this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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You're grossly overestimating the number of consoles they would "burn through" by having a few of their original original hardware set up in their museum. If you're worried about them running constantly, they could easily have a couple consoles per station that get swapped between throughout the day so that no one console is ever on for more than a few hours. People used their regularly NESes and SNESes for several years, I'm sure you could stretch that to decades of you had the expertise and resources of the company that invented the hardware behind you.
You're grossly overestimating the amount of money it would cost to maintain original hardware. As another user said, hobbyists can maintain an original system themselves for decades using mostly off-the-shelf parts. The rare occurrences where a proprietary Nintendo part needs replaced wouldn't cost tens of millions of dollars. There's thousands of shops that can manufacture small runs of custom ICs or circuit boards for a few thousand bucks. They wouldn't need to maintain a custom multi-million dollar facility.
Then emulate on your current hardware, if you're going to use emulation! Don't use a Windows emulator from who-knows-where, when you've repeatedly made clear that you're against other parties emulating your hardware! That's certainly more embarrassing by the way, if your Windows emulator crashes and museum goers are greeted by a Windows BSOD or whatever, instead of the Switch home screen or the Nintendo Online interface.
We're talking about NES/SNES games here (which Nintendo doesn't develop anymore, btw), because that's what they were caught using a Windows PC and a Windows emulator for. So either they're using someone else's emulator, or they ported the emulator that runs on the switch to run on Windows (which would be a huge undertaking, considering the architecture and OS differences between a Nintendo Switch and a Windows PC).
Emulation is not piracy.
Some of the ROMs on their official library contained signatures from popular ROM rippers, which indicates they straight up just downloaded them from one of the various ROM sites they've been trying to shut down for the last couple decades.
That's fine, I don't have a problem with anyone emulating anything, including Nintendo. My problem lies with their hypocrisy. If they want to emulate NES/SNES games in their own museum, go for it. But at least use your own emulator on your own hardware, given they have the ability to easily do that. Using a Windows PC and a Windows emulator for that is hypocritical.
NES and SNES processers? Those should be simple enough, although I'm not sure it would be 1 to 1 swap. Anything later? No.
You'd have to make the same processor on the same process node. That's not even just to do transistor size, as that's just one aspect of a particular companies process. No one has made 350nm MIPS dies since, well, the late 90s or early 2000s. So the equipment likely doesn't exist anymore. I think they licensing is open now, but otherwise they would also need to relicense the design, which would be something that would be very hypocritical for Nintendo to do.
Sure a hobbyist could swap a dead passive component out, and probably fix a damaged trace on the PCB, that's where it would stop. I've never seen a hobbyist or even small company make a PCB that complex. I know from personal experience that getting a batch of those made would run in the tens or hundreds of thousands. It actually may also need leaded solder, which would violate Japans version of RoHS. I'm not familiar enough with that standard to know if that would be permissable.
If hobbyist do have the capability to recreate the processor, why would a company like Analogue make an FPGA instead for there N64 clone? Think about all the development they put into that instead of trying to do what you're suggesting is commonplace.
They don't need to make an IC, the need to make the same IC. There are more powerful chips running smart toasters, and they cost a couple of dollars a piece, but that's not the original hardware
Your also assuming that expertise and resources lies with the company, and not the staff themselves. I also know from personal experience how big of mistake that can be.
Anything later than an N64 is going to be progressively harder and harder to fix. By the end of the decade they will probably be emulating N64s. And so on and so forth.
The whole point is to not damage original articles, not to damage and then fix them. That's what's required of US Museum at least. It will matter more and more as the hardware ages and becomes scarcer.
On the next point, I think your giving the public too much credit. The BSoD is probably the most common failure screen in the world, but how many people would know to equate that with a windows PC and just with any computer?
What percent of the population knows what an emulator or emulation is? 1%? Maybe among people who are visiting the Nintendo museum, probably in the double digits, but not by much. The only embarrassment would be a reddit post, which would get turned into garbage news articles and shorts which everyone but us will forget about 3 seconds later. Basically every person that sees it would just be mad it's not working when they happened to be there.
It's is quite literally only there decision what hardware there IP can run on. In every legal way, they are the arbiters of that. Why are we supposed to care what emulator they use? If it's open source, it's as much there's to use as everyone else's. I wouldn't run it on Windows certianly, but that is objectively there decision.
They probably have there own way on running NES/SNES games for development for Switch online or the NES classic, so your silly comment about them no longer developing those not only pointless but also probably wrong.
I've used mGBA on both my Switch and a PC, I'm not sure why you think that would be so hard. That's literally made by a hobbyist, for a more modern system, and runs on several other platforms as well.
All emulation is probably (but not 100 certainly) piracy. It depends on how you read the law, but it seems clear to me that you can't legally transfer software copies without transferring the original. Meaning for it to be legal, you would have to make the copy yourself, and continue owning the original. I say this as someone who fully supports pirating from AAA publishers, including Nintendo.
Can you provide a source for the ripped ROMs? I've been well actually'd on that before, now in both directions, but I can't find an actual source.
These are in the most certain terms possible "rules for thee and not for me" but it's there IP, and they get to set those rules. I wouldn't describe there rights they fight tooth and nail for as hypocritical.
Funnily enough, I'm guessing the whole reason they are emulating NES/SNES is because they were having reliability issues.They probably picked the simplest thing they could get working on short notice.