News
Nintendo Files Suit Against Flash Cart Retailers
I’ll Be Right Back, I Gotta Get An R4 RIGHT NOW.
If you were ever interested in picking up a flash cart for your DS (you know, for homebrew and nothing else…), now is the time to buy. If Nintendo has their way, it’ll be your last chance to do so. The gaming giant has filed a lawsuit against five Japanese firms for importing and selling the popular R4 and other flash carts because they allow illegally obtained games to be played on the DS handheld system.
The suit was filed at the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday by Nintendo Co. Ltd, along with 54 other Japanese software companies. The suit is presumably an effort to curb DS piracy, but will also affect creators and players of homebrewed games. There is, however, a possible alternative in the officially licensed flash card for the DS, the DSvision, but no one seems to know whether or not these will play homebrewed games. They’ve only recently made their way to the states, and it’s unclear as to how useful they are for playing homebrewed games. And of course, there's no other reason any of us would want an R4 card other than homebrewed games, right? RIGHT?
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UPDATED: John Hillier: “90% of DS Owners in the U.S. Are Pirating Games”
Comments
I feel RIGHT AT HOME with this issue.
Modchips/Flashed Consoles/Custom Firmwares are all still legal to own, and sell in the USA, Canada, Japan, and most of Europe because some people out there play 'back-ups' of games that they already own, to keep their original copy safe in it's box. I didn't think Nintendo actually had a word in on this unless they have a patent on the shape of the cart, or it runs a some code which Nintendo already developed, but was modified.
Also keep in mind, homebrew IS a real thing, and it's the only reason my PSP hasn't met a sledge hammer. Run over to http://hackmii.com/ and read some of the articles they have, specifically THIS.
A Wii Exploiter who goes by bushing, found a work-around that would let backup games run on a Wii Console without a modchip (eg: Softmodding), and he's trying to contact Nintendo about it. We emailed back and forth a few times, and they still haven't sat him down with an engineer, so they must not care.
For some reason, I knew Puxel would show up in here.
I do have to agree with him though. They have the right objective (stopping piracy), but the wrong means. Banning something certainly isn't going to help, especially when another community suffers from it.
Video game companies should embrace (or at least accept) homebrew. Just look at how well the Prohobition years turned out.
Maybe Nintendo should just purchase the rights to those homebrew titles from their developers. And maybe spider monkeys will no longer be the devil's creation!