Messages

1

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Loses DS Flash Card Case in French Court

« on: December 04, 2009, 04:48:43 PM »

The main problem with the flash carts is that they compromise the security of the system in which they use to deliver content to those that have bought it. It is how they make their money after all. If this takes hold, what ramifications does it have in the European Market?

Trying to stop piracy by technological means is a dead-end; piracy is already illegal. There will always be a way around it. At least with flash carts, people are buying Nintendo hardware (as opposed to running emulators on computers or other handhelds).

And the second someone makes a pornographic homebrew game and it falls into the hands of a child, who will be getting sued?

Erm, if you want to pin the liability on anyone, I would say whoever gave it to the child (or [negligently?] allowed the child to come into possession of it). I fail to see how DS flash carts differ from any other platform in this regard. There are many companies involved in content creation for the DS. I find it hard to believe that most people would be any more confused about a Square game being played on a Nintendo DS than about a Warner Bros. movie being played on a Sony DVD player.

I think that judge forgets that Nintendo makes it's own systems that are closed. If they want to develop something there are open options or licensing available. If someone is going to violate the terms & usage of something that I myself researched, developed, manufactured, distributed and now use to make money, then I think I have every say on how it can and can't be used.

What right does Nintendo have to say what I can and can't do with a physical object that I bought from them? Don't I own it, not them?

I am not in support of piracy (nor am I even all that interested in homebrew: I have regular computers I can run whatever I want on; running homebrew on consoles is just extra work), but I am very much against the idea of a company being able to exert control over hardware I own. If they really wanted to stop piracy, they would provide for legal ways to run homebrew apps which could not be used for piracy.

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TalkBack / RE:Play Import GameCube Games on Wii Without Mods

« on: February 28, 2007, 12:57:43 PM »

Actually, this does not sound all that random to me at all. I remember hearing that similar tricks would work on PSX.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Porn sites supporting the Wii!!

« on: January 13, 2007, 01:37:12 PM »

Seeing as to get internet access to the Wii you pretty much need (1) a router or (2) a computer with the Nintendo wireless adapter, if the parents care about filtering their children's internet access then it should already be filtered at one of those two points.

[KDR_11k]

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TalkBack / RE:Opera Browser Vulnerability Affects Wii Internet Channel

« on: January 07, 2007, 04:27:04 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
The first problem for injecting code into the Wii is... Do you have a Wii compiler?

Yes.

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TalkBack / RE:Dungeon Explorer Delayed for Virtual Console

« on: January 03, 2007, 09:46:35 AM »

It's unlikely, but it could be a bug related to the timing/video on the NTSC version of the game. Or maybe there were other changes when the PAL version was made, which happen to cancel out the bug somehow.

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TalkBack / RE:Virtual Console Mondays

« on: December 15, 2006, 07:09:37 AM »

Online play would be a modification to the emulator, maybe with a 2 bit field in the game for max number of players in the VC game download. The difficulty is that games that were not designed for online play are pretty much unplayable online due to lag. I highly doubt that Nintendo would release a version of VC allowing for bad online play; it's just not their style. The alternative would be rewriting the multiplayer mode of every multiplayer VC game, which would be far more work than Nintendo is interested in spending on VC games. Maybe some companies could decide to release anthology discs/Wii downloadable games, which would be the classics with updated graphics and online play, but that would be separate from VC.

On the other hand, an online leaderboard would be trivial. A very small file could be included with each VC game that has a high scores list describing where and how it is stored (this could even work for games which do not have a battery, so the high scores list exists only while the game is running). Whenever the game was quit, the VC emulator could read off that information and compare it with the information it gets from Nintendo's servers. The only difficulty here is preventing cheating by someone figuring out the format and then submitting themselves as having gotten 99999999 points in every game. The solution would probably be to have the Wii have a private key to sign the high score submissions. I assume that is how the XBox 360 handles that problem.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: Virtual Console to look worse with Component Cables?

« on: November 29, 2006, 12:31:19 PM »

There is no reason why old games would look bad in progressive scan. I run emulators without enabling scanlines, and the games look fine. Although, Nintendo really should be using a scaling algorithm like scale2x or hq2x for the virtual console games because very few, if any, are outputting at a full 640x480. (I have not played VC yet, so I do not know for sure that they don't; it just sounds like they are not from this thread and other impressions.)

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: TG16 Control Unhappiness

« on: November 29, 2006, 12:28:11 PM »

Gah, why didn't Nintendo just allow the user to set any button mappings they want? Having default ones is fine, but why not as an option?

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TalkBack / RE: The NEW Mailbag Talkback Thread

« on: November 29, 2006, 12:23:36 PM »

On the question in the most recent mailbag about the website click-through for accessing the internet. Of course, this would be easiest when Opera is on the Wii, but you could clone the Wii/DS's MAC address with a laptop, do the click-through, and then reset the computer's MAC address. The only way the network can identify devices is the MAC address, so it will think the Wii/DS did the click-through. (Technically, there are method that might detect that, but no one would bother.) As to how to find the MAC address... it should be on the device somewhere, if it isn't, then it would be more difficult.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: Non-Nintendo WIFI USB thingies...Recomendations?

« on: November 20, 2006, 07:11:19 AM »

If you want a router, the Linksys WRT54G is probably the best. It acts as a router, an 802.11g wireless access point, and a 4 port switch (you can plug in four wired ethernet devices). It sits between your computer and your modem (assuming you have cable/DSL/some internet connection that plugs into your computer via wired ethernet), so it does not matter what OS your computer is running. I think the new ones have a one-press setup button, although for the most basic setup, you would just plug it in.

