two players to share their save files to each other through multiplayer, but if you wanna do the games yourself on your own in single player, you'll have to input the password you get from the other game.
That is kinda sad considering it's the first player who selects the save file from the other player, it could have been very easy to setup in a way that's easy to use without needing to implement any specific user interface, but that didn't quite happen.
I hope they'll bother for Golden Sun considering the tiers of password this game can have with Golden Sun: The Lost Age, but I am starting to think if the game does offer a way to transfer without needing any additional work, they wouldn't do it. In the case of Fire Emblem, this way of save transfer was the only way to do it.
I did not mention much about this, but Oracle of Ages/Seasons are also known for having exclusive content if you play those games on a Game Boy Advance. After looking into it though, it does not seem like we're missing much, but it's kinda sad that they're not really in their most definitive way to play them.
Pokémon Trading Card Game
Two weeks after those last two games, Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Stadium 2 were released.
The cool thing about this game, is that they emulated the infrared communications.
At least, Card Pop does work, for sure, which does require emulation of the IR communcation... or does it?
Upon a quick inspection of the emulator code, I found out that the emulator does indeed patch the game ROM's functions, and thanks to the disassembled Pokémon Trading Card Game offering me a lot of information, I found out that they absolutely don't emulate the IR communications at all and outright replace the IR functions to point to a invalid 0xDD opcode (opcodes are small commands that CPU executes)... which probably points to a function in the emulator to specifically manage this.
Ain't that funny? In any case though, they do at least let all IR communications work just fine, and that's what matters.
(For the nerds who wants to look this up, the emulator keeps SHA1 hashes of the ROM you can easily search for, then points to a struct of 100 bytes original to compare, 100 bytes to patch, address, size, and something else I don't get.)
I ended up looking this up as someone pointed me to this video:
It turns out in the original game, one of the cards, the Phantom Venusaur, is impossible to obtain due to a mistake in the calculations of the odds, on which this video explains very well in detail.
This is the reason that motivated me to look at how the emulator might patch the game, and see if they fixed this issue: They did not fix this problem, I see no patch for any of the relevant code for this.
So, NERD, if you're reading this, look at 06:5D92, you can definitely fix this in one way or another.
N64 emulation
So... the Pokémon Stadium 2 release at least updated the emulator in some way, because they added new functions for the Lua scripting for N64 game hacks, and some of the UI engine stuff got shuffled around.
Then I tried some of the games, to see if some things got fixed:
F-Zero X did NOT get its framerate drop fixed.
Goldeneye's Dam level has texture tiling fixed. Interesting.
Since I noticed this last thing, it was pointed to Graslu00 who knows the game in and out and already compared the emulation of the game on NSO and Xbox... to a disappointing degree.
Here's his thread about the fixes... or rather the lack of:
https://twitter.com/Graslu00/status/1688994099477528576
The update did also some additional fixes to Pokémon Stadium 1, though I don't really know much about it other than it relates to rendering and soft reset in some way.
Unfortunately the N64 emulator is still not up to snuff, but I think the most annoying thing is still the controls. The default controls suck, let us change them in the emulator, per game! Offer also better stick emulation!
It still pains me to rely on the Switch OS remap feature, it's not good for this, it messes too much with some of the macros, it sucks!
It annoys me when I see the text "Change Control Method" in the emulator files too, you guys clearly thought about it! Why isn't it a feature after months with nothing?
Future releases
There's still a couple N64 games left that were explicitly announced for 2023, such as 1080° Snowboarding, Excitebike 64 and Mario Party 3.
That said Japan also had plans for release of Harvest Moon 64 (which I see no reason why we can't get it now that Harvest Moon SNES got released since), but also Goldeneye 007, on which Japan has it on the highest age rating (CERO Z).
Considering how the plans are going and how lazy everything is (sorry devs, I'm sure you guys know already, but most of the results of this just don't impress me and don't fill me with confidence aside from GB/GBA somehow), I just think N64 NSO will randomly get a 18+ rating and put every N64 game under parental control bullshit out of nowhere with no warning for Japan.
Also, where's the alternate languages for NES and SNES games?
