Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Hot_Dog on June 18, 2011, 12:16:35 am
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Are there any NES games that are either public domain or open source? I don't care whether they're "official" games or "unofficial" games. However, I am not interested in hacks.
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Hmm good question. It would be nice to know, that's for sure.
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As far as I am aware, no. I also doubt that I'm wrong about any games that I've never heard of, because Nintendo kept programming pretty tightly controlled for the system (hence the use of the cartridges).
If you'd still like to learn from games, someone did a disassembly of Metroid and went through relabeling everything so it made sense. I actually found a link to it on Omni, of all places :P
http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/ (http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/)
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I think it exists indeed. In fact, I'm pretty sure it exists.
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As far as I am aware, no. I also doubt that I'm wrong about any games that I've never heard of, because Nintendo kept programming pretty tightly controlled for the system (hence the use of the cartridges).
If you'd still like to learn from games, someone did a disassembly of Metroid and went through relabeling everything so it made sense. I actually found a link to it on Omni, of all places :P
http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/ (http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/)
I actually got all the information I needed, but if a game is protected, I don't think it's legal to take its .ROM and port the game, which was my goal.
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There are at least two originally open source NES games. Both were developed targeting NES emulators, not the real hardware.
1) Escape from pong: http://hcs.freeshell.org/efp.html
2) NESMine: http://code.google.com/p/nesmine-game/
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Please don't necropost. That said, there's probably more homebrew for the NES out there considering the massive fan community for this console.
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Although it is an old topic, the post is actually relevant.
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I agree on that point. But even then it's still a necro.
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But it's an acceptable necro. That means that it is allowed by forum rules :P
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Yeah sorry I wasn't clear. I was just warning a new member against making it an everyday practice. :P Heck, I even contributed to the topic.
Back on topic. I found a pretty extensive list : http://www.nesworld.com/homebrew.php Since homebrew dev is mostly open source/PD/free software the most part of it must fall in this category./me hides in shame as this is the first result upon googling "nes homebrew" :P
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That is an acceptable necro. it contributes to a topic that is a discussion that can and could continue on.
regardless nifty. I wonder how they would fair on hardware seeing as they were targeted to emulators
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Interesting Street. As for open source and public domain NES games, I assume this would apply mainly to ones that were never sold, right? (If they were commercialized, they would be unlicensed games, like Tengen or Wisdom Tree games and the Chinese pirate carts (I have one of those, but it doesn't work very well due to graphics being glitchy).
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Well one thing's for sure is that the NES patents no longer apply hence all the hardware clones. Same goes for the SNES and all three GameBoys. Probably the N64 too since it's older than the GBA. Not sure about the GameCube though.
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Most unlicensed games would still be copyrighted, and not likely public domain or open source. Tengen in fact was owned by Atari.
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Well one thing's for sure is that the NES patents no longer apply hence all the hardware clones. Same goes for the SNES and all three GameBoys. Probably the N64 too since it's older than the GBA. Not sure about the GameCube though.
Wait, don't those patents last like 20 years? Because I thought the GBA wasn't old enough to be cloned legally (it came out in 2001).
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Wait, doens't Nintendo refresh the patents?
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Well there are some GBA clones or there. Like this one : http://www.k1gba.com
Or this : http://www.k1gbasp.com
Both are different, don't get confused by the URLs.
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There are a lot of patents or copyrights that are no longer refreshed by the companies who hold them. I do not know about Nintendo consoles though.
Thing is, even if patents are still pending, clones are not necessary illegal. A company can allow other to use their patents. The thing with clones is that Nintendo doesn't care about them.
They stopped making NES and NES games long ago. They no longer get revenue from the console. Also, most people don't care about 25 year old consoles. Companies making clones do not make a lot of money off them (compared to current-gen consoles) and they do not hurt current-gen consoles sales. It would be more of a pain for Nintendo to sue people who make clones or ROMS or whatever of old consoles rather than let them do their thing.
So go ahead, download any ROM or any ISO off the internet and play them on emulators or clones, no one will care enough to stop you. If anything it could allow Nintendo to make extra sales if for example you were to play the old Zeldas unlegitimately, then like the series and buy Skyward Sword, A Link Between Worlds or Wind Waker HD (plus the consoles those are played on of course).
The only thing I see that could piss them off is that they make less sales of Virtual Console games, but those don't bring in the revenues the new games do, so they don't seem to mind that. They just know there is a market for retro games and people stupid enough to actually buy them because "Hey! I can play the original LoZ on my Wii now! Thanks Nintendo!".
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Well yeah, up to the GameCube, those games are no longer being sold so it's no harm to download the ROMs. Still, we are encouraging piracy from a legal point of view. :P
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I think Nintendo sued a clone company once but they lost the cause, plus it was before 2003, the year the Famicom patents expired.
As for retro gaming a lot of younger people will just download games on emulators (or a flash cart) or buy them digitally for cheap rather than buying expensive cartridges that you have to blow into or clean, because they don't care as much about the nostalgia factor and it's cheaper (I mean, Earthbound on the VC is $8 maybe and in cart form it's $160.
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Well I prefer the real thing with some way to run games off a flash media to collecting crappy disks and bulky cartridges or emulation. Unless I mod a Raspberry Pi or an FPGA clone into the real console. I won't buy any clones personally.
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I have a NES/SNES clone called RetroDuo, but I heard that sometimes it had overheating problems and could produce smoke when used for too long if defective, plus in my case it is even harder to get NES games to play in it than my actual NES (which is quite ironic considering I have the front loading model). Same for SNES. Retron is apparently quite good, though.
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I heard there are compatibility issues with clones. That's one reason why I want to avoid them, but also due to the fact that it's not the same as having the real thing if you know what I mean. :P
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Yeah such as Mario RPG. More recent clones such as the Retron are pretty much emulators, though, so the compatibility is pretty much identical to ZSNES and Snes9x. As for having the real thing, remember that you can plug real SNES controllers to some clones. The ones that come with it usually suck (although the 1997 SNES gamepads weren't that much better).
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True about the controllers but it's still not the real console. :P Yes I insist on having the original system.