No Excuse For Less-Than-Legal ROMs Anymore? 73
jvm writes "As per a previous story, you can now buy some Atari ROMs legally from StarROMs. I've selected 14 games, easily paid for them, downloaded the ROM images, and then played the games. For completeness, I even confirmed with Atari that StarROMs is legit. Now, I've posted on why it's time to pay up or admit you're a pirate."
Re:I'm a pirate and I'm okay. (Score:1, Funny)
I sleep all night. I steal all day.
Mateys : He's a pirate, and he's okay.
He sleeps all night and he steals all day.
I cut down masts. I eat my lunch.
I go to the lavatory.
On Wednesdays I go swashbucklin'
And have buttered rum in tea.
Mateys: He cuts down masts. He eats his lunch.
He goes to the lavatory.
On Wednesdays he goes swashbucklin'
And has buttered rum in tea.
Chorus : I'm (He's) a pirate, and I'm (he's)
Re:I'm a pirate and I'm okay. (Score:1)
So, not only is he a nagging writer, he's an idiot for handing over money to a possibly illegal source of roms.
Dear god, they post any shit on Slashdot these days don't they...
Thanks, I'll stick to downloading games from this century:)
Re:I'm a pirate and I'm okay. (Score:1)
However, the fact is most, if not all of the games I emulate I PAID FOR TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO! How is it piracy to download the rom of, say, Activision's Starmaster, which I got for Christmas around 1983 or so?
The article is like a nagging mother.
Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, Motorhead. I miss that game but I can't run it on anything over 98 and it doesn't play well without the Voodoo Glide drivers.
Better yet, Transport Tycoon. I think that game was way ahead of it's time and for some reason largly ignored. Still building a really intricate train system that linked into your truks and air transports was great. Too bad the AI competition was pathetic.
Re:Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:2)
Re:Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:1)
Re:Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:2)
For example, Motorhead. I miss that game but I can't run it on anything over 98 and it doesn't play well without the Voodoo Glide drivers.
If only they'd coded the game for some kind of VM...
All of Infocom's games are still playable - and most of them not only on PCs, but on practically every computer imaginable.
Re:Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:2)
http://thcnet.net/error/index.php [thcnet.net]
Re:Now if they did that for older PC games... (Score:1)
Re:Arr matey !!! (Score:2)
If you'd like more games to be avaliable, you can encourage companies other than Atari to follow suit - by purchasing the Atari games at StarRoms.
The small number (Score:2)
How else am I supposed to play things like the C64 version of Paradroid, or the old, old version of Neuromancer?
If it was possible to buy these games at a low price, let alone at all then I'd be more than happy to, but for the moment I have no choice but to break the law.
Which sucks when all you want to do is reminisce.
Pirate? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Ye want a pirate keyboard [pirate.org] to go with yer roms?
I already purchased a few of these (Score:1, Interesting)
What about my actual collection of Atari Lynx games? Am I entitled to play the arcade version of APB if I own the Lynx version? In a way, it's format shifting like CD->MP3, but in another way it's really not.
Re:I already purchased a few of these (Score:2)
A copyright holder cannot copyright media, and cannot license it, they can only grant license to what they have copyrighted... the lyrics themselves, the actual combination of notes. This is what they have a copyright for and therefore what you have a license for.
However a port of a game from one platform to another is a bit different, what is copyrighted is the code and the code is not the same.
Re:I already purchased a few of these (Score:1)
And what about photographers. Is a photograph not copyrightable?
or a painting of something.
Both paintings (still lifes) and photographs are copies of something out there, not truly original in the same sense as a newly created songs. Yet if a photographer brings their own perspective (or luck) to a scene and gets the perfect shot that has to be worth something, I I doubt anyone would argue that anything more then the most trivial painting has alittle bit of the pai
Re:I already purchased a few of these (Score:2)
However, the same mix, of the same song, from the same recording, = ONE copyright, recorded onto a cassete tape, those big black round things, a cd, or an mp3 is ALL the same license. It's the same recording, it's the recording to which they hold copyright, not the recording on x media.
Re:I already purchased a few of these (Score:1)
Pretty please?
one exception (Score:2)
I'm building a MAME machine just for using these legal ROMs - their collection is still quite small, but there _are_ some real classics in there. They just need to add to their collection, big-time. I can't _believe_ that Red Baron is on their list - too cool!
Good News (Score:2)
Dig Dug
Mr. Do!
Qix
Donkey Kong
Star Castle
Pacman
Ms Pacman
Hopefully, others will follow Atari's lead.