An interpretation of the Dolphin on Steam situation.
As a reminder, Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator, had announced a release of a Steam version using features from Steam like cloud save, Steam Deck native support and all.
A couple of days ago, Dolphin's Steam page was pulled down, then Dolphin's official blog mentioned a DMCA takedown, and PC Gamer reported on it, quoting the DMCA. Then we all went a bit crazy over this, then Delroth, a former Dolphin member, talked in a bit more detail, and debunked a misunderstanding.
You can still read this from Delroth here: https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440301402516214
All in all, the situation was misinterpreted from all sides, and to sum it up, according to Delroth: Valve asked Nintendo about this, and Nintendo said they don't want this, and quoted the DMCA's set of laws. In fact, not only Delroth says this, a lawyer contacted by PC Gamer essentially says the same thing in the updated report here.
One more preface: I am NOT a lawyer, legal text is very hard to fully grasp, this is only my own interpretation of the situation, what I am about to say may be VERY VERY WRONG. Got it?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a copyright law from 1998. It is made of several titles and acts. The first title contains the anti-circumvention part which we'll get to later. The second title contains the takedown process part.
DMCA Takedown
I'll get to the second title first:
To sum it up, this is the part where you can do a copyright infringement claim, a "notice and takedown" process. This process also includes the ability of a counterclaim.
NONE OF THIS HAPPENED ON DOLPHIN ON STEAM. Nintendo did not use this process. They just told Valve a reason, and it was Valve's decision alone that got the emulator removed, and they notified Dolphin of the reason.
I won't really debate much on this, it's not really interesting.
"Anti-circumvention"
Now, the anti-circumvention part, the meaty part. There's a lot of legal text, but I will translate to the best of my abilities to you, don't worry.
This is the part where I feel the least comfortable about, and again, this is an interpretation, but let's start again from that quote that I had (from PC Gamer, by the way):
the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act.
The thing is... I only said that indeed, the Wii Common Key, required to decrypt everything, is included in Dolphin's source code. It's... not necessarily the problematic point of this, as I tried to read more into it, and I will go back to the Lockpick_RCM actual DMCA takedown.
Lockpick_RCM is a Switch tool that gets a set of keys from your Switch console and puts them into an easy to read file that could be used in conjunction with other Switch tools. They're required to decrypt pretty much everything about the Switch, from games to other packages.
The use of Lockpick with a modified Nintendo Switch console allows users to bypass Nintendo’s Technological Measures for video games
A thing you read a lot is "Technological Measures"... turns out this has a bit of a definition in 17 U.S.C. §1201... or rather, in that text itself, here's the very first thing you can read:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(A)
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
The wording "circumvent a technological measure" happens to have a definition tied to it:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)
As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and (B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
It's a somewhat precise definition, actually, and purely relying on it... this makes pretty much everything Wii, 3DS, Wii U and Switch a very dangerous situation.
The "technological measure" also has a definition:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(B)
a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Basically it just means a DRM (Digital Rights Management) process of sorts.
A lot of people loves to talk about the previous lawsuits on emulators, but note that I never mentioned the emulation being the issue here.
Nintendo is NOT arguing, on a legal level anyway, that emulators are illegal by being one, their communication team does by stifling innovation in their public arguments.
According to 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(A), just having encryption is enough to consider that they're protected, and just decrypting is already illegal... this affects a lot more than you think, it's not just Dolphin at this point, it seems we misunderstood a lot of things about the DMCA.
To sum it up more bluntly: I don't feel like the encryption key is the main argument, it's actually about what you do with it that they argue against.
So even if Dolphin removed the Wii Common Key, if they still include the decryption process, even if you provided the key yourself from your own system, EVEN your own Wii dumps, the argument here implies that since you're still decrypting the Wii dump data, this last part is argued to be illegal. This ain't right.
Now apply this to everything else, even if you decrypted the game beforehand so that Dolphin doesn't even decrypt anything, the problem would be moved to the dumper or the decrypter tool doing it. This applies to a lot of systems.
