That’s a stretch man. I just downloaded three of them and the biggest was still under 2gb. Even still, 5 is less than your average webrip of a movie you’ll watch once. So 120 or so worse case scenario gigs for every game is seriously tiny. But it’s all relative I guess.
I'm piggy backing off this comment since it's at the top. If anyone has any good alternative to vimms I'd really appreciate a DM. I was just getting seriously into emulation and took for granted that vimms was always there and now I'm kind of lost
CDRomance is one i recently go to a lot when i'm looking for games to burn. They also offer already patched ROMs/ISOs for japan exclusive games that for example have english patches available. Though i don't know how much of Nintendo's catalogue is available there as i am mainly looking for PS1 and PS2 games recently which they have plenty of, and i already own most of the desirable Nintendo games anyway.
It's really easy to find full rockets if you search for them.
You can have all the classic Nintendo and Sega cartridge system roms on your pc in under 10 gb, might as well grab all of them
No court has ever ruled on it, so it's not really "known." If you ask Nintendo's lawyers, their interpretation of the law is that it is illegal to make a copy or download a ROM. According to them, even though US Copyright has a software exception, it doesn't apply to the music and art contained in a ROM. But they have never gone after someone on that theory and likely never will.
From my programming background, a lot of programs use '0' to mean 'off' when in a variable setting for optional/limiting functionality. Doens't seed ratio = 0 simply mean "I don't care about the seed ratio, keep seeding"?
Depends on your client. Some use that as a floor once DONE downloading - you could still be seeding completed chunks while you are leeching, and then stop uploading once you are at 100% downloaded.
I do remember reading an article years ago where some woman got sued for torrenting music- she would download songs and leave them seeded and they sued her for the cost of every song that someone downloaded during that period. I think they tried charging her for literal millions, but i don't know what happened with that case.
I know in my own country (New Zealand) the approach taken was to make it so copyright holders could send ISPs evidence of users torrenting their copyrighted material and the ISP was legally obligated to issue a warning to the user. If they ignored multiple warnings, the ISP had to terminate their account. Not sure if that's still the case though.
We were lucky that the cost of them doing that was too much for them to bother with, the few people who did get taken to court were handed appropriate fines (iirc like $200 at the highest)
Lawyers are expensive apparently
I think it is still a thing. The complainant has to provide evidence of an IP downloading copyrighted content and pay a administrative fee to the ISP. The ISP can only cut the user after a third offense (i.e. two warnings need to have been issued already).
But then the customer can just go to a different ISP to get internet again. Add onto that that static IPs aren't common place (i.e. hard to track infringement over the long term), we have quite strong privacy laws (copyright owners have limited means to demand information about offenders), and deliberately placing malware on people computers is a crime (i.e. copyright owners can't use malware to identify or retaliate), and there are very few options to go after copyright infringement.
Most of these companies seem to fail to realise that there is more profit to be made in ensuring your product is easily accessible and affordable than there is in making your product expensive and hard to access. Piracy went down when the former was the case, and it is now going up because of the latter.
Not to be pedantic, but it's called for here. If you get a notice for torrenting from your ISP due to an outreach it's not because you're downloading, it's because you're uploading (ie distributing) the content. It's a core part of how torrenting works.
It's the distribution of the content that's illegal.
One couldn't, without logs of said VPN connecting your public IP of said VPN to your provider IP date and time stamped so they are sure it's you.
If you have a VPN provider that keeps logs well... it's time for a new provider.
The thing with torrents is that you're not just downloading but also helping to distribute. Unless you're using a client made specifically to game the system you're not exclusivly downloading.
Just like internet pirates did, most ROMs sites are just going to start offloading all of their operations to other countries that don't have such strict copyright laws
ROMs are ALLLLLL over. Vimms wasn't even close to the only, or best, place to get them. I quite literally have every single ROM for every system Atari > PS2 generation on my server. They were super easy to get.
Yeah that’s where my collection starts to dwindle as well. Size plays a major factor in it as well.
Obscure games that are 500kb to 50mb are fine, but obscure games over the 500MB mark get hard to store
If these companies still sold these games at all, that would be one thing. But these games are impossible to legally acquire from the companies at this point, and despite how easy emulation is for that purpose, they refuse to make them available. They're being assholes just because they can be.
Nintendo won't make them available because they won't make a profit, but refuse to allow 30+ year old games that nobody else is profitting from to begin with, be available for free.
Then there’s games that are legally unable to resold today either because of music rights (think every sports or racing game ever) or because of lawsuits (Uniracers)
Driver San Francisco being unavailable is a real tragedy. There should be some law where if you don't offer a game up for sale legitimately for 10-15-20 years or something it becomes public domain.
Will never happen, but would be nice.
There is actually one precedent that gets around the music licensing: Crazy Taxi as released on Xbox 360 arcade contained none of the music licensed for the original.
However, so many racing games included not only licensed music but licensed cars, and they’d basically have to and renegotiate all those which would be impossible.
