https://www.emuparadise.me/emuparadise-changing.php

no more ROMs and ISOs can be downloaded from good ol' EP.

Yikes that's a pretty scary thought. Vizzed actually owns all the games the roms are for on the site so I don't see it being likely but I can't say for sure. I also hope something like that never happens here.

zanthehero :

... you actually believe that crap?

Look, I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but having a ROM of a game is actually NEVER legal. These people say it better than I can.

The reason EMUparadise took their stuff down is to avoid being attacked by another company. They got out while they were ahead. Which is smart.

It'll hurt their traffic, but ultimately, it's better than risking a lawsuit.

Vizzed isn't "safe" from meeting a similar fate. Honestly, Vizzed should go the same direction.

the same direction? do you mean stay on the current path now?

legacyme3: guess we know who doesn't care about the preservation of gaming history and having said history available to the public.

and it's extremely unlikely nintendo and other game companies will ever have all of those old titles available on services like virtual console, xbox live, or psn when currently, the overall selection across all 3 services likely isn't even 1% of the total games EP offered.

and speaking of, when you pay to download and play old games through those services you are doing exactly what users of websites like EP have been doing for free for at least 2 decades: downloading and emulating ROMs and ISOs of old games.

and the legality argument? pure hypocrisy since the ONLY difference between emulating those games for free vs using one of those services to emulate them is the fact you're paying a company before you can emulate a game.

pretty good time to start saving full romsets right now...

treos :

Who?

Certainly you can't mean me. I love emulation (in theory!), I think that it's a great way for abandon-ware to be played, and I'm only on this site in the first place because of the games.

That said, it's still highly illegal. And nothing I do or say is going to change that. Now that I know it's illegal, I avoid it.

It doesn't matter if you agree with the law, or think it's silly, or any of that (I know I sure think it's silly). The law is still the law, and you can't break laws just because you think they are silly.

EMU paradise got out before they got taken out. It was a smart business decision from them. Any time you make money off of someone else's work, it's usually because what you are doing is against the law. And if you break the law, and get caught, you get punished.

legacyme3 : "That said, it's still highly illegal."

"It doesn't matter if you agree with the law, or think it's silly, or any of that (I know I sure think it's silly). The law is still the law, and you can't break laws just because you think they are silly."

but that's just it. what nintendo has claimed to be piracy in the past and what they do through the virtual console service are both the exact same thing.

if i were to pay nintendo for a game on the virtual console i can then download the ROM and emulate it. which is the exact same thing i do when i download a ROM off a website like emuparadise and play it using an emulator.

nintendo themselves have said in the past that downloading ROMs of old games is piracy. yet they themselves commit those very same acts of piracy for profit while many people try to defend their actions.

"The law is still the law, and you can't break laws just because you think they are silly."

tell that to the people running nintendo who are exploiting a form of literal hypocrisy for profit while attacking those who do the exact same thing for free.

they should not be allowed to be exempt from the very crimes they accuse others of.

treos :

Except that there's a difference between emulation (which gives Nintendo no money) and selling something on the VC (which gives Nintendo money).

It is Nintendo's intellectual property. They have the legal right to the games in question.

The idea that you are entitled to use a ROM because you own a copy of the game is a falsitude. You do not have ANY rights to a ROM for the purposes of emulation, regardless of whether or not you own a copy of the game.

Downloading ROMs "is" piracy. It is piracy because you are "stealing" someone's intellectual property, without paying them for it. When they sell it on the VC, they are selling the digital rights to one copy of the game, in exchange for money.

Even if you bought the game, you cannot spread it wherever you want, because that is a violation of the end-user licensing agreements, and violating the agreements makes your contract (the game purchase) null and void.

treos :

I don't like going for the ad hominem, but I can't believe your logic. A company offering digital downloads of their games, in exchange for money that goes to THEM, is not the equivalent of Vizzed, which is essentially an "underground" service for illegally accessing free games. That's like saying establishments (sponsored by Coke) selling Coke is comparable to one stealing their cola recipe and marketing it as their own.

Sadly, Vizzed has chances of facing this same fate as long as we keep the ROMs out there.

For several years, we saw as other ROM-hosting sites were taken down one by one while Vizzed stayed out of harm, fearing the day Vizzed would be the next target. That day ultimately came, and we were very lucky (thanks to Nintendo being generous and polite, we must not forget that part) to come out alive and still be around here searching for a future for this site.

There is a way in which Vizzed could avoid this fate yet not having to fully discard the RGR. No change to the RGR will bring Vizzed back from the dead, which is another top-tier priority, so we will have to choose between making Vizzed "fully" safe or attempt to return it to some of its former glory. I wish we could do both at the same time, but it's not possible right now and might not be in the near future.

legacyme3 : I actually read about emuparadise and other emulation sites being shut down on my phone, when I was looking to see if there was new videos on Pokémon lets go pikachu and eevee.