Your views on the emulation world

[Nightingale]

Never doubt the internet; they are constantly working on the most insane projects you can think of. I mean, it wasn't until about a week ago that I found out the Tiger Game.Com (pronounced "Game Com", no dot) had an emulator for its library of 20 games. Well, 21, if you count the prototype of Symphony of the Night that dropped this past Halloween. Do you even know what a Game.Com is?! Because I do! And it's as terrible as you think it is! Like, imagine the original Game Boy being released in 1999 instead of '89, and you about have what the Game.Com was! Like, you have not SEEN true garbage until you have seen its port of Resident Evil 2! It is IMPRESSIVELY terrible! So of course people are Speedrunning it.

My God, man. That's SO cool!

I do realize that I come across as some sort of digital garbage colector, but I wanna try that too XD

[Maniakkid25]

I'll be honest, I'm a fan of Jank, too. I was more trying to crack wise about the Jaguar when I originally said that comment about wanting a Jaguar emulator. But more than historical preservation, I like Jank because they're useful as teaching tools on what NOT to do. Oh, sure, there are masterclasses out there, but you can learn a lot from the dissection of games like American Hero and Neuro (and if you've never heard of Neuro, YOU ARE IN FOR A TRIP AND A HALF!) about what went wrong and why. It's WAY more interesting than just watching games that do it right!

[Nightingale]

I'll be honest, I'm a fan of Jank, too. I was more trying to crack wise about the Jaguar when I originally said that comment about wanting a Jaguar emulator. But more than historical preservation, I like Jank because they're useful as teaching tools on what NOT to do. Oh, sure, there are masterclasses out there, but you can learn a lot from the dissection of games like American Hero and Neuro (and if you've never heard of Neuro, YOU ARE IN FOR A TRIP AND A HALF!) about what went wrong and why. It's WAY more interesting than just watching games that do it right!

Nah, I totally get you and I never thought that you had ill-intentions with your comment - if anything, I really dig your sense of humor!

And I agree, it is always a good learning experience to pay a visit to the lowest of lows and to see what they contributed to the highest of highs.

That Neuro thing... wow. It is absolutely damming to the whole gaming scene that it got ignored at E3. Like, Holy Hell.

[Dragon Lord]

So I found out that Mumu (one of the various Android emulator companies out there) released a new version of the program back in August called Mumu Player X. What's the different between it and normal Mumu? Mainly that X uses Android 12 as a base for its OS. As fare as I am aware, it's the only emulator to run the newest version of Android. I believe Bluestacks runs the next highest version of Android, that being Android 9.

This is pretty big for the performance of the emulator. I'm a big fan of Mumu, so when I found out about Mumu X, of course I had to download it and give it a try right away.

It's performance is very good so far. I might stick to using this until GPGB finally gets around to adding Azur Lane and Neural Cloud (or AL at the very least -- I can stick to playing NC on my phone and tablet). There's a setting that emulators need to have turned on, but GPG makes you turn off, so I can't run both at the same time, and every time you turn the setting on or off, you have to restart you computer. So until all of my games are on GPG, I think I'll stick to using Mumu X for convenience.

[Moonface]

What Happened to Dolphin on Steam?
I'm sure most of you here are aware of the story about plans for Dolphin on Steam falling apart, but if not then a quick catch-up is that back in March, a page was put onto the Steam store for the Dolphin emulator. The page was then removed in May, and the people behind Dolphin announced the release on Steam would be postponed indefinitely, after a DMCA request was sent by Nintendo due to the emulator containing a key in its source code that is used to encrypt Wii game discs. A Nintendo spokesperson stated that Dolphin "illegally circumvents Nintendo's protection measures" and that "illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation".

Since then, not much has really been said about the whole ordeal, until the people behind Dolphin decided to put out this during the night: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/...-on-steam/

Here are a few notable takeaways from the whole statement:

Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512© notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.

What actually happened was that Valve's legal department contacted Nintendo to inquire about the announced release of Dolphin Emulator on Steam. In reply to this, a lawyer representing Nintendo of America requested Valve prevent Dolphin from releasing on the Steam store, citing the DMCA as justification. Valve then forwarded us the statement from Nintendo's lawyers, and told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam.

Wii and Nintendo GameCube game files, or ROMs, are encrypted using proprietary cryptographic keys. 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. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1). Distribution of the emulator, whether by the Dolphin developers or other third-party platforms, constitutes unlawful “traffic[king] in a[] technology . . . that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure . . . .” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2)(A).3

Dolphin is an independently created computer program that is circumventing Wii disc encryption for interoperability with Wii software. According to this exemption, this does not constitute infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 1201. This exemption even allows distribution of information collected through circumvention, like encryption keys, if it is for software interoperability.

We do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger. We can look to the end of the message Valve forwarded to us to show this. After all of the scary language, Nintendo made no demands and made only a single request to Valve.

We specifically request that Dolphin’s “coming soon” notice be removed and that you ensure the emulator does not release on the Steam store moving forward.

It's an overall rather interesting read just because it clears a lot of the uncertainty over what exactly happened. For example, that Valve reached out to Nintendo over putting the emulator on their store, and that it was not a DMCA takedown.

All in all though, as long as Nintendo doesn't decide to pursue this any further, it ultimately doesn't affect much, and the only benefit Dolphin had from being on Steam was that cloud saves would be possible using Steam. Other than that I get the impression it would've just been the same as just downloading it the way everyone has been doing so for years already. I've never had a reason to use Dolphin myself but I hope nothing happens to it only because of how it helps with game preservation. Nintendo can piss and moan about how it "stifles innovation" all they want but that's a pretty weak argument against an emulator being used for older games that are no longer sold nor playable on current systems, barring whatever ones got ported or remade or whatever.

[Maniakkid25]

I was today years old when I found out you can just straight buy ROMs off of Steam

So, I watch a youtuber called Rerez. That team is a pretty underrated video game review channel, but they do a lot more than just rage at bad video games, and this was one of them. They did an expose on emulation recently and, importantly, how you -- yes, YOU -- can obtain ROMs to emulate on whatever platform you so choose, and it's completely legal. Turns out, a lot of classic re-releases of games are just the ROM being emulated on proprietary software, and if you just go into the install folder, and rename it, it suddenly becomes a recognizable file that any emulation software can access. Piko Interactive is a name to look out for in this case: they often just have the ROMs you want just sitting in the install file because they own the rights, so they just can! This legit is blowing my mind that more publishers aren't doing this. For minimal investment, they can just dump a game onto a storefront of their choice, and it's basically free money just sitting on the table!

[Moonface]

My guess for why publishers don't do it is because they might think bringing attention to emulation could lead to people who weren't aware of it using it to obtain games without paying for them? Or if the ROM can't run without extra software that isn't included then you're selling a product that isn't technically working out of the box and people who don't know what to do are gonna get upset?

[ShiraNoMai]

Isn't the Glover port made/published by these folk?

[Maniakkid25]

Yes, and while the PC version is ass, it just comes out of the box with PSX and N64 builds. Multiples, basically a half dozen prototypes as well as the full game, immediately emulateable with the work being "load it up on RetroArch".

While yes, people would get annoyed if they bought it expecting an out of the box working product, there are plenty of products that sell with assembly required. As long as you advertise it correctly, it should be fine.