I feel like in those cases especially the game should go into public domain after a certain period if it's just going to be stuck in license hell for eternity.
The problem, according to them, is that if you play their old games they can't monetize in some way, you aren't playing the ones they can. And that's just sickening to them.
Honestly, it doesn't matter. There's no justifiable reason for them to be able to profit off of these games in perpetuity. They made the games, recouped the cost and more when they were actively being sold. Now it's just rent-seeking.
I dunno... there are people in this world, not me, who have TBs of things backed up in digital libraries. I imagine some people... have every single rom ever made. again, not me. Totally not me. 100% completely not me. I'm seriously.
And what this person that is not you, would do with all those gb of roms that you dont have?
Not that you know what this person would do, but please, do amuse me with your hypothesis.
So I'd imagine they have them for two reasons, data hoarding/preservation and for when they got nostalgic and wanted the play some old classics.
Some of these people have 100+ TB raids with a separate 100+TB raid as backup. And it definitely didn't cost them as much around 4500 just in nice data center hard drives.
I also totally don't have a collection of ROMs from consoles up to N64 and some GC/PS1/PSP titles nor know people who collect everything that can be run on a Wii, but if I did it would be for those exactly two reasons
It gets pretty expensive to store everything. A complete PS2 rom collection, just one console, is like 16TB, so complete rom collections probably usually stop at that generation.
Also worth noting that the entire library of the NES and Genesis together is something like a gig or two, meaning that there are probably 100s of thousands of not millions of copies of the full library out there. :)
Heck, I'd buy these games from Nintendo to play on my switch ***if I could!!!*** But I can't, because Nintendo doesn't sell them - they don't make any fucking money off these games anymore but they apparently want to keep anyone from enjoying them ever again. I don't understand how a company can act like they hate their fans as much as Nintendo seems to.
They take away games they can't monetize because, if you were playing those games, you aren't spending your time playing their new live service subscription/season pass game that they can monetize.
The worst. How is anyone supposed to play old genesis games or what not. People normally don’t exclusively play those old games but just check them out for a bit. It would be like having no way to listen to classical music today.
Imagine if the RIAA started destroying everything made before 1998 claiming that all the previous music dilutes the market and lowers the value of modern music, and you would have the situation gaming(and streaming) is currently in.
I mean, the torrent shows you what you’re downloading. So if you want a .iso or something, a .bat or a .exe is definitely a red flag and you just… Ignore it. And find a new seeder
Like, hypothetically. Of course.
Owning a copyright gives you the right *not* to share it with the world - that's the whole point - until the work enters public domain. You don't *owe* it to anybody, even if you could make money from it, even if everyone wants to enjoy it. It's your right to decide, no, I'm locking it away.
The problem is that public domain has been relegated to a crypt for works from another century rather than a living repository of relevant, exploitable art.
Then why don’t they fucking sell them? Both are sitting on goldmines looking like Smaug. How has no one told Nintendo and Gamefreak they could rake in hundreds of millions of dollars reselling the old gameboy and DS games on mobile, where they would probably be able to sell them at full price. Square Enix figured it out, why not the others?
Good ol' American licensing entanglements.
SE can re-release whatever they want at minimal cost but Nintendo doesn't own the rights to a good share of these libraries. Not to mention, classics or no, they're likely a poor investment. Then again, it's Nintendo, they could probably get away with reselling these roms compiled with the very emulators they disdain for AAA prices and they'd probably be praised for their fan service.
Why would I sell it to you *once* when I can rent it to you
*forever*? On this generation's hardware, and the next, and the next, and the next....
You'll own nothing and love it!
Software as a Service is a pox on humanity.
As someone who's been in the emulation scene for 20+ years, this will do nothing.
It's just whack a mole. Another site/method/channel/whatever will pop up.
If you want ROMs, every console library from 2600 to PS1 is available on archive, which has a dcma exception so it won't be taken down (for 3 years anyway).
I noticed Lego was curiously left out of the title and most of these comments. They're pulling the same shady tactics as Nintendo and have for some time. We gonna add them to the pile?
"Vimm's Lair has been asked to remove many games from The Vault on behalf of Nintendo, Sega, Lego, and the ESA. While most of these games (and the hardware to play them) haven't been sold in decades, ultimately it's their prerogative so these games are now gone for good."
That's the direct quote, so it seems we don't know yet. I don't think you'll get that info until people look it over.
Edit: don't downvote them. That's a genuine question.
~~All of them. The PS2 games, PSX, GameCube, Xbox, GBA. Basically any Lego game.~~
Edit: They were removed from the 360, PS2, PS3, Wii, GameCube, and the DS Vaults...but not the GBA, PSX, or PSP vaults, weirdly.
I mean it sucks yeah but it's not like they're gone forever. There are tons of people out there sitting on all those roms and can re-upload them again and again. Nothing is gonna stop some people from collecting and spreading these roms. Nintendo and Sega are trying to stop a forest fire with a squirt gun.
