Mother three is a video game many more people have heard of than have played. Among online gamers in America, it is understood to be an absolute classic, just like Earthbound (AKA Mother two), which it is the sequel of. These games are known for their creative and unusual enemies, setting, and writing, and served as the inspiration for popular indie games, such as Undertale. However, many people are aware of this game’s existence and significance without ever having tried to experience it, and when it comes to the mainstream, the most knowledge the average person might have about the game is the presence of its franchise in the Super Smash Bros. series. The reason for this is simple; Nintendo never brought Mother three to America. To enjoy this work of art of a game, you have two options. You must either learn how to read Japanese, or download the thoughtfully-crafted fanmade translation for free and emulate it on your computer. The more ideal option is obvious. However, this option is piracy. Nintendo, along with the industry in general, does not want you to play their games without paying for them, no matter what.
Nintendo has been implementing virtual consoles to their new consoles for a while, which are top of the line emulators through which you can officially access many of their old games easily. However, this isn’t always enough. For starters, many games, depending on your region, are not available, and never have been, like Mother three. Nintendo is simply unwilling to translate these games, always for unexplained reasons, and since these games are relatively obscure and old by this point, they likely have no motivation to translate them in the future, since the translation would not appeal to a mainstream audience.
Additionally, virtual consoles do have sizable libraries, but there will always be many games missing, and there are only virtual console versions of Nintendo’s oldest consoles. In order to play a game from, for example, the Gamecube, you would either need to have the original Gamecube console, which was available from 2001 to 2007, and a copy of the game, both in good condition, or you will have to use unofficial emulators. Nintendo no longer sells these products. If you want them, but do not own them, you must buy them second-hand. You are stealing nothing from Nintendo by playing such games for free, because Nintendo cannot currently profit from them.
The legality and specifics around playing video games unofficially can be confusing to the average person. Basically, there are two types of things that a person would have to download to do this: an emulator and a ROM. An emulator is a software which recreates all of the attributes and capabilities of a device as an application on a different device. For example, an emulator of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) will, entirely as an executable on your computer, recreate the features of the SNES such as the processing speed, and will allow you to use keys on your keyboard in place of buttons on a controller. A video game console emulator is not illegal in itself, but it exists solely to enable an illegal action. To use it for this purpose, one would need a ROM. A ROM (read-only memory) file contains all of the data of a video game, copied from an original copy, and can be opened with an emulator to allow it to be played. ROMs and the use of them are illegal.
Doing something technically illegal is, of course, disconcerting. However, to be frank, you aren’t going to get punished if you download video game ROMs. Neither video game companies nor legal authorities are aware when an individual user downloads or emulates a game, and even if they were, that would not give them your identity. Many people have been enjoying games through emulation for decades now, even making online communities about it, and none of them have been punished. The only parties who might be punished for ROMs are groups who distribute them, some of whom have been sued by Nintendo’s infamous legal team in the past. Additionally, because of how openly emulators and ROMs are used on the internet, information and testimony about safe and reliable downloads can be found relatively easily.
Not only is ROM emulation an understandable decision that will not be punished, but Nintendo is fighting a losing battle if they think they can do anything about it. Anybody who has downloaded files can then upload them for others to use, and every single person who has downloaded an emulator or ROM has its files on their computer. As a result, these files are available from countless sources, and even if Nintendo took down every website offering them, all it would take is one user for the files to become available again.
On the whole, ROM emulation is useful, and is in many cases harmless to almost every party involved. It could definitely take away from a game’s revenue if that game was currently officially available to purchase on modern hardware, but in the world of console gaming, everything eventually becomes outdated. Additionally, legally prohibiting piracy has little effect on it. Despite this fact, I believe that, in a more perfect system, piracy should cease to be a crime when the owner of the content is no longer actively selling it. However, there are no signs of the law changing any time soon, and with overzealous companies like Nintendo in the industry, that’s not a good thing.
