Nintendo Patents Handheld Emulation, Cracks Down

mclove writes "Looks like Nintendo has recently been granted a patent that gives them new leverage in their fight against emulators: Patent 6,672,963 mainly appears to cover emulators like UltraHLE that are custom-tailored for particular games, but they're already using it to suppress a new Game Boy Advance emulator for the Tapwave Zodiac, Firestorm gbaZ, and there's no reason to think they won't start leveraging it against anyone else trying to emulate their systems." The reprinted lawyer's letter from Nintendo also notes: "Whether you have an authentic game or not, it is illegal to copy a Nintendo game from a cartridge or to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet."

Re:I thought.. ?

[L. J. Beauregard]

You're new here, aren't you?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Prior art

[tcdk]

That's not what the patent claims. The patent is for a handheld emulator that can dynamically chose which platform to emulate based on the input file it was asked to load. The workaround is to forget about coding that part and just have the user select which platform needs to be emulated.

I can see it now:

LOADING MY_SNES_GAME.ROM....
LOADED...

Please select which emulator to run this ROM on:

1. PS1 (not!)
2. GameBoy (I don't think so)
[H1][BLINK]3. SNES[/BLINK][/H1]
4. Amiga (No way)

Please press a number between 1-4 (which isn't 1, 2 or 4): _

An actual excerpt from the patent:

[LightningBolt!]

...computer system comprising:

said first type microprocessor that loads and executes emulation software, and parses and interprets a binary image capable of being executed on said handheld video game platform, said first type microprocessor converting, with said emulator software, instructions within said stored binary image for said second type microprocessor into instructions for execution by said first type microprocessor and then executing said converted instructions, said second type microprocessor implementing, under control of said emulation software, a state machine that emulates plural states exhibited by said display circuitry associated with said handheld video game platform liquid crystal display, said first type microprocessor analyzing, with said emulator software, said binary image to determine whether said binary image constitutes a predetermined video game title...

I don't know what it means. But it looks a bit like html metatags trying to lure in people searching the web for the word "said".

Re:Fuck them

[Eccles]

What you cannot to is give or recieve a tool that will assist you in doing so.

Perhaps someday there will be geek cruises, where CDs of DVD extract and DVD shrink are exchanged once the boat reaches international waters...