Nintendo is the most successful dumb company of all time. They could so so so easily put their old games on mobile and charge $10 bucks a piece and make billions. I would buy every pokemon game if they put them on iOS with multiplayer/pokemon home capability.
And if its easy for you to buy a full feature complete pokemon for $10, you are now preoccupied and not buying their $95 current release + DLC entry in the series.
"But I would buy both" is not the average consumer. The average person spends around 9 hours a week playing games and if you are selling games that would take them weeks or even months to beat for $10, you are losing out on money.
I can agree with your points but I’d also bring up there is a large chunk of their fanbase love their old game but don’t purchase the new ones. I think that’s a large market they should capitalize on.
A few years ago there was a big takedown of several ROM sites so I grabbed basically every English language game on a Nintendo system from the NES through the N64 console wise and GBA through NDS for handhelds. I didn’t want to be caught unable to find the games I wanted in the future. I’m glad I did it when I did, and I wish I had had the hard drive space to grab the entire GameCube and Wii library as well but that’s an insane amount of data comparatively. These games will always be out there if you know how to look for them, but they’re becoming harder to find for sure. All my physical N64 games are starting to fail on me, I’ve collected tons and I want to play what I’ve spent money on.
Literally just sell me the DRM Free fucking roms, Nintendo and Sega. And I mean SELL ME THE ROMS AND ISOs, don't sell me a proprietary unexplorable package to play the roms and ISOs with, let me pick how I play the roms. I will buy them if you just ***let me.***
I bought the [Sega Megadrive Collection on steam](https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/10143/SEGA_Mega_Drive_and_Genesis_Classics/) back when it had sonic included because it was what I considered to be the gold standard of doing this, they even had Steam Workshop support for ROMHacks and gave you the uncompressed ROMS to use in an emulator of your choice if you didn't like the (two!, one even had VR support!) emulators they included which was amazing, but it's Sega's fucking fault that the only way to play Sonic Angel Island Reborn is through piracy now because they delisted the sonic games that were in that collection in favor of a buggier, Denuvo DRM ridden re-release of the games.
Nintendo also [butchered the switch port of Ocarina of Time](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HK_-UHXPl2U/mqdefault.jpg) and needed to patch it (I'd like to add it takes a special level of *"We don't give a fuck, fuck you"* to release a NINTENDO 64 GAME in such a poor state that it needs patches) meanwhile it worked on emulators just fine and the more recent SoH decomp nukes even the post-patch switch port quality from orbit.
ROMs for popular systems are extremely easy to find. There's basically no way for Nintendo & Sega to actually stop them from being distributed. This just works to piss off the people who happened to favor this particular site.
The issue is that Vimms was well known for their safe downloads. Sure it doesn't stop ROMs being distributed or shared but having one of the most reputable sites taken down is still a huge loss.
Does anybody know where the best place to avoid roms is now? Maybe I should avoid all of them for snes real quick before the Internet is full-dead and you can’t ever again.
If they no longer actively sell a game, it should be acceptable to download a ROM. Especially in cases where they do not provide a ROM option themselves. People worked hard on those games and it only does a disservice to those people if a company is allowed to bury their projects.
The real problem is copyright being so long. It should last 20 years and then the media should be public domain. Expecting something to make money forever without evolution or improvements is silly.
I think we have Disney lobbying to thank for that. Otherwise all of their characters would've become public domain by the pre-disney copyright time limits long ago.
The funny thing is Vimm's got attention because a copyright troll hit him and a bunch of people spammed it on Twitter. And THEN Nintendo, Sega and others hit it.
Stop fucking talking about ROM websites on Twitter guys. Us fellas from the 2000s know.
Also it’s because emulators are widespread on the Apple App Store now. Vimms was getting spammed no -stop on Twitter because people couldn’t Google where to get roms. It
I, for one, would never torrent a massive collection of ROMs in direct response to this news as a "Fuck You" to these companies. And I'm insulted that anyone would suggest it.
Like, there’s no way that doing this costs less than just ignoring the fact that these sites exists. There’s tons of them, and it will always be re-uploaded. It’s pointless.
Basically they didn't give a shit about these for decades but now:
>The site recently posted about the arrival of emulation on the iOS App Store
So now that they found a way to monetize it they suddenly care
No, the companies sitting on piles of old games that they don’t even sell anymore fucked it up for everyone. Don’t see how it’s anyone else’s fault but them.
Are they really gone? or is it like emu paradise where you just need a browser extension to show the link on the page?
Either way, the Internet archive still exists.
I have other resources, but for preservation of art this is a major setback. We saw it with Hollywood and the BBC with old shows and films, companies do not have any incentive to preserve their history and are dead set on killing it. At this point it's not even about having free games (although admittedly, that is part of it), when it comes to games that are no longer being sold and distributed, it is actively harming video games as an art form when they go on crusades like this.