Considering the definition I showed earlier, this seems hard to argue against, however, notice that I never said anything as fact, and insisted that it is Nintendo's argument, legally speaking, I believe this is an important distinction to make.
Exceptions?
The law also explicitly defines exceptions to this, but please read carefully, because this is where I start to really interpret from here:
In 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(B), my understanding is that when the protection itself prevents legitimate use, then you are allowed to break it. That said, and this is important: The later subparagraphs defines these paragraphs as something that CANNOT BE USED AS A DEFENSE. This is only there to shield the Library of Congress from any attack, and to allow them to research the various impacts that the protection does and determine rules. Their ruling is also explicitly not allowed to be used as a defense in the text.
After reading a lot of this, I only found one thing that, very honestly, I find quite unclear. Subsection (f) about Reverse Engineering, is particularly showing how much they're not well versed in computer science.
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f) basically says if you're trying to understand how the program works, you are allowed to circumvent the protection, under the idea that you're doing analysis, or...
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(2)
for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
In the case of infringement, I believe this is about copyright in general, as the law suggests this does not affect copyright laws in any way.
So what is interoperability... well let's take the definition from there:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(4)
For purposes of this subsection, the term “interoperability” means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.
So we're talking about the ability for a program to exchange information with the work, in this case, a game for example.
...what is this? Programs exchange information all the time. That's even the basis of a computer. Maybe there are other definitions, but frankly I can't be bothered to read even more legalese right now.
With just this, and not taking into account anything else, I feel like this allows emulators to work, they don't really modify the game, they try to run it within a sandbox, where a lot of information is exchanged to make sure the program runs as intended.
Oddly enough this would still make the ability to run those games on a modded Switch still illegal though, while emulators could be allowed to do this.
But make no mistake: This is not a legally tested argument. I need to repeat: This is an interpretation.
Lawsuits literally work with lawyers interpreting information and the laws, and argue. The whole idea of laws being unclear is not necessarily a fault, it's specifically why lawyers exist.
Why now? And what now?
Honestly, as much as Nintendo argued, for the time being, they have not shown any intention to take down Dolphin as a whole.
They could just argue as a scare tactic to prevent Dolphin to reach an even more mainstream status. I doubt Nintendo didn't know about Dolphin for that long.
Until I see an actual DMCA takedown, or worse against Dolphin itself, I'm going to assume Dolphin will stay up for a long time.
Removing the Wii Common Key from Dolphin will not change the situation, as it is the whole decryption process that the argument is about.
Whether Citra, Cemu, Yuzu and Ryujinx could have included the keys or not, the argument would still be the same here.
TL;DR of the complicated part
About the takedown itself:
Valve asked Nintendo about Dolphin on Steam, and they argued that Dolphin is illegal because it decrypts Wii games, and Valve, on their own accord, took down Dolphin from Steam from this.
(Note: GameCube does not use encryption and cannot be impacted by this.)
An actual lawyer also takes this as a warning from Nintendo to Valve according to PC Gamer.
About the argument that Nintendo used against Dolphin:
Encryption Keys are NOT the main point of contention, because...
The encryption itself, as a whole, is argued by Nintendo to be a protection measure.
This means that decrypting the game outside of the intended way by the copyright owner (Nintendo, on a Nintendo Switch) is argued to be illegal by default.
The law, as in how I interpret it, goes in that sense, but for some reason you are allowed to make an additional program that can "interoperate" with the protected works in question and explicitly is allowed to break the protection. This is a vague part, and could be used in defense of Dolphin, potentially.
The final answer can only be answered in a courtroom.
An interpretation of the Dolphin on Steam situation.
As a reminder, Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator, had announced a release of a Steam version using features from Steam like cloud save, Steam Deck native support and all.
A couple of days ago, Dolphin's Steam page was pulled down, then Dolphin's official blog mentioned a DMCA takedown, and PC Gamer reported on it, quoting the DMCA. Then we all went a bit crazy over this, then Delroth, a former Dolphin member, talked in a bit more detail, and debunked a misunderstanding.
