"Guess what? You got it for free. Are you proud of yourself?"
-Misc Text (The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening)
The Nintendo Switch is only 10 months into gaming world and its emulator is announced already. I know emulator for Nintendo Switch is going to be made at some point, but I didn't expect it this soon.
It was announced 2 days ago on its new Twitter account, made by the team behind Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra. Although there's no published ROM... yet, many people are not happy with this and I'm not sure if I'm happy, not happy, hungry, I don't know.
As we probably know already, the emulator is not illegal, but when the ROMs are published that's when we ask ourselves if we want to save up to buy the console and support the game's company or just burst into Yo Ho Yo Ho a pirate's life for me! song.
Currently this emulator does not run any commercial games and is only useful for homebrew development and other "reasercher purposes". Well, it's "currently". We all know what we're likely to see next time there's news on this emulator.
It is still in the work, yes, but a day after the announcement the program can run a game with decent performance already.
I agree on the good part of emulator is that it allows you to play old games from old time consoles that are probably hard to find nowadays. With the ability to emulate/imitate another system you can play your beloved games that were made specifically for other platforms on PC in modern day gaming. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who think about it that way.
But err.. that's what makes some people, including the platform's company.. restless(?) Emulator is not illegal, but the illegal stuff will likely come after. And that is not something that many people fancy. Nintendo even have an entire explaination of how downloading Nintendo ROM is wrong, whether or not you own the original copy of the game.
"There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy."
"..whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet."
I wasn't aware that it's this much of a never-ending dilemma if we are talking about emulator, really. It feels kinda like one of those "Hardest Decisions in Gaming". It's wrong, but it's okay. It's not entirely wrong, but still wrong. As someone who don't own a Nintendo Switch and itching to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild--which will likely made for this emulator--I'm not sure if I'm excited about this. And again, I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Thanks for stopping by, and let me know what do you think in the comment if you have any thought of it.
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