- Reaction score
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If you follow emulation news, here's a story you've probably heard. Nintendo releases a brand new Legend of Zelda game for a young console. It is immediately heralded as one of the greatest games ever made. Reviewers give it perfect marks. It is, definitively, the best reason to own Nintendo's new hardware. And mere weeks after its release, when buzz was at its highest, a PC emulator was able to run that massively popular game—The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time—making it playable without Nintendo's hardware.
Yeah, this happened 18 years ago.
Last week I wrote about the shockingly quick progress the authors of Wii U emulator Cemu have made in supporting Nintendo's new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. In just a few weeks, they've solved the game's biggest problems and made Nintendo's latest hit playable in an emulator. And I've watched Cemu's amazing progress stir up debate about the legality of emulators and their connection with software piracy. Some fans seem more invested in the debate than usual, and that's understandable—Zelda is the Nintendo Switch's flagship launch game, and some see the emulator as a path to piracy robbing Nintendo of potential software and hardware sales.
This exact scenario played out in early 1999 with an emulator named UltraHLE and Nintendo's brand new Ocarina of Time, which was immediately the reason to own an N64. Then, the UltraHLE devs pulled down their website after just a few days and Nintendo later talked about legal action, but none was ever taken. So far, Cemu has faced no public legal threats, but there's a modern wrinkle that complicates the legal and ethical debate around Breath of the Wild's emulation: Cemu's $24,000 in monthly donations through Patreon.
I decided to talk to people who make and work on emulators to get their perspective on the ethics of emulation today: emulation's relationship with piracy, open source vs. closed source development, and what happens when money enters the picture.
Read more here. (PC Gamer)
Yeah, this happened 18 years ago.
Last week I wrote about the shockingly quick progress the authors of Wii U emulator Cemu have made in supporting Nintendo's new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. In just a few weeks, they've solved the game's biggest problems and made Nintendo's latest hit playable in an emulator. And I've watched Cemu's amazing progress stir up debate about the legality of emulators and their connection with software piracy. Some fans seem more invested in the debate than usual, and that's understandable—Zelda is the Nintendo Switch's flagship launch game, and some see the emulator as a path to piracy robbing Nintendo of potential software and hardware sales.
This exact scenario played out in early 1999 with an emulator named UltraHLE and Nintendo's brand new Ocarina of Time, which was immediately the reason to own an N64. Then, the UltraHLE devs pulled down their website after just a few days and Nintendo later talked about legal action, but none was ever taken. So far, Cemu has faced no public legal threats, but there's a modern wrinkle that complicates the legal and ethical debate around Breath of the Wild's emulation: Cemu's $24,000 in monthly donations through Patreon.
I decided to talk to people who make and work on emulators to get their perspective on the ethics of emulation today: emulation's relationship with piracy, open source vs. closed source development, and what happens when money enters the picture.
Read more here. (PC Gamer)