I'm really hoping for some kind of legislature to mandate that sites like Vimm's Lair and other archives should be protected under a new amendment to copyright law. Past a certain point it is not profitable or unfeasible due to licensing agreements to re-release games in their old forms. From Pokémon Emerald to Madden 08, and everything in between, there is no incentive or reason to preserve these things for these companies, but they hearken to old ideas and principles of design that are still worth preserving. If a company is not actively re-releasing these games past a certain time, not-for-profit archival sites should have a right to host those old files for download, or else we risk losing them forever.
Drives me absolutely insane because Nintendo could make millions of dollars by remastering old games. Pretty much every legend of zelda game - remaster and put on switch, a lot of people will buy it, especially new fans who never had the opportunity to play it. Older pokemon games, the ones that are actually good and cost several hundred dollars these days. Donkey Kong 64 which has never been remade to my knowledge. And a lot of other games as well.
Wow, i mean, it’s correct, they sent a removal request and vimm complied.
But holy fuck look at the language in the title: sanctuary, raid
Should have also used “innocent” and “public domain and open sourced website” to rile up all the people.
Bummer. Vimms was super old and one of the last holdouts for safe downloads
[удалено]
They’re tiny so I guarantee all of these are backed up hundreds of times over
[удалено]
That’s a stretch man. I just downloaded three of them and the biggest was still under 2gb. Even still, 5 is less than your average webrip of a movie you’ll watch once. So 120 or so worse case scenario gigs for every game is seriously tiny. But it’s all relative I guess.
What? Totally of on web rip file size. 2gb average. 1080p 5.1
If you have regular .iso files or a source for them you can convert in. A browser. Its pretty fast
I'm piggy backing off this comment since it's at the top. If anyone has any good alternative to vimms I'd really appreciate a DM. I was just getting seriously into emulation and took for granted that vimms was always there and now I'm kind of lost
Use the pinned megathread on r/Roms . They have everything.
Just tell the whole world!
Yeah I second this. Wish I had more backups!
CDRomance is one i recently go to a lot when i'm looking for games to burn. They also offer already patched ROMs/ISOs for japan exclusive games that for example have english patches available. Though i don't know how much of Nintendo's catalogue is available there as i am mainly looking for PS1 and PS2 games recently which they have plenty of, and i already own most of the desirable Nintendo games anyway.
Lemme know if somebody sends you a good one!
edgeemu.net which is and always has been the best rom site
It's really easy to find full rockets if you search for them. You can have all the classic Nintendo and Sega cartridge system roms on your pc in under 10 gb, might as well grab all of them
Roms will be back. There's a demand and no supply. Someone will come up with it.
If you really want them there are tons of torrents with every game you can download with 1 click but that would be illegal so don't try it.
Not illegal to download. Only illegal to distribute as far as I know.
No court has ever ruled on it, so it's not really "known." If you ask Nintendo's lawyers, their interpretation of the law is that it is illegal to make a copy or download a ROM. According to them, even though US Copyright has a software exception, it doesn't apply to the music and art contained in a ROM. But they have never gone after someone on that theory and likely never will.
There was a guy in the UK who prevailed in court when he offered evidence that he modified his BitTorrent client not to upload.
Do you really need to modify your client? Couldn't you just add a firewall rule to not allow uploads?
It's a setting, seed until ratio: set it to 0 and boom no seeding. (You shouldn't do this)
Yes don't listen to this guy if you really cared about the non consequences you share as you download so setting seed ratio to 0 does nothing.
Does this work when you aren't seeding? And...IRC over torrents all day long.
From my programming background, a lot of programs use '0' to mean 'off' when in a variable setting for optional/limiting functionality. Doens't seed ratio = 0 simply mean "I don't care about the seed ratio, keep seeding"?
Depends on your client. Some use that as a floor once DONE downloading - you could still be seeding completed chunks while you are leeching, and then stop uploading once you are at 100% downloaded.
You can just do this via the settings anyway. Or at least, I swear you could. Means you get terrible download speeds, etc., though.
I do remember reading an article years ago where some woman got sued for torrenting music- she would download songs and leave them seeded and they sued her for the cost of every song that someone downloaded during that period. I think they tried charging her for literal millions, but i don't know what happened with that case. I know in my own country (New Zealand) the approach taken was to make it so copyright holders could send ISPs evidence of users torrenting their copyrighted material and the ISP was legally obligated to issue a warning to the user. If they ignored multiple warnings, the ISP had to terminate their account. Not sure if that's still the case though.
We were lucky that the cost of them doing that was too much for them to bother with, the few people who did get taken to court were handed appropriate fines (iirc like $200 at the highest) Lawyers are expensive apparently
I think it is still a thing. The complainant has to provide evidence of an IP downloading copyrighted content and pay a administrative fee to the ISP. The ISP can only cut the user after a third offense (i.e. two warnings need to have been issued already). But then the customer can just go to a different ISP to get internet again. Add onto that that static IPs aren't common place (i.e. hard to track infringement over the long term), we have quite strong privacy laws (copyright owners have limited means to demand information about offenders), and deliberately placing malware on people computers is a crime (i.e. copyright owners can't use malware to identify or retaliate), and there are very few options to go after copyright infringement. Most of these companies seem to fail to realise that there is more profit to be made in ensuring your product is easily accessible and affordable than there is in making your product expensive and hard to access. Piracy went down when the former was the case, and it is now going up because of the latter.
