For many years there has been a debate around classic video games, and in general, the access to retro games on modern devices: Is it legal to download and use emulators? This is a complex issue because it has many nuances, both legal and ethical. Now, Nintendo has made a public comment on the matter.
It's no secret that Nintendo is a company very strict regarding its intellectual properties. We've seen many cases where the company seeks to bring to justice those responsible for programs that allow its video games to be played informally, so to speak. But the company is clear: the problem often comes not from the emulators, but from their use.
Nintendo against piracy
Nintendo is a Japanese company which, although in its beginnings, more than 100 years ago, was dedicated to the creation of cards, since the 80s it has become one of the most important video game companies in the world.
Throughout this time, Nintendo has developed and accumulated a portfolio of franchises that have become some of the most important in history: Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroidamong many others. These are titles and gaming sagas that have accumulated millions of fans around the world, and although the company continues to release new installments of these franchises, in many cases, to play the classics from ago several decades, the easiest way to do this is to use software. developed by third parties.
This is exactly what emulators are for, since in general they are a type of program that emulates the operation of another system (in this case, a console) within a computer and also on mobile phones.
However, emulators are often used for piracy purposes, which is why Nintendo has been tracking down some of the most well-known programs and developers for many years. This is the case of Switch Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, whose developers were sentenced to pay millions of dollars in damages to Japanese society. This is just one of the most recent cases, but Nintendo has already taken legal action against the creators of other emulators, such as Dolphin, the Gamecube emulator.
What Nintendo says about emulators: “It's complicated”
Image: DIm Hou/Unsplash.
The key to Nintendo's fight lies in the purpose of emulators. While developing and creating emulators is technically not illegal (in fact, even Apple and Google allow emulators to be downloaded from the App Store for iOS and the Play Store for Android), using them to run software that violates intellectual property of another company enters illegal territory.
A group of executives and intellectual property officers from some of Japan's biggest video game companies, Nintendo, Capcom and Sega, gathered at an event in the city of Tokyo to discuss the copyright protection laws in your country. Nintendo's head of intellectual property, Koji Nishiura, made comments about emulators, being one of the few times the company has spoken about it publicly:
“Are emulators illegal? This is something that is often debated. Although it cannot be said that an emulator is illegal per se, This may depend on how it is used.“.
Super Mario Run is one of the games that Nintendo has officially developed for mobile devices (Photo: Xataka Android)
In other words, Nishiura says that The problem is often not the software that is emulating, but what it is emulating.. If an emulator offers access to game ROMs from Nintendo or another company, they are doing so illegally, because they do not have the rights to distribute these titles. Likewise, if an emulator copies the game you're running, it's also committing an offense, at least according to Japanese laws. One of the examples he mentioned was the Nintendo DS R4 card.
The other side of the coin: the ethics of emulators
As we mentioned a few lines ago, Nintendo is behind some of the most successful and beloved video game franchises in the world. Many titles that are part of these franchises, and in general the games available on their classic consoles, can still be played through legal access to the software, either through re-releases of these games or through official services such as Nintendo Online. .
However, Accessing many other classic games may be more difficult. If you want to play that game you loved so much back in the Nintendo 64 days, it's a lot more complicated today. Even if you currently own the physical game, you will only be able to play it if you have the console and everything you need to continue enjoying it.
It is for this type of cases that emulators are considered a very useful tool, and even a necessity to be able to preserve video gamesa tool that allows us, and will allow us, to access classic titles decades after their original release, when there is no official way to access them.
Emulators allow software to be preserved even decades after its original development and release, as is the case with video games. This is one of its advantages.
This is a complex subject that generates much debate. Nintendo is a company that is constantly fighting against piracy and the illegal availability of its games on the Internet. However, many believe that pirated software that allows you to illegally play the latest Zelda of 2024 is very different from software that allows you to revive a classic game from the 90s.
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