Glitch City Laboratories Archives

My financial aid got cut off, nobody in my circle has the credit & will to cosign a student loan, and nobody in my circle can afford to pay my tuition out of pocket. Help.

Something in case anyone is interested. I acknowledge some people may dislike me for this but I'm adamant about it now. It's something I've thought about lots of times before, but I'm adamant about stopping emulators for good, just because in England it's a crime/at least potentially a crime even if you dump your own ROMs (Nintendo in the past were/are against this since during the NES days). This means I won't be able to make more specific analysis to the ROMs.

At the same time I don't want to take the situation too far and stop/disagree with people who do. I don't want them to get in trouble but I don't want to endorse it either.

I will still be posting glitches on my channel and analysing unused content, but may avoid certain custom programs (i.e. memory editors, fan games) except cheating devices.

Yes I relate. I feel from one perspective it is a grey area, if you own the game what's wrong with having a copy for research, but also from Nintendo's perspective, unauthorised game copying has always been challenged or unendorced, and  they don't like derivative works (I'm not saying these are definitely illegal, I've heard (from a black and white no feelings perspective) above all terms of use, the jurisdiction body has the power in consideration to what e.g  Nintendo fights for.) On the other hand that's not necessarily correct as it seems a lot more complex than that.

So yeah I don't know if memory editors matter as much, but from Nintendo's employees point of view some of them don't like it. The Game Genie was challenged in court as a derivative work. In the end the developers of Game Genie won (the idea argued that it's more like skipping to the end of a book) yet it's probably not necessarily the case either. What if you used Game Genie to find those artidicial glitch Trainers as you're fighting trainers that likely don't exist outside of arbitrary code execution (I suppose if the game landed in the middle of the battle routine and skipped the -200 from class code, and that  goes into semantics too; is unintended ROM execution arbitrary code execution? It is and isn't it feels.

But also it's complex now ACE in video games is more mainstream, and you can write your own programs like memory editors and even custom sprites. It then becomes a subjective matter of 'what is a derivative work', in one sense you're not editing the physical ROM in another sense you created say a Yoshi which it is possible to keep on the save file until it is destroyed.

So it's like I don't want to have a guilty conscience or just feel that way in a sense that may be impossible unless I was like 'forget about it' which happened to me before.

I relate with how you feel though it's like I've betrayed the community and blindly appealed to the authority who bluntly are not gods, you don't have to obey them but you still might get caught, and for me it has made me feel I've betrayed both my fans and Nintendo and its  hurt my pride as well . I'm not going to be like that though re 'shoot if using emulator', people at the end of the day do what they like. I know it hurts though and I'm sorry for that. I'll still use a GameShark like device (physical cartridge) to analyse the code; reverse engineering for fair use historically has won to the best of my knowledge also I asked Nintendo directly about 3DS capture boards they asserted it's legal just they don't endorse it, that and that import games are fine after I got concerned with Lik-Sang (?) and Japan state being elevated about it.

In a nut shell I respect your opinion but I feel like I have to do this too.

that's fair. I just feel like power users of… anything, really, are being caged in and forced to be end-users because some corp wants to keep some s**t, inferior code to themselves.

Hm. I guess I'll keep it brief and just agree to disagree, as I've never thought about it much myself. At the very worst I feel like it could be a "park anywhere but leave before the tow truck" situation, but what you do is up to you.

It's something I've thought about lots of times before, but I'm adamant about stopping emulators for good […]

At the same time I don't want to take the situation too far and stop/disagree with people who do. I don't want them to get in trouble but I don't want to endorse it either.

..Wha?

Evie, are you talking about making all emulators illegal for _everyone_, or are you just saying you're not going to personally use them?

If it's the former, then no.