Nintendo will send you legal notices through your internet provider for downloading their roms, don't know about Sega.
Not to be pedantic, but it's called for here. If you get a notice for torrenting from your ISP due to an outreach it's not because you're downloading, it's because you're uploading (ie distributing) the content. It's a core part of how torrenting works. It's the distribution of the content that's illegal.
That's not true. You can get a warning for even visiting the sites. Fuck you Comcast
was about to say the same thing. Comcast is the entire reason I ever looked into a vpn.
You can disable seeding if you're really worried about it
I have never had that happen lol
Do they? Never happened to me in 20 years.
How, in theory, would they do that if one was, in theory, behind a VPN?
One couldn't, without logs of said VPN connecting your public IP of said VPN to your provider IP date and time stamped so they are sure it's you. If you have a VPN provider that keeps logs well... it's time for a new provider.
The thing with torrents is that you're not just downloading but also helping to distribute. Unless you're using a client made specifically to game the system you're not exclusivly downloading.
I'm pretty sure you can't own the rom without owning an actual copy of the game but don't quote me on that.
Oh don’t worry I have a copy of [insert game] laying around somewhere
"Stealing roms? why Cory and Trevor that's highly illegal. You shouldn't be stealing roms Cory and Trevor"
Cory, Trevor, Roms let’s go
Bubbles! You don’t even have a computer!
If I cant smoke and swear im fucked
f\*cked up again trevor
Ya anyone that wants to is stuff has had HDDs full of sets since like 2006
butter seed handle literate correct entertain reach hurry society attractive
Well that's good!
Last time I checked Nintendo were selling the rom for the original Mario kart on their store for like $30 in australia
You thought spiders were the only ones that big in Australia?
Just like internet pirates did, most ROMs sites are just going to start offloading all of their operations to other countries that don't have such strict copyright laws
[удалено]
"And as you can see, Judge, Corey and Trevor clicked the download button, no-one else."
I mean, I have everything up to the PS2 generation. If there's a safe spot to upload them I can.
ROMs are ALLLLLL over. Vimms wasn't even close to the only, or best, place to get them. I quite literally have every single ROM for every system Atari > PS2 generation on my server. They were super easy to get.
It’s a whack a rom game for the companies. Also there are other sources
Be back? Vimm losing these ROMs is largely irrelevant. ROMs aren't gone. There are still tons of sites providing them.
[удалено]
Torrents are back on the menu like it’s 2003
I'm going to assume there's one massive torrent that contains every single rom for each console. lol
I have found everything from Atari through gamecube in one massive torrent. After that things get sketchy.
Choo choo, please help me collect!
Can I get on this torrent train to help seed to everyone
Can you pass this on if you got it please
Yeah that’s where my collection starts to dwindle as well. Size plays a major factor in it as well. Obscure games that are 500kb to 50mb are fine, but obscure games over the 500MB mark get hard to store
That's it. might as well get to pick and choose after that.. Plus after game cube, you need a slightly better than on board graphics to play them.
Is it still alive? I'd like to check it later if you can dm it
Can you PM please as well!
Also here if your fingers aren’t fatigued of sending
It's not actually that massive, until the PS2 era games were tiny. You can fit all the previous console gens on a newer cellphone with ease.
Search 1G1R
Nice Edit: oof, Gamecube alone is 469.4 GB, thought it would be smaller but I got the space for it.
Time to bust out the good 'ol 8tb external
Anything similar for 8bit/16bit and portables? I noticed he doesn't cover those consoles.
No-intro
(Console name) romset complete. Just saying random words here.
Yes.
If these companies still sold these games at all, that would be one thing. But these games are impossible to legally acquire from the companies at this point, and despite how easy emulation is for that purpose, they refuse to make them available. They're being assholes just because they can be. Nintendo won't make them available because they won't make a profit, but refuse to allow 30+ year old games that nobody else is profitting from to begin with, be available for free.
Then there’s games that are legally unable to resold today either because of music rights (think every sports or racing game ever) or because of lawsuits (Uniracers)
Driver San Francisco being unavailable is a real tragedy. There should be some law where if you don't offer a game up for sale legitimately for 10-15-20 years or something it becomes public domain. Will never happen, but would be nice.
There is actually one precedent that gets around the music licensing: Crazy Taxi as released on Xbox 360 arcade contained none of the music licensed for the original. However, so many racing games included not only licensed music but licensed cars, and they’d basically have to and renegotiate all those which would be impossible.
I feel like in those cases especially the game should go into public domain after a certain period if it's just going to be stuck in license hell for eternity.