You can still read this from Delroth here: https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440301402516214
All in all, the situation was misinterpreted from all sides, and to sum it up, according to Delroth: Valve asked Nintendo about this, and Nintendo said they don't want this, and quoted the DMCA's set of laws. In fact, not only Delroth says this, a lawyer contacted by PC Gamer essentially says the same thing in the updated report here.
One more preface: I am NOT a lawyer, legal text is very hard to fully grasp, this is only my own interpretation of the situation, what I am about to say may be VERY VERY WRONG. Got it?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a copyright law from 1998. It is made of several titles and acts. The first title contains the anti-circumvention part which we'll get to later. The second title contains the takedown process part.
DMCA Takedown
I'll get to the second title first:
To sum it up, this is the part where you can do a copyright infringement claim, a "notice and takedown" process. This process also includes the ability of a counterclaim.
NONE OF THIS HAPPENED ON DOLPHIN ON STEAM. Nintendo did not use this process. They just told Valve a reason, and it was Valve's decision alone that got the emulator removed, and they notified Dolphin of the reason.
I won't really debate much on this, it's not really interesting.
"Anti-circumvention"
Now, the anti-circumvention part, the meaty part. There's a lot of legal text, but I will translate to the best of my abilities to you, don't worry.
This is the part where I feel the least comfortable about, and again, this is an interpretation, but let's start again from that quote that I had (from PC Gamer, by the way):
the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act.
The thing is... I only said that indeed, the Wii Common Key, required to decrypt everything, is included in Dolphin's source code. It's... not necessarily the problematic point of this, as I tried to read more into it, and I will go back to the Lockpick_RCM actual DMCA takedown.
Lockpick_RCM is a Switch tool that gets a set of keys from your Switch console and puts them into an easy to read file that could be used in conjunction with other Switch tools. They're required to decrypt pretty much everything about the Switch, from games to other packages.
The use of Lockpick with a modified Nintendo Switch console allows users to bypass Nintendo’s Technological Measures for video games
A thing you read a lot is "Technological Measures"... turns out this has a bit of a definition in 17 U.S.C. §1201... or rather, in that text itself, here's the very first thing you can read:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(A)
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
The wording "circumvent a technological measure" happens to have a definition tied to it:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)
As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and (B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
It's a somewhat precise definition, actually, and purely relying on it... this makes pretty much everything Wii, 3DS, Wii U and Switch a very dangerous situation.
The "technological measure" also has a definition:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(B)
a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Basically it just means a DRM (Digital Rights Management) process of sorts.
A lot of people loves to talk about the previous lawsuits on emulators, but note that I never mentioned the emulation being the issue here.
Nintendo is NOT arguing, on a legal level anyway, that emulators are illegal by being one, their communication team does by stifling innovation in their public arguments.
According to 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(A), just having encryption is enough to consider that they're protected, and just decrypting is already illegal... this affects a lot more than you think, it's not just Dolphin at this point, it seems we misunderstood a lot of things about the DMCA.
To sum it up more bluntly: I don't feel like the encryption key is the main argument, it's actually about what you do with it that they argue against.
So even if Dolphin removed the Wii Common Key, if they still include the decryption process, even if you provided the key yourself from your own system, EVEN your own Wii dumps, the argument here implies that since you're still decrypting the Wii dump data, this last part is argued to be illegal. This ain't right.
Now apply this to everything else, even if you decrypted the game beforehand so that Dolphin doesn't even decrypt anything, the problem would be moved to the dumper or the decrypter tool doing it. This applies to a lot of systems.
Considering the definition I showed earlier, this seems hard to argue against, however, notice that I never said anything as fact, and insisted that it is Nintendo's argument, legally speaking, I believe this is an important distinction to make.
Exceptions?
The law also explicitly defines exceptions to this, but please read carefully, because this is where I start to really interpret from here:
In 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(B), my understanding is that when the protection itself prevents legitimate use, then you are allowed to break it. That said, and this is important: The later subparagraphs defines these paragraphs as something that CANNOT BE USED AS A DEFENSE. This is only there to shield the Library of Congress from any attack, and to allow them to research the various impacts that the protection does and determine rules. Their ruling is also explicitly not allowed to be used as a defense in the text.
