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Nintendo Nixes YouTube Videos of Super Mario Speedruns
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.
What the deuce? Yes, there are *some* people out there who use ROMs, hacked or otherwise, for their speedruns, but there are quite a few people who do them using stock consoles and vanilla cartridges. I can understand Nintendo getting upset about hacked gameplay, but they should not penalize people who glitch games or simply try to play as fast as possible.
It's also bullshit because that's a handy way to get kids into the guts of computing. They see it and think "I want to do that!" And they can. They can get an emulator, they can get the ROM, and all of a sudden they're looking at the machine code trying to figure out how it makes all the bleeps and the bloops on the screen.
I think that's missing in this age of locked-down everything. Back in my day (THERE. I SAID IT. I SAID IT.) I got into programming by copying the BASIC code for games out of the back of magazines into my Apple IIe. You realize all the stuff on the screen and all action comes from things humans wrote...and it's not really that much...and this is neat and all but how I make the ships move a little faster? Oh, that must be this part of the code right here...I'll change that to a 5 instead of a 4 and look the ships go faster!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.
They're not penalizing normal speedruns, the summary is baiting you into thinking that. If you read the article you'll see that they're targeting tool-assisted speedruns, i.e.: ones that use pirated software.
1. Retards -- let's piss off the consumers ...who _used_ to buy your stuff; Keep it up and Nintendo will find they won't have any consumers left to sell to.
2. Can someone smack Nintendo's Marketing dept with a sudden-outbreak-of-common-sense please?
Speed runs are FREE publicity.
This is the best advertising money can buy -- when consumers _willingly_ advertise your product for you without it costing you a cent! /sarcasm Nah, can't have that -- let's waste money on bullshit DMCA and drive a wedge between consumers.
3. Part of creating something for the culture to enjoy is that it BECOMES part of the culture -- ergo, the limited terms of copyright.
4. Why am I _not_ allowed to use an emulator if I legally have a physical cartridge? The medium is irrelevant -- I already purchased a license by physically buying the cartridge.
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.'"
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.
Or at least, you can get the same version ROM that matches a cart you bought at the flea market.
This is illegal, you know, for the reasoning described in the opinion of the court in UMG v. MP3.com . To take advantage of the necessary adaptation and backup provisions of US copyright law (17 USC 117), you have to dump the ROM yourself. And you can't just buy an NES Game Pak reader at the same flea market. Even the Retrode never supported NES format; it came with Super NES and Sega Genesis cartridge readers, and most adapters fit in one of those slots.
Here's a list of tool assisted speed runs that are actually run on real hardware with a real copy of software : http://tasvideos.org/Movies-Ve...
Getting things to sync to real hardware is amazing that so much effort FROM FANS has gone into preserving these games in emulators that it works outside of those emulators.