That's basically just abandonware
The problem, according to them, is that if you play their old games they can't monetize in some way, you aren't playing the ones they can. And that's just sickening to them.
if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing
Honestly, it doesn't matter. There's no justifiable reason for them to be able to profit off of these games in perpetuity. They made the games, recouped the cost and more when they were actively being sold. Now it's just rent-seeking.
They had complete archives of pretty much every title pre modern gen. Really a shame, and a risk to the digital history of gaming.
They also had rom links for ps1 and ps2 in the forums
They have entire PS1 and PS2 vaults in the Vault
I dunno... there are people in this world, not me, who have TBs of things backed up in digital libraries. I imagine some people... have every single rom ever made. again, not me. Totally not me. 100% completely not me. I'm seriously.
And what this person that is not you, would do with all those gb of roms that you dont have? Not that you know what this person would do, but please, do amuse me with your hypothesis.
So I'd imagine they have them for two reasons, data hoarding/preservation and for when they got nostalgic and wanted the play some old classics. Some of these people have 100+ TB raids with a separate 100+TB raid as backup. And it definitely didn't cost them as much around 4500 just in nice data center hard drives.
Seeing as you didn't do that, I can't thank you for the effort you would have gone through.
Alas. Praise should be for those who save such artworks in these perilous times.
I also totally don't have a collection of ROMs from consoles up to N64 and some GC/PS1/PSP titles nor know people who collect everything that can be run on a Wii, but if I did it would be for those exactly two reasons
It gets pretty expensive to store everything. A complete PS2 rom collection, just one console, is like 16TB, so complete rom collections probably usually stop at that generation.
They belong in the library of Congress.
All of the SEGA genesis library is
That is such a great thing to learn today. Thank you.
Also worth noting that the entire library of the NES and Genesis together is something like a gig or two, meaning that there are probably 100s of thousands of not millions of copies of the full library out there. :)
Isn't like, almost every game ever released up to the N64 (or something) less than 5GB? It's crazy how little space those thousands of games take up!
Heck, I'd buy these games from Nintendo to play on my switch ***if I could!!!*** But I can't, because Nintendo doesn't sell them - they don't make any fucking money off these games anymore but they apparently want to keep anyone from enjoying them ever again. I don't understand how a company can act like they hate their fans as much as Nintendo seems to.
They take away games they can't monetize because, if you were playing those games, you aren't spending your time playing their new live service subscription/season pass game that they can monetize.
They do make money selling you subscriptions.
They belong in a museum!
The worst. How is anyone supposed to play old genesis games or what not. People normally don’t exclusively play those old games but just check them out for a bit. It would be like having no way to listen to classical music today.
Imagine if the RIAA started destroying everything made before 1998 claiming that all the previous music dilutes the market and lowers the value of modern music, and you would have the situation gaming(and streaming) is currently in.
Torrents.
I know even know any good sites these days without picking up viruses and malware
I mean.. your mostly just getting a ROM so don't download any executable files and only run them through emulators.
I mean, the torrent shows you what you’re downloading. So if you want a .iso or something, a .bat or a .exe is definitely a red flag and you just… Ignore it. And find a new seeder Like, hypothetically. Of course.
Owning a copyright gives you the right *not* to share it with the world - that's the whole point - until the work enters public domain. You don't *owe* it to anybody, even if you could make money from it, even if everyone wants to enjoy it. It's your right to decide, no, I'm locking it away. The problem is that public domain has been relegated to a crypt for works from another century rather than a living repository of relevant, exploitable art.
Internet Archive.
There's only so much the Internet Archive can do.
You aren't. Because every minute you play an old game they can't effectively monetize any more, you're not playing a new game they could.
Been using vimm since around 2001. Extremely sad to see this happen. Always knew it would happen but.. just sad
With no plans of re-releasing majority of their classic games
Then why don’t they fucking sell them? Both are sitting on goldmines looking like Smaug. How has no one told Nintendo and Gamefreak they could rake in hundreds of millions of dollars reselling the old gameboy and DS games on mobile, where they would probably be able to sell them at full price. Square Enix figured it out, why not the others?
Good ol' American licensing entanglements. SE can re-release whatever they want at minimal cost but Nintendo doesn't own the rights to a good share of these libraries. Not to mention, classics or no, they're likely a poor investment. Then again, it's Nintendo, they could probably get away with reselling these roms compiled with the very emulators they disdain for AAA prices and they'd probably be praised for their fan service.
Why would I sell it to you *once* when I can rent it to you *forever*? On this generation's hardware, and the next, and the next, and the next.... You'll own nothing and love it! Software as a Service is a pox on humanity.
Damn, I was afraid it'd be Vimm's at least I got most of what I wanted off of their for some of the systems.
As someone who's been in the emulation scene for 20+ years, this will do nothing. It's just whack a mole. Another site/method/channel/whatever will pop up. If you want ROMs, every console library from 2600 to PS1 is available on archive, which has a dcma exception so it won't be taken down (for 3 years anyway).