After reading a lot of this, I only found one thing that, very honestly, I find quite unclear. Subsection (f) about Reverse Engineering, is particularly showing how much they're not well versed in computer science.
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f) basically says if you're trying to understand how the program works, you are allowed to circumvent the protection, under the idea that you're doing analysis, or...
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(2)
for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
In the case of infringement, I believe this is about copyright in general, as the law suggests this does not affect copyright laws in any way.
So what is interoperability... well let's take the definition from there:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(4)
For purposes of this subsection, the term “interoperability” means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.
So we're talking about the ability for a program to exchange information with the work, in this case, a game for example.
...what is this? Programs exchange information all the time. That's even the basis of a computer. Maybe there are other definitions, but frankly I can't be bothered to read even more legalese right now.
With just this, and not taking into account anything else, I feel like this allows emulators to work, they don't really modify the game, they try to run it within a sandbox, where a lot of information is exchanged to make sure the program runs as intended.
Oddly enough this would still make the ability to run those games on a modded Switch still illegal though, while emulators could be allowed to do this.
But make no mistake: This is not a legally tested argument. I need to repeat: This is an interpretation.
Lawsuits literally work with lawyers interpreting information and the laws, and argue. The whole idea of laws being unclear is not necessarily a fault, it's specifically why lawyers exist.
Why now? And what now?
Honestly, as much as Nintendo argued, for the time being, they have not shown any intention to take down Dolphin as a whole.
They could just argue as a scare tactic to prevent Dolphin to reach an even more mainstream status. I doubt Nintendo didn't know about Dolphin for that long.
Until I see an actual DMCA takedown, or worse against Dolphin itself, I'm going to assume Dolphin will stay up for a long time.
Removing the Wii Common Key from Dolphin will not change the situation, as it is the whole decryption process that the argument is about.
Whether Citra, Cemu, Yuzu and Ryujinx could have included the keys or not, the argument would still be the same here.
TL;DR of the complicated part
About the takedown itself:
Valve asked Nintendo about Dolphin on Steam, and they argued that Dolphin is illegal because it decrypts Wii games, and Valve, on their own accord, took down Dolphin from Steam from this.
(Note: GameCube does not use encryption and cannot be impacted by this.)
An actual lawyer also takes this as a warning from Nintendo to Valve according to PC Gamer.
About the argument that Nintendo used against Dolphin:
Encryption Keys are NOT the main point of contention, because...
The encryption itself, as a whole, is argued by Nintendo to be a protection measure.
This means that decrypting the game outside of the intended way by the copyright owner (Nintendo, on a Nintendo Switch) is argued to be illegal by default.
The law, as in how I interpret it, goes in that sense, but for some reason you are allowed to make an additional program that can "interoperate" with the protected works in question and explicitly is allowed to break the protection. This is a vague part, and could be used in defense of Dolphin, potentially.
The final answer can only be answered in a courtroom.
An interpretation of the Dolphin on Steam situation.
As a reminder, Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator, had announced a release of a Steam version using features from Steam like cloud save, Steam Deck native support and all.
A couple of days ago, Dolphin's Steam page was pulled down, then Dolphin's official blog mentioned a DMCA takedown, and PC Gamer reported on it, quoting the DMCA. Then we all went a bit crazy over this, then Delroth, a former Dolphin member, talked in a bit more detail, and debunked a misunderstanding.
You can still read this from Delroth here: https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440301402516214
All in all, the situation was misinterpreted from all sides, and to sum it up, according to Delroth: Valve asked Nintendo about this, and Nintendo said they don't want this, and quoted the DMCA's set of laws. In fact, not only Delroth says this, a lawyer contacted by PC Gamer essentially says the same thing in the updated report here.
One more preface: I am NOT a lawyer, legal text is very hard to fully grasp, this is only my own interpretation of the situation, what I am about to say may be VERY VERY WRONG. Got it?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a copyright law from 1998. It is made of several titles and acts. The first title contains the anti-circumvention part which we'll get to later. The second title contains the takedown process part.
DMCA Takedown
I'll get to the second title first:
To sum it up, this is the part where you can do a copyright infringement claim, a "notice and takedown" process. This process also includes the ability of a counterclaim.
