CES vendors showing off shady old-school console emulators
One of the interesting trends we saw at the lackluster gaming showcase at this year's CES was an abundance of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis hardware manufactured by third-party companies.
Some booths, which preferred to remain nameless, were showcasing 3-in-1 portable players as well, with slots to play all the above-mentioned consoles. All you need are the original game cartridges.
Perplexed as to how this kind of blatant patent infringement could possibly be tolerated, we asked these booth reps, "How can this be legal?" One booth rep immediately told us that "the patent for these consoles has since expired, essentially making it a free-for-all." At a different booth, a clearly uninformed rep responded, "As far as I know, all this is Kosher."
But is it? A while back in 2005 a Gamasutra article disclosed some research and uncovered that simply because a patent is expired doesn't mean protection of the patent has also. So what are these guys even doing at CES in the first place?
We'll be in touch with Nintendo for some further explanation and a statement, but as far as we can tell, some of these vendors appear to be breaking the law with these devices. We'll update this story once we hear back.
Meanwhile, check out our slide show highlighting some of these suspect products for sale from various vendors on the showroom floor.
The real issue here is: why would Nintendo care? The Virutal Console's library (while being very slow to update), contains many old classic games for the NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Master System, Turbographix, etc...and all you need to play all of these old great games is a Wii (and possibly one extra accessory if you don't own a Gamecube controller). No dragging out old components that may or may not work anymore (like my 7800 [r.i.p. old friend]), dealing with cartridges that might be missing or damaged (HAL hole-in-one golf, I barelly knew ye)...and then there's the ever-popular problem of dust entering the cartridge or system (and the original NES having troubles with its cartridge loading springs and locks that held the games in their place...if those went bad you weren't playing anything!)...and then you have to find a way to get yet another legacy machine to work with newer components (coax adaptor my old friend....I've come to speak with you again). Oh, and you also have to make sure you can FIND a copy of the old game you want to play, and hope that you can AFFORD IT (local slackers was selling Secret of Mana for $45...now you can get it for about $10 and not have to worry about the useless multi-tap adaptor for the SNES to play with 3 people!).
And as for other cartridge systems and their companies...well, only Sega still really exists at this point, and they've ported their old games onto just about every other system imaginable (Sonic the Hedgehog has so many variants.....there's even a standalone device you can plug straight into your tv!). All the other systems either totally died out, or were bought by or merged into another entity that no longer cares about their rights belonging to their own system.
-
by forestryee
January 26, 2009 2:26 PM PST
- Actually, I can see an aftermarket forming. I have all above mentioned systems, but I like the idea of new controllers and not using the actual systems. It just saves the actual systems from being over used. Also, It might encourage aftermarket development for games for these systems.
-
Reply to this comment
-
(4 Comments)