My friend is known to be a bullshitter, but not usually when I can call him on something - he told me about this thing ... this set of controllers or something that plugs directly into your A/V outlet - it has over 70,000 or 7,000 or some ridiculous amount of old Nintendo games (he mentioned Sega games too) actually built INTO this "system" (which allegedly is only the set of controllers and a gun that plug into the A/V). He told me he's gonna find out the name of the thing for me - but I don't think this exists. Just simply for the fact that I haven't heard of it ever, and I visit game sites fairly regularly...I figure I would have come across this godsend of a product. Anybody have an idea?
How to Make the Wienerboard a Better Place, Chapter 2: If you're going to make a smart-ass remark, make sure you know why you're saying it.
Originally posted by FurryHippieMy friend is known to be a bullshitter, but not usually when I can call him on something - he told me about this thing ... this set of controllers or something that plugs directly into your A/V outlet - it has over 70,000 or 7,000 or some ridiculous amount of old Nintendo games (he mentioned Sega games too) actually built INTO this "system" (which allegedly is only the set of controllers and a gun that plug into the A/V). He told me he's gonna find out the name of the thing for me - but I don't think this exists. Just simply for the fact that I haven't heard of it ever, and I visit game sites fairly regularly...I figure I would have come across this godsend of a product. Anybody have an idea?
(edited by FurryHippie on 15.12.03 2252)
If it's the same thing that they're selling at the mall here, it's a pirated little device that plays, like, 70 games. They just repeat the same games thousands of times. I've played it (gives me something to do when I'm not on break long enough at work) and it works fine... the controls are a tad mushy, though. Does Power Player ring a bell? That's the name printed on these boxes.
EDIT: Upon further review, this (famiclone.emucamp.com) is what I'm talking about... look familiar? There is a connector on the back, which this page says is for the Mega Drive 2. Dunno if that's compatible with US Genesis games, since I haven't been able to try it out. The only good game on there that I can remember is Contra, although it does have Hogan's Heroes. Want an easier way to play all those games, and thousands more? Get a Dreamcast, download the ROMs, burn them to a CD with NesterDC, and have at it. Same price, too.
(edited by drjayphd on 16.12.03 0416)
(edited by drjayphd on 16.12.03 0417) Today's Out-Of-Context Quote, Courtesy ofJoseph Ryder:
"Sure, some guys here and there started fondling his balls, but it's nothing to get jealous over."
Ahhhhh yes, thanks a lot - this must be what he's talking about. Hm...70 games that repeat? If these 70 games are good ones then maybe it's worth getting.
There are dozens of these types of pirate NES/Famicoms and several for other systems as well. There are actually a couple of legal ones for Atari 2600. I saw one at Wal-Mart that was a replica of the 2600 joystick and had 20 Atari 2600 games built in to it.
Of the NES clones, the best one I've seen was the one that looked identical to an N64 controller.
And if you really want to run ROMs on your television, the X-Box is FAR superior to Dreamcast when it comes to emulation. If you don't use X-Box live, you can even mod your X-Box without even having to open the system. (Though, for really old systems (as opposed to just pretty old systems) Dreamcast is often easier to use, even if the emulation isn't as good.)
I was pretty surprised to see those those being sold at a mall last holiday season. I believe they come with hacked or reprogrammed versions of the games so as to get around copyright issues. So, you'd be playing Super Mario Bros., except you'd be controlling a pickle or cat sprite, and stomping on generic blob enemies. The units seemed pretty shoddy to me, so I didn't investigate whether or not they had good games. I'd rather play the real thing, anyway.
The official ones I've seen have Activision and Atari games, although there might be more.
There is a licenced Intellivision direct-to-TV controller -- two, actually, with 10 and 25 games respectively.
The Dreamcast requires _zero_ tweaking to run properly-burned emulator discs (no modding, no boot discs, no hacks required), can run just about anything pre-SNES at full speed, and costs about thirty or forty bucks these days. Sounds like a better deal to me.
"There were times when I intensely wanted to walk out of the theater and into the fresh air and look at the sky and buy an apple and sigh for our civilization, but I stuck it out." -- Roger Ebert
Hey... this is an area that I really want to stay out of. Most of you should know better.
To reiterate: ROM emulation is an area I'd rather not cover. There are plenty of places on the web where you can discuss it. Most of the uses for it are not legal, so I'd just like to stay on the safe side of things and not talk about it.
Let's stick with discusisng the pirated, non-licensed (as far as I could tell) NES devices for sale at the mall.
Back on topic here, I stopped and picked up the box and looked for the licensed from Nintendo sticker on the one at the mall here. Needless to say, there wasn't one - and there was no copyright information for any of the game data. This doesn't prove that they are pirated - but I'm pretty sure that Nintendo copyrights everything -- even the throw away leaflets inside of their games-- so not putting copyright notices for a licensed game would strike me as very odd.
I asked the guy if it was legal, and he said it was, so I asked him to prove it. I asked him where the licensing information was, and he just turned away. You think they would at least have a lie ready. I think he said "Made in China!" one time in response to something I asked.
I would think the mall would have some liability in this. Maybe I should call Nintendo?
(edited by Guru Zim on 17.12.03 0806) Willful ignorance of science is not commendable. Refusing to learn the difference between a credible source and a shill is criminally stupid.
