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Nintendo Nixes YouTube Videos of Super Mario Speedruns

Posted by timothy on from the you-mean-they-also-buy-games? dept.

The Boston Globe reports (based on Kotaku's story earlier this month) that Nintendo is cracking down on YouTube videos which show speedruns of its games -- computer-guided play that skips completely human hands pressing buttons on a controller. Why? The article notes that these play-throughs "require the use of ROMs, digital backup files of the original game that can be freely passed from computer to computer, or downloaded from well-known websites. Therefore, Nintendo reasons — and YouTube is clearly sympathetic to this reasoning — there are copyright issues at play, since players aren’t using the (ancient) original game cartridges, or newer copies sold directly online by Nintendo." Legally justifiable or not, this seems unlikely to build goodwill with some of Nintendo's most nostalgic fans.

3 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You don't need a ROM in order to do speedruns.. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not only that, but there are things like Retrode ( https://www.dragonbox.de/en/63... ) that allow you to make your own ROM - file from an original cartridge that you own or just play directly from the cartridge using an emulator.

  2. Re:You don't need a ROM in order to do speedruns.. by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    But you can dump your own ROM. Or at least, you can get the same version ROM that matches a cart you bought at the flea market. So that's not necessarily illegal, either.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Re:You don't need a ROM in order to do speedruns.. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is absolutely nothing about a speedrun being tool-assisted that requires pirated software. The Retrode I just linked, for example, is a really easy and simple way of using your own, original cartridges. Also, there are plenty of videos on the Internet where people are using original consoles and cartridges connected to automated, modified controllers -- ie. tool-assisted runs.