NONE OF THIS HAPPENED ON DOLPHIN ON STEAM. Nintendo did not use this process. They just told Valve a reason, and it was Valve's decision alone that got the emulator removed, and they notified Dolphin of the reason.
I won't really debate much on this, it's not really interesting.
"Anti-circumvention"
Now, the anti-circumvention part, the meaty part. There's a lot of legal text, but I will translate to the best of my abilities to you, don't worry.
This is the part where I feel the least comfortable about, and again, this is an interpretation, but let's start again from that quote that I had (from PC Gamer, by the way):
the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act.
The thing is... I only said that indeed, the Wii Common Key, required to decrypt everything, is included in Dolphin's source code. It's... not necessarily the problematic point of this, as I tried to read more into it, and I will go back to the Lockpick_RCM actual DMCA takedown.
Lockpick_RCM is a Switch tool that gets a set of keys from your Switch console and puts them into an easy to read file that could be used in conjunction with other Switch tools. They're required to decrypt pretty much everything about the Switch, from games to other packages.
The use of Lockpick with a modified Nintendo Switch console allows users to bypass Nintendo’s Technological Measures for video games
A thing you read a lot is "Technological Measures"... turns out this has a bit of a definition in 17 U.S.C. §1201... or rather, in that text itself, here's the very first thing you can read:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(A)
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
The wording "circumvent a technological measure" happens to have a definition tied to it:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)
As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and (B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
It's a somewhat precise definition, actually, and purely relying on it... this makes pretty much everything Wii, 3DS, Wii U and Switch a very dangerous situation.
The "technological measure" also has a definition:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(B)
a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Basically it just means a DRM (Digital Rights Management) process of sorts.
A lot of people loves to talk about the previous lawsuits on emulators, but note that I never mentioned the emulation being the issue here.
Nintendo is NOT arguing, on a legal level anyway, that emulators are illegal by being one, their communication team does by stifling innovation in their public arguments.
According to 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(3)(A), just having encryption is enough to consider that they're protected, and just decrypting is already illegal... this affects a lot more than you think, it's not just Dolphin at this point, it seems we misunderstood a lot of things about the DMCA.
To sum it up more bluntly: I don't feel like the encryption key is the main argument, it's actually about what you do with it that they argue against.
So even if Dolphin removed the Wii Common Key, if they still include the decryption process, even if you provided the key yourself from your own system, EVEN your own Wii dumps, the argument here implies that since you're still decrypting the Wii dump data, this last part is argued to be illegal. This ain't right.
Now apply this to everything else, even if you decrypted the game beforehand so that Dolphin doesn't even decrypt anything, the problem would be moved to the dumper or the decrypter tool doing it. This applies to a lot of systems.
Considering the definition I showed earlier, this seems hard to argue against, however, notice that I never said anything as fact, and insisted that it is Nintendo's argument, legally speaking, I believe this is an important distinction to make.
Exceptions?
The law also explicitly defines exceptions to this, but please read carefully, because this is where I start to really interpret from here:
In 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(B), my understanding is that when the protection itself prevents legitimate use, then you are allowed to break it. That said, and this is important: The later subparagraphs defines these paragraphs as something that CANNOT BE USED AS A DEFENSE. This is only there to shield the Library of Congress from any attack, and to allow them to research the various impacts that the protection does and determine rules. Their ruling is also explicitly not allowed to be used as a defense in the text.
After reading a lot of this, I only found one thing that, very honestly, I find quite unclear. Subsection (f) about Reverse Engineering, is particularly showing how much they're not well versed in computer science.
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f) basically says if you're trying to understand how the program works, you are allowed to circumvent the protection, under the idea that you're doing analysis, or...
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(2)
for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
In the case of infringement, I believe this is about copyright in general, as the law suggests this does not affect copyright laws in any way.
So what is interoperability... well let's take the definition from there:
17 U.S.C. §1201 (f)(4)
For purposes of this subsection, the term “interoperability” means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.
So we're talking about the ability for a program to exchange information with the work, in this case, a game for example.