Nintendo doesn't have the resources to mount legal cases against the legion of piraters out there. Nobody does. Much like the RIAA-vs-P2P war, Nintendo makes a lot of noise and makes token efforts now and then, but they know that trying to stamp out every last infringing item is a hopeless cause, particularly since most of the devices like the one being discussed are being sold by small gray-market retailers. If they can keep them out of Kay-Bee and Toys 'R' Us, they're not as frantic about them being available at a little shop in Chinatown or at some flea market.
Again, it's sort of like the MP3 war; the RIAA goes after the most obvious target that's making illicit goods _easily available_ to Joe Average (first Napster, then Kazaa), and generally the subset of those who are making _popular and easily identifiable_ goods available for mass consumption. Likewise, Nintendo will pursue ROM sites and mass-marketed devices containing direct dumps of their titles, but do they care that much if someone's selling devices that are mostly other companies' games?
"There were times when I intensely wanted to walk out of the theater and into the fresh air and look at the sky and buy an apple and sigh for our civilization, but I stuck it out." -- Roger Ebert
Well, this was in the middle of Westfield's Mission Valley Mall - not exactly backwoods or Chinatown. I feel that Westfield should know better, especially since it was all that the kart was selling.
I wonder if I can get a kart to sell other illegal items in a Westfield mall?
Willful ignorance of science is not commendable. Refusing to learn the difference between a credible source and a shill is criminally stupid.
And my local Kay-Bee Outlets have these NES knockoffs as well. Sites like ThinkGeek have them for sale, too.
I'm not saying that the handhelds are 100% in compliance with American copyright law; far from it. Looking at a typical game list reveals HORDES of games that are other companies' property, some hacked, some as-is. I'd be hard-pressed to say that anything on the list is either public-domain or independently developed.
What I'm saying is that if Nintendo and the other games' designers choose not to prosecute, then yes, you could get a kart and sell these gadgets in the middle of your local mall and get away with it. There are lots of other illegal items you could get away with, too. Whether your ethics would allow you to do so is another matter entirely, and if Nintendo should happen to choose to sue you as an example to the others, you'd be at a substantial legal disadvantage.
Nintendo is quite used to having their hardware and games ripped off. When it's something that might make a serious dent in their bottom line, such as sites that sell flash carts for "backing up" GBA games, they go postal (Lik-Sang certainly found that out the hard way). When it's something that's their property but isn't a current money-maker, they send out occasional waves of threats (hence ROM sites are like Whac-a-Mole; one pops up, cease-and-desist order goes out, it goes down, another pops up).
And it's not as if the NES is the first system this has happened to, either... not that that's an excuse.
On the plus side, the Intellivision handheld I mentioned _is_ officially licensed and has my seal of approval...
(edited by vsp on 17.12.03 1014) "There were times when I intensely wanted to walk out of the theater and into the fresh air and look at the sky and buy an apple and sigh for our civilization, but I stuck it out." -- Roger Ebert
On an interesting, sort of related note, the NES and N64 games found on the free Zelda Collection disc for GameCube used ROMs and emulators to get the games working on GCN. Not only that, they either downloaded the ROMs from the Internet or dumped them themselves using one of the copiers they fought so hard against (but are now legal thanks to the Library of Congress.) The NES ROMs had full iNES headers which was a format developed by emulator authors, not Nintendo. (Sega also used not only ROMs but an independently developed emulator for the PC version of the Sega Smash Pack.)
Originally posted by Guru ZimThis doesn't prove that they are pirated - but I'm pretty sure that Nintendo copyrights everything -- even the throw away leaflets inside of their games
I *know* they do that. Or at least, they used to.
Back when renting out Nintendo games first started getting big, a friend of the family that owned a video store got into a bit of trouble with The Big N for photocopying the instruction manuals of games (that his store owned) so that he'd always have them with his rentals.
Of course, back then Nintendo seemed to enjoy bitching at the rental business in general because they thought they were costing them money, so they may've lightened up since then... but I doubt they've stopped copyrighting every single item inside a box stamped with their Seal Of Approval (the box, of course, also being copyrighted.)
Kansas-born and deeply ashamed The last living La Parka Marka
"They that can give up essential liberty to gain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
How to Make the Wienerboard a Better Place, Chapter 2: If you're going to make a smart-ass remark, make sure you know why you're saying it.Yup, the one where I saw this was a Westfield place, too (even though they changed the name to have Westfield in it, it's still the Square, goddammit). (arches eyebrow)
And I'm pretty sure this thing's about as legal as a freshly downloaded ROM, too... you could probably say the same thing about every device like this except the Intellivision (dunno about the Atari) ones.
InVerse: iNES headers? Eenteresting... people are probably working on swiping the emulator as I type.
How to Make the Wienerboard a Better Place, Chapter 2: If you're going to make a smart-ass remark, make sure you know why you're saying it.
Originally posted by jermI was under the impression that the ones I linked were licensed by the game companies. Wouldn't that make them legal? There's also a Namco one, too.
If they are, then yeah. But you're probably not gonna get hunted down for buying one.
on the shelves The Club (The W at Amazon) (gamestats) Third person shooter, adding elements of time trials and combos (the faster you kill people, and the bigger bunches you kill them in, the higher the score.)