Re:Good News (Score:2)
I recently (6 months ago?) purchased for my wife a MS compliation that has Dig Dug, Pole Position, Ms and regular Pacman, Galaxian (i think), and maybe a couple other games in it.
So I assume other companies won't
Re:Good News (Score:1)
The thing is that they still can't recreate the original in all of it's quirks.
Re:Good News (Score:2)
I also don't see how a document of hundreds of pages would be required for a game whose entire source code would probably fit on 20 pages.
selection (Score:2)
The other odd part is that in some sense, people might not play the ROMs that much...they just want to see a game that maybe they've heard about, or the title sounds intriguing.
I agree that if you play a game every one in a while, you should pay up. But, in a big way it's lik
Re:selection (Score:2)
talking about this stuff 5 years ago... [google.com]
I'll admit it (Score:1)
Majority of them are translations of japanese games that were never released here. I am glad that people do these translations since it gives us a chance to play those games that we never had a chance to play before (unless you read japanese and where able to import the game and japanese system)
I'm not ashamed that I have these games.. alot of them I haven't played much. Theres a few that I go back and finish from time to time (Final fantasy games for example but I have the org
Righteous Twit (Score:3, Interesting)
But how much money has he donated to the MAME project? Time/Effort? Webspace?
How does he think those ROMS got their value back? Magic?
How much intrinsic value is there in these games? It's nigh impossible to find these games in their native format. And without MAME these games would've been long forgotten and written off. You can't market them by current standards because Atari Football looks pretty sad compared to Madden 2003.
How much of a market *IS* there for games without OUR (the gamers) effort to keep them alive! And how much intrinsic value is there in OUR effort to maintain a piece of video-game history that would've been happily relegated to the same junk heaps of E.T. 2600 if suits had had their way. (Except for the occasional, hey let's release Tempest again along with some other classics, but not Major Havoc because Nobody remembers that game)
Is Atari going to compensate the developers of MAME out of these ROM sales? I mean, how else am I supposed to play these games?
But no no... keep throwing names like "pirate" around...
Re:Righteous Twit (Score:3, Informative)
"StarROMs believes that emulators play an important role in the preservation of classic video games. A portion of StarROMs annual profits will be donated to projects that help support the legal emulation of classic video games." Here's the link [starroms.com].
So Atari won't be compensating MAME anytime soon, but ROM redistributors just might.
A portion of annual profits...dissapointing (Score:2)
A portion of StarROMs annual profits will be donated to projects that help support the legal emulation of classic video games.
The problem with this sentence is, it's as good as a politicians statement or any CEOs statement nowadays. a portion is anything from 99.9% down to some cents. And even worse, they wrote annual profits which can be increased and decreased nearly at will by using tax things like 'one-time-expenses', 'cost of stock options for CEO', 'savings for later' etc. (I know that company is n
Re:Righteous Twit (Score:2)
yes but nearly nobody has ever heard of it, all it did was maybe inspire MAME to preserve the history. Who did it first is irrelevant.
"Surely not eveyrone with thousands or ROMs can wrap himself in the flag of protecting those bits from the scrapheap of history?"
making redundant copies is least thing these people are doing to preserve the bits from the scrapheap. It's playing them and inviting friends to do the s
who ever thought they weren't a pirate? (Score:2)
Perhaps some people use the euphamism "abandonware," but the legality is no different and the crime is the same. But show me one person for whom legality defines all morality. What kind of person would download illegal ROMs and then wrestle with themselves over the moral implications? Either download them, or avoid- I doubt many people rationalize and hallucinat
Re:who ever thought they weren't a pirate? (Score:2)
From dictionary.reference.com [reference.com]:
pirate
n.
1.
a. One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation.
b. A ship used for this purpose.
2. One who preys on others; a plunderer.
3. One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization.
4. One that operates an unlicensed, illegal television or radio station.
So I'm still a pirate.... (Score:1)
My thoughts exactly (Score:1)
Once they start hosting more titles I have a vested interest in, I'll give them my money.
Re:So I'm still a pirate.... (Score:2)
Some math: (Score:2)
Less than 100 (StarRoms isn't the only source. I'm counting things like Sega Smash Pack for the PC. There's still very few).
Number of games supported by MAME:
About 2000 unique titles.
Number of unique PCEngine, Vectrex, Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 and other non-readibly available games:
A very large portion.
Seems Slashdot is using an exotic definition of the word "no."
Old PC games - (Score:1)
Many old PC games don't work on new hardware, for various reasons.