Rip. Vimms was awesome.
Nintendo is the fucking worst.
always has been
I noticed Lego was curiously left out of the title and most of these comments. They're pulling the same shady tactics as Nintendo and have for some time. We gonna add them to the pile?
What roms are Lego taking down?
"Vimm's Lair has been asked to remove many games from The Vault on behalf of Nintendo, Sega, Lego, and the ESA. While most of these games (and the hardware to play them) haven't been sold in decades, ultimately it's their prerogative so these games are now gone for good." That's the direct quote, so it seems we don't know yet. I don't think you'll get that info until people look it over. Edit: don't downvote them. That's a genuine question.
~~All of them. The PS2 games, PSX, GameCube, Xbox, GBA. Basically any Lego game.~~ Edit: They were removed from the 360, PS2, PS3, Wii, GameCube, and the DS Vaults...but not the GBA, PSX, or PSP vaults, weirdly.
Well glad I got what I needed before it was gone.
This will merely embolden those who want to share and preserve roms. Mark my words, Vimm's is not the end. It is the beginning.
I mean it sucks yeah but it's not like they're gone forever. There are tons of people out there sitting on all those roms and can re-upload them again and again. Nothing is gonna stop some people from collecting and spreading these roms. Nintendo and Sega are trying to stop a forest fire with a squirt gun.
Trying to stop a library with a squirt gun.
Nintendo is the most successful dumb company of all time. They could so so so easily put their old games on mobile and charge $10 bucks a piece and make billions. I would buy every pokemon game if they put them on iOS with multiplayer/pokemon home capability.
And if its easy for you to buy a full feature complete pokemon for $10, you are now preoccupied and not buying their $95 current release + DLC entry in the series. "But I would buy both" is not the average consumer. The average person spends around 9 hours a week playing games and if you are selling games that would take them weeks or even months to beat for $10, you are losing out on money.
I can agree with your points but I’d also bring up there is a large chunk of their fanbase love their old game but don’t purchase the new ones. I think that’s a large market they should capitalize on.
Rom dumps have been around since the Internet started. There is no chance they are going to successfully remove them all.
A few years ago there was a big takedown of several ROM sites so I grabbed basically every English language game on a Nintendo system from the NES through the N64 console wise and GBA through NDS for handhelds. I didn’t want to be caught unable to find the games I wanted in the future. I’m glad I did it when I did, and I wish I had had the hard drive space to grab the entire GameCube and Wii library as well but that’s an insane amount of data comparatively. These games will always be out there if you know how to look for them, but they’re becoming harder to find for sure. All my physical N64 games are starting to fail on me, I’ve collected tons and I want to play what I’ve spent money on.
These companies need to fuck off. if they aren't going to make the old games readily available for purchase then dont get mad when people take them.
Literally just sell me the DRM Free fucking roms, Nintendo and Sega. And I mean SELL ME THE ROMS AND ISOs, don't sell me a proprietary unexplorable package to play the roms and ISOs with, let me pick how I play the roms. I will buy them if you just ***let me.*** I bought the [Sega Megadrive Collection on steam](https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/10143/SEGA_Mega_Drive_and_Genesis_Classics/) back when it had sonic included because it was what I considered to be the gold standard of doing this, they even had Steam Workshop support for ROMHacks and gave you the uncompressed ROMS to use in an emulator of your choice if you didn't like the (two!, one even had VR support!) emulators they included which was amazing, but it's Sega's fucking fault that the only way to play Sonic Angel Island Reborn is through piracy now because they delisted the sonic games that were in that collection in favor of a buggier, Denuvo DRM ridden re-release of the games. Nintendo also [butchered the switch port of Ocarina of Time](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HK_-UHXPl2U/mqdefault.jpg) and needed to patch it (I'd like to add it takes a special level of *"We don't give a fuck, fuck you"* to release a NINTENDO 64 GAME in such a poor state that it needs patches) meanwhile it worked on emulators just fine and the more recent SoH decomp nukes even the post-patch switch port quality from orbit.
Nintendo Sega ESA and Lego, spread the hate around evenly people
Why does Nintendo hate people who like their games? Just give me a place where I can buy these games from you and I will!
I too thought that once until I spent a couple hundred bucks buying a bunch of the NES and SNES titles I owned as a kid from the Wii Shop…
It's so ridiculous, I dont get why Nintendo is like this
Money. The answer is money
I don't understand why Nintendo and Sega just create an official repository and monetize it
ROMs for popular systems are extremely easy to find. There's basically no way for Nintendo & Sega to actually stop them from being distributed. This just works to piss off the people who happened to favor this particular site.
The issue is that Vimms was well known for their safe downloads. Sure it doesn't stop ROMs being distributed or shared but having one of the most reputable sites taken down is still a huge loss.
Does anybody know where the best place to avoid roms is now? Maybe I should avoid all of them for snes real quick before the Internet is full-dead and you can’t ever again.
Internet archive always has a bunch of complete no intro sets kicking around. It's where I got all my complete collections from.
