Nintendo has become notorious in time due to their policies on Nintendo content on the web - most notably their ongoing shellacking of people who play Ninty games on YouTube (one that no other current big-name publisher has) and their DMCA of fangames like Another Metroid 2 Remake (which became slightly more understandable in retrospect due to the existence of Metroid: Samus Returns.) They are also one of the more stringent companies when it comes to ROM sites, issuing takedowns and DMCA notices quite often, in no small part because their consoles and games tend to get downloaded more than others. The point of this article is not to determine whether such sites are legal, but rather talk about games preservation and Nintendo’s role in it. But there’s even more to the picture than that - more that shows that such actions, while understandable from a copyright angle, have potentially dangerous consequences for the future preservation of old games.ĭisclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and thus my understanding of the legality of these issues is tenuous at best. While the announcement contains no assertion that threats of legal action or DMCAs from Nintendo played a part in the decision, the timeline of events shows the clear fear that the folks at emuparadise had over their repository of games. While you can still get legal emulators for a variety of consoles there, site founder MasJ writes that “you won’t be able to get your games here from now on.”Īs one of the biggest emulation sites on the web, emuparadise’s effective shutdown has sparked a torrent of debate, discussion, and debasement of Nintendo for prompting such action. In a vacuum, this is another mere, misguided power play on Nintendo’s part - but repercussions would become far more impactful.īecause a few days ago, emuparadise - long considered a major destination for retro ROMs, ISOs, and emulators - announced that, at the “risk potentially disastrous consequences,” they would no longer be hosting game downloads on their website.

LoveROMs quickly took down every Nintendo related emulator and ROM download, and indefinitely shut down LoveRETRO. Considering the number of Nintendo developed and published ROMs hosted on the site (let alone all the games that are on Nintendo systems in general), that adds up to well over the reasonable limit for any company smaller than a multinational corporation. Late last month, Nintendo filed to sue against two ROM websites - LoveROMs and LoveRETRO - seeking $150,000 per copyright infringement and $2 million for each trademark infringement.

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