...what is this? Programs exchange information all the time. That's even the basis of a computer. Maybe there are other definitions, but frankly I can't be bothered to read even more legalese right now.
With just this, and not taking into account anything else, I feel like this allows emulators to work, they don't really modify the game, they try to run it within a sandbox, where a lot of information is exchanged to make sure the program runs as intended.
Oddly enough this would still make the ability to run those games on a modded Switch still illegal though, while emulators could be allowed to do this.
But make no mistake: This is not a legally tested argument. I need to repeat: This is an interpretation.
Lawsuits literally work with lawyers interpreting information and the laws, and argue. The whole idea of laws being unclear is not necessarily a fault, it's specifically why lawyers exist.
Why now? And what now?
Honestly, as much as Nintendo argued, for the time being, they have not shown any intention to take down Dolphin as a whole.
They could just argue as a scare tactic to prevent Dolphin to reach an even more mainstream status. I doubt Nintendo didn't know about Dolphin for that long.
Until I see an actual DMCA takedown, or worse against Dolphin itself, I'm going to assume Dolphin will stay up for a long time.
Removing the Wii Common Key from Dolphin will not change the situation, as it is the whole decryption process that the argument is about.
Whether Citra, Cemu, Yuzu and Ryujinx could have included the keys or not, the argument would still be the same here.
TL;DR of the complicated part
About the takedown itself:
Valve asked Nintendo about Dolphin on Steam, and they argued that Dolphin is illegal because it decrypts Wii games, and Valve, on their own accord, took down Dolphin from Steam from this.
(Note: GameCube does not use encryption and cannot be impacted by this.)
An actual lawyer also takes this as a warning from Nintendo to Valve according to PC Gamer.
About the argument that Nintendo used against Dolphin:
Encryption Keys are NOT the main point of contention, because...
The encryption itself, as a whole, is argued by Nintendo to be a protection measure.
This means that decrypting the game outside of the intended way by the copyright owner (Nintendo, on a Nintendo Switch) is argued to be illegal by default.
The law, as in how I interpret it, goes in that sense, but for some reason you are allowed to make an additional program that can "interoperate" with the protected works in question and explicitly is allowed to break the protection. This is a vague part, and could be used in defense of Dolphin, potentially.
The final answer can only be answered in a courtroom.
Recently I opened a new wiki titled FamiWiki with the current focus being the documentation of the Famicom software library, hardware, add-ons, and accessories.
The wiki was created for various reasons but one of the factors that led me into pursuing the creation of FamiWiki was my distaste of Famicom neglect on the English side of the internet. For many years it has collectively been decided by most western users that the Famicom is simply a regional variant of the NES. On paper this is fine, and mind you the lack of documentation of the Famicom is what most likely resulted in the acceptance of this belief. Especially back in the 2000s when hardly anyone outside of Japan knew what a Famicom is. Things have changed a lot within the past 2 decades though and at this point we should really start questioning our prior beliefs we had. Most who are into retro games know what a Famicom is, they probably couldn't tell you anything specific about the Famicom but they'd at least recognize it. FamiWiki aims to have proper documentation of the Famicom but most importantly draw the line between the Famicom and NES.
I made a post several months back about the console paradox. In the post I explained that folks tend to mix the terms console and platform as one thing, when in reality they are distinct terms. On FamiWiki we currently have the following definitions.
Console - A computer designed to play software made for it.
Platform - An ecosystem that encompasses the software designed for specific consoles.
It's more or less the same definitions given within that previous post, but now applied to FamiWiki. The result? We've been able to properly draw the lines between different consoles and platforms while also giving a name for everything in general.
This system we have in place is also very flexible when we need to include other oddities such as actual regional variants and other add-ons. We've been able to create something that's less confusing and makes more sense than what other wikis and websites currently have in place. The acceptance of this however is going to take a while to sink in but I'd imagine when FamiWiki becomes a useful resource for many to reference than that's when things are most likely to change and hopefully inspire the same change elsewhere.
Anyways stop calling the Famicom a Japanese NES when the Famicom actually released officially outside of Japan thus not making it Japanese exclusive.