PC games aren't like Atari games, every PC is different, each Atari 2600 is identical.
Solution? Buy an older PC on eBay [ebay.com] (486 or whatever you please). Cheap. The shipping will most likely cost more than the computer itself.
The best part of it is, you can get REAL SoundBlaster sound cards, etc for them, because some of the older games are just too picky to run on todays hardware, even with helper programs and such.
Re:Old PC games - (Score:1)
Heh. Some time ago I ran Betrayal at Krondor, which was the second PC game I ever got. After minimal AUTOEXEC/CONFIG changes, it actually started up right from Windows98, and my USB keyboard and mouse worked right away.
The only problem was the soundcard. SoundBlaster setting just didn't work with SBLive!... then I tried the General MIDI support. And my God, that sounded awesome. Samples didn't work, but the music was far more epic than what I got on the ol' SBPro =)
Just a little bit worried what will ha
Ohh Well (Score:1)
Right of First Sale (Score:2, Interesting)
The reply came two days later, and was very clear that the right to the use the ROMs was non-transferable, meaning that according to the company, anyway, you can't actually sell the ROM to somebody else. (Obviously, I'm not talki
Re:Right of First Sale (Score:2)
Re:Right of First Sale (Score:2)
I admit it... (Score:2)
Piracy vs. Sharing (Score:2, Insightful)
Arg Maties!! If ye be perpetuating the myth that boarding a ship and stealing booty(physical, tangible goods) is the same as copyright infringement, then you are mistaken.
I am so sick of hearing people say that "it's just like shoplifting". If I wasn't going to pay for it, and I didn't deprive anyone else of the opportunity to purchase it, where is the monetary loss? I fail to see it.
If I couldn't download roms to play, that doesn't m
So Share (Score:2)
See, I'm not even going to copy any bits, I just want to move some around. You like to share right? So set the information free! Its just bits on some server somewhere not real physical property.
I'll take the fact that you don't post that information to mean that you are a hypocrite. Please, share with us. You say you l
Re:So Share (Score:1)
Re:So Share (Score:2)
I'll explain this as well as I can to someone who fails to grasp the concept.
lets say we have a file, song.mp3
if I
cp song.mp3 songcopy.mp3
mv song.mp3
sync
umount
I made a copy! I can now give the floppy for a friend and my song.mp3 is STILL THERE!!!! Nothing is missing!!!
Now if I simply...
mv song.mp3
sync
umount
And give it to my friend, he now has my song.mp3 file and I have non for myself, we've MOVED it instead of making a copy of it.
Re:So Share (Score:2)
Actually... song.mp3 is gone. Luckily, you copied it and songcopy.mp3 is still around. I think you meant to cp song.mp3 /mnt/floppy.
Besides it is much easier just to cp song.mp3 /mnt/floppy/songcopy.mp3. It saves a step. :)
Re:So Share (Score:2)
We wouldn't want to go too fast now, just one concept at a time.
I'm confused, somebody help (Score:1)
Re:I'm confused, somebody help (Score:1)
In the Pac-Man case I think they just pay eachother licenses when they release a Pac-Man related game.
Re:I'm confused, somebody help (Score:2)
Atari Inc was split into two companies in 1984. The home game and computer part, Atari Corp, and the arcade game part, Atari Games. Williams acquired Atari Games in 1996. Atari Corp wound up in the hands of Infogrames via JTS and Hasbro. Atari Corp had the rights to do home translations of the pre-split arcade games but Atari Games owned the rights to the originals. Each
No excuse? Questionable... (Score:1)
Some of them, I feel I am justified in having. I purchased the Williams Arcade Classics a while back, which had emulated versions of 6 of their games, and I'd rather have the ROMs and play them through MAME for various reasons. At some technical level, it's probably still wrong (only having "license" to the ones supplied or something like that), but I paid for the rights to play the games. I also plan on getting the Midw
Screw that (Score:1)
Actually, careful shopping can net you games for less than $2 each.
Nice idea, however. Now, anybody have a link for a cart reader for those too lazy to Google?
i'll admit.. (Score:2)
I too... (Score:1)
2000 Games, Piracy (Score:2)
Just a quick aside: 2000 games? How can anyone possibly justify downloading the ROMs to 2000 games? We're way out of the realm of casual piracy at that point. That's three new games a day for nearly two freaking years!
It only takes about two seconds to think of the logical reasons behind keeping a collection of 2000 games:
1. Convenience. If you play a lot of MAME games and talk to a
I wonder if in the future... (Score:1)