Hacking VC vs emulation on Wii: opinions?

[SG]

So basically, Nintendo's shoddy emulating (the size of games) along with their laughable 512MB storage has got me thinking.

One thing I was looking forward to on the Wii was that it wouldn't just be emulation - we'd get lovely little digital manuals as well. Well, given that the manuals are actually laughable compared to the paper equivalents and quite frankly, pretty fucking useless, I thought I would put it to the forum about emulation channels - specifically SNES and Genesis (and SMS I guess).

How do the Wii iterations of emulators fare compared to Nintendo's own VC games? Do they work the same or better at all (slowdown in DKC & SMW FTL)?

 

[fly_us]

First thing need to be consider is using ROM is illegal, isn't it?

Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[SG]

Installing WADs that you haven't paid for is illegal too.

And if you own the original of the ROM, it's a grey area.

 

[kedest]

(slowdown in DKC & SMW FTL)?

I did notice some occasional slowdown (frames skipping) when playing DKC3, using the 004 version of snes9xgx.
But in the unofficial 3.1 by LoPsT version, it seems to run at full speed all the time.

 

[Killer Phantom]

Except for N64 VC, emulation all the way.

More option.

 

[Meksilon]

First thing need to be consider is using ROM is illegal, isn't it?

Correct me if i'm wrong.

It depends, here in Australia there's no court precedent which would make copying an old game to another medium illegal; however that doesn't mean that a strict legal right exists either. But it's a trivial matter, frankly if I own the game, why should I care if it's "technically illegal" to play it on another system?

 

[Lumstar]

In some countries, the mere act of unauthorized dumping of a commercial ROM may be illegal. But it's largely a gray area.

Anyway. SNES emulators on Wii run countless games that'll likely never come to VC. Such as fan translations, ROM hacks, licensed titles, etc.

 

[Doomsday Forte]

In some countries, the mere act of unauthorized dumping of a commercial ROM may be illegal. But it's largely a gray area.

Anyway. SNES emulators on Wii run countless games that'll likely never come to VC. Such as fan translations, ROM hacks, licensed titles, etc.

Earthbound. ;_;

Nintendo didn't really think their system very smartly. I mean, Super Mario Bros. being, what, 80 blocks in size? And the actual ROM being (whatever meager size it was here)? Each game having its own emulator doesn't necessarily give you lots of space for lots of games. I wonder why they didn't go the approach of having the emulators built into the system, and then you could just download the ROMs?

Anti-piracy? Yeah right! Look how far that got them.

 

[Meksilon]

Nintendo didn't really think their system very smartly. I mean, Super Mario Bros. being, what, 80 blocks in size? And the actual ROM being (whatever meager size it was here)? Each game having its own emulator doesn't necessarily give you lots of space for lots of games. I wonder why they didn't go the approach of having the emulators built into the system, and then you could just download the ROMs?

Anti-piracy? Yeah right! Look how far that got them.

Yes that's one of the worst things about the VC (the worst being 50Hz for PAL, the second worst being the so-called "digital instruction manual"). It is useful for Nintendo in that each game has an individually programmed emulator - but that would work with simply updating the emulator in the Wii system, and would reduce the size significantly. There are two great benefits to emulation on the Wii (even if you're using an emulator for a different system, like ScummVM):

1. Only one channel.
2. Takes up very little room in the Wii System Memory; and all the games can be loaded from your SD-card (which for all intents and purposes is a permanent part of your Wii now).

As for the piracy of the VC games and then injected ROMS - Nintendo could have avoided this by using a single emulator for each system which they could update in such a way as to be more "picky" about what ROM it'll run. However, that is going even further down their ridiculous path of supreme control, as if they're not far gone enough already. Anti-piracy groups used to say this (and they still do): "an unauthorized copy is an inferior quality product"; but considering that in this case the unauthorized product is at worst an "equal quality" product, and at best a "better quality product", one would argue that it's Nintendo who should be doing more to add value to, and improve the quality of the official product over the competition of pirated VC titles and/or homebrew emulation. Let me restate this in a way Nintendo might actually understand: I have never, once, purchased a downloadable music file, though I've downloaded plenty. I have, however, purchased many CDs from stores over the years.