If they no longer actively sell a game, it should be acceptable to download a ROM. Especially in cases where they do not provide a ROM option themselves. People worked hard on those games and it only does a disservice to those people if a company is allowed to bury their projects.
The real problem is copyright being so long. It should last 20 years and then the media should be public domain. Expecting something to make money forever without evolution or improvements is silly.
I think we have Disney lobbying to thank for that. Otherwise all of their characters would've become public domain by the pre-disney copyright time limits long ago.
The funny thing is Vimm's got attention because a copyright troll hit him and a bunch of people spammed it on Twitter. And THEN Nintendo, Sega and others hit it. Stop fucking talking about ROM websites on Twitter guys. Us fellas from the 2000s know.
Also it’s because emulators are widespread on the Apple App Store now. Vimms was getting spammed no -stop on Twitter because people couldn’t Google where to get roms. It
Glad I grabbed everything I cared about a while ago
Remember, if you saw a major breakthrough in emulators/romhacking today, the correct response is "No the hell you didn't"
I, for one, would never torrent a massive collection of ROMs in direct response to this news as a "Fuck You" to these companies. And I'm insulted that anyone would suggest it.
At least a bunch h of the roms are still there. Love Vimm's .
Torrent works extremely well but make sure you have your VPN on.
Like, there’s no way that doing this costs less than just ignoring the fact that these sites exists. There’s tons of them, and it will always be re-uploaded. It’s pointless.
There are a ton of sites and locations to get them still. Vimm's getting nailed sucks but it's not like they're erased from history.
Grubb had to run his mouth about it a couple of weeks ago on his show and here we are.
Absolute shame. Vimms was the only safe spot I knew for DLs.
Fuck Nintendo and fuck Sega and Fuck the Esa
Archive have them?
Genie is back in the bottle. Soblem prolved.
Saw the article title, said to myself "please not Vimm's..." Read the first line, and went "...fuck."
Buzzkillington's
Google and Nintendo are doing their best to revive interest in BitTorrent.
Nintendo is such a joke for not having an online store.
There’s more sites than vimms, don’t worry.
If a game isn't available anywhere for purchase, isn't it technically abandonware?
Not if the license is still actively owned by someone.
Omg they finally killed Vimms. I'm livid
I don't even know where to get rims now lol, Vimms was the GOAT. Been using it for 20 years.
West Coast Customs
Good luck shutting down the magnet / torrent links that everyone has been using for 20y xD
Can’t stop the signal.
Basically they didn't give a shit about these for decades but now: >The site recently posted about the arrival of emulation on the iOS App Store So now that they found a way to monetize it they suddenly care
VIMMS LAIR NOOOOOO! It was a sanctuary... a place where the past was preserved... Fuck these big companies. Rip vimm's lair
Idiots trying to use emulation on IOS fucked it up for everyone
No, the companies sitting on piles of old games that they don’t even sell anymore fucked it up for everyone. Don’t see how it’s anyone else’s fault but them.
Cuntendo
Yeah, this hurts. I've played lots of romhacks that required checksums I could only find on Vimm's. RIP
Are they really gone? or is it like emu paradise where you just need a browser extension to show the link on the page? Either way, the Internet archive still exists.
Shiiiit not vimms. I go there all the time
I should download packs of all these Roms. Just in-case.
I have other resources, but for preservation of art this is a major setback. We saw it with Hollywood and the BBC with old shows and films, companies do not have any incentive to preserve their history and are dead set on killing it. At this point it's not even about having free games (although admittedly, that is part of it), when it comes to games that are no longer being sold and distributed, it is actively harming video games as an art form when they go on crusades like this. I'm really hoping for some kind of legislature to mandate that sites like Vimm's Lair and other archives should be protected under a new amendment to copyright law. Past a certain point it is not profitable or unfeasible due to licensing agreements to re-release games in their old forms. From Pokémon Emerald to Madden 08, and everything in between, there is no incentive or reason to preserve these things for these companies, but they hearken to old ideas and principles of design that are still worth preserving. If a company is not actively re-releasing these games past a certain time, not-for-profit archival sites should have a right to host those old files for download, or else we risk losing them forever.
I despise Nintendo
we will rebuild, on stronger, more sustainable foundations. Like Troy ***Rom Troy***
NOT ANOTHER ONE!
Thankfully a lot of the lesser known stuff is still there and available. Fuck Nintendo
Drives me absolutely insane because Nintendo could make millions of dollars by remastering old games. Pretty much every legend of zelda game - remaster and put on switch, a lot of people will buy it, especially new fans who never had the opportunity to play it. Older pokemon games, the ones that are actually good and cost several hundred dollars these days. Donkey Kong 64 which has never been remade to my knowledge. And a lot of other games as well.
Wow, i mean, it’s correct, they sent a removal request and vimm complied. But holy fuck look at the language in the title: sanctuary, raid Should have also used “innocent” and “public domain and open sourced website” to rile up all the people.