 

[Volkov]

Vs is legal, emulation is not..what's the point?

 

[Killer Phantom]

Vs is legal, emulation is not..what's the point?

VC you downloaded from the Internet isn't legal.

And why are we talking about legality here? This isn't GameFAQs.

 

[WiiCrazy]

Vs is legal, emulation is not..what's the point?

Your remark is iterating in itself since Virtual Console uses emulation too...

By the way here I remember asking a question about the nintendo's emulators. Regarding if did they write themselves or not... It seems most of them seems to be written by the appropriate companies yet there is a stong evidence that C64 emulator of VC seems to be rip off from open source gpl licensed c64 emulator frodo which should have come with the sources to be completely legal.

It's complicated...

ps: I informed the Frodo's original author about the case.

 

[GN-001 Exia]

I swear. after the first post you guys have been idiots. TC question was how does emulation compare to VC. not the legality of ROMs/Wads/Iso/etc. way to go off topic

 

[Lumstar]

Agreed, not worth debating. We already know it's illegal to download such ROMs or wads from the Internet.

 

[WiiCrazy]

I swear. after the first post you guys have been idiots. TC question was how does emulation compare to VC. not the legality of ROMs/Wads/Iso/etc. way to go off topic

Read the above posts you fool, there are comments regarding both legality and the emulation quality... If you really want to keep the forum in order go prick to the topics that have gazillion of pages of full .hit.

 

[GN-001 Exia]

oh noes I am a foool. Internets taken away. Please the majority of the posts here have been off topic including this one and yours. BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

 

[Killer Phantom]

Personally, I think that homebrew emulation is far better than VC emulation.

Take the latest SNES9XGX 004 emulator for example, it allows you to map your button so the games are playable with GC controller, while it is near impossible to play SMW properly on the VC using GC controller, you can play it perfectly with the customized button map.

Not to mention the color and stuff, you can modify them all, and almost all of them are perfect in performance.

Yes.

 

[Lumstar]

I'm not sure if BS-X games work yet, but Star Ocean without graphics packs!

 

[Killer Phantom]

I'm not sure if BS-X games work yet, but Star Ocean without graphics packs!

BS-X games...what is it?

I've seen several BS-X games in my collection, but I have no clue what they are.

Most notable BS-X games is in Zelda aLttP.

 

[Meksilon]

Agreed, not worth debating. We already know it's illegal to download such ROMs or wads from the Internet.

Yes, but it's not necessarily illegal to create those ROMs. I have a SNES copier which - if it was working correctly - could duplicate any game I owned, without any legal ramifications (at least none that I know of that have been legally established in the High Court of Australia). You could probably use it legally in the US too as it doesn't "circumvent" any form of DRM (in order to create the copy), so the "DMCA" wouldn't apply to its use in the slightest. Let's not forget that almost every law in any country that "governs" copyrights are entirely civil in nature, and not criminal; so stating a mere act of playing a game under emulation as "illegal" is quite misleading. It's a bit like saying that singing "happy birthday" in a public place is illegal; when it's long been established that the mere act of singing the song in a public place anywhere in Australia is not an act which would constitute any legal breach of the song's copyright. Nor would singing any copyrighted Christmas carol. Nevertheless, just the other week the news "reported" that "singing 'happy birthday' in a public place is illegal" - it's completely misleading, and false information, it's not "news" and it's not real reporting.

But it's also worth discussing the injected VC games, especially the N64 ones - specifically I'm thinking of "Super Smash Bros". I installed it on my Wii, and must say that my friends and I enjoyed playing it even more than my original Nintendo 64 version (after all my N64 is PAL, and thus runs in 50Hz - if anyone knows of a way to make a PAL N64 console run in 60Hz, I'd be forever in your debt). It plays much better than the original PAL Nintendo 64 version.