If you just want a USB wireless adapter, I do not know. You may want to check the prices and see what the difference is between buying a WRT54G and Nintendo's USB wireless adapter. You should be able to do it with any wireless card (PCI or USB), but I am not sure how easy it would be to set up on Windows ME. On 2k/XP I know you can just make a network bridge pretty easily.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: Wired internet connection

« on: November 18, 2006, 09:55:01 AM »

The Omen: That's what the router does. The router has a WAN port (your broadband plugs in here), LAN port(s) (your desktop plugs into one of these), and acts as a wireless access point (connects to your Wii/other wireless devices).

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: BlkPaladin's rant/editoral on this upcoming console cycle.

« on: November 18, 2006, 09:49:43 AM »

Word can save as HTML. The result is ugly, but it works.

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TalkBack / RE: SanDisk Announces Wii-branded Memory Cards

« on: November 18, 2006, 09:47:21 AM »

Normal SD cards max out at 2GB; 4GB+ are "SD High Capacity" which look the same but have a different standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_card#SD_and_SDHC_-_compatibility

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TalkBack / RE: Welcome to Nintendo World Report

« on: November 16, 2006, 11:36:21 AM »

I agree, it could use a bit more color.

Why are the three key news items images at the top now flash? I admit that I usually just use the main news listing anyway, but it's still annoying that those are not links.

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TalkBack / RE: More Virtual Console Details

« on: November 15, 2006, 07:58:52 PM »

Light gun --> Wiimote conversion is possible, but not trivial. I see no reason why Nintendo would not do it eventually.

I do not know about other emulators, but I know ZSNES's netplay is not very good. I remember seeing one of the devs suggesting that its best application was for playing a game on one monitor with two keyboards. The problem is, the games were made to assume zero lag, which doesn't happen over the internet. For some games, it doesn't matter, but for fast moving games, it's intolerable. (Anyone who has ever played a LAN game of armagetron knows what I mean... and that is designed for LAN play, just Tron is pretty much the fastest possible game.)

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TalkBack / RE: Future Wii Model to Include DVD Playback

« on: November 15, 2006, 06:54:54 PM »

Hmmm... it is possible that the current Wii simply won't read DVDs because the media is slightly different (like the GCN's was not quite a mini-DVD), and the DVD-playing version would have an optical drive with firmware allowing it to read either. Otherwise, software-only would be possible. If it is, someone will make Wii Linux to do it.

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TalkBack / RE: Virtual Console Details Exposed

« on: November 06, 2006, 05:58:25 AM »

Everyone talking about "cracking" the VC: Why?! All of the ROMs that will ever be available on the VC are currently trivial to find online and download for free. The whole point of the VC is to offer a legal way to play those games. If you want to use a GCN controller for your emulated games, go ahead and buy a GCN-USB adapter (actually, I don't know if they exist, but they probably do).

The VC games will probably just be a ROM along with a signature saying that Nintendo verifies that Wii#NNN is authorized to play this ROM. Whether or not it is encrypted does not matter. The Wii would simply refuse to play ROMs with that signature, and that would be secure. In order to crack it, you would have to modify or remove the signature check, which, if Nintendo is smart, would be handled in ROM, not in the flash. I guess if it is handled by the flash, then it would be possible to modify the VC software to ignore the check and just play any downloaded ROM (put into the Wii VC format).

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*(updated 10/28/2006)

« on: November 01, 2006, 05:56:55 AM »

JonLeung: Uh, you actually still use physical DVDs? Weirdo.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: Need some help catching up...

« on: October 31, 2006, 09:14:56 AM »

Depending the game, the WiiMote might also be fine for an SNES controller. I am thinking of RPGs where you pretty much need a D-pad, menu select, and menu back.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: Official Countdown to wii

« on: October 30, 2006, 06:09:31 AM »

Edfishy: Nah, in RPGs it is just strategy, not reflexes, that you are "doing better." Although, as Kairon pointed out, you are usually free to ignore strategy and level-grind instead.

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TalkBack / RE: Sony Puts Lik-Sang Out of Business

« on: October 25, 2006, 06:59:28 AM »

Quote
arguing that Lik-Sang advertises the Sony products "in a
dishonest manner" and "unlawfully interferes with Sony's economical
interests".

Now there's a new one. Can I sue some European government for unlawfully interfering with my economical
interests by not giving me a million dollars? Sounds pretty sweet.

The copyright question was clarified in Jonny's post, but that only justifies a cease and desist, not a lawsuit. Suing for mirrored material is ridiculous, but reasonable under copyright law.

In the US there is a concept called the first-sale doctrine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine ), which basically says that once something has been sold (say, to Lik-sang), the buyer may do whatever they want with it, including resell it. I assume other countries have similar laws. If Sony does not want Lik-Sang selling their products, they could simply not sell them to Lik-Sang in the first place. (I assume Lik-Sang was buying direct from Sony.)

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: That next-gen itch

« on: October 23, 2006, 07:37:30 AM »

I agree that power is important as far as it affects gameplay, but, at least graphics-wise, the Wii is plenty powerful. On the N64 a lot of games had trouble with draw-in, which did not detract from the game too much, but was still annoying (see: Mario 64. Or, rather, don't see because it's too far away. . I do not remember noticing that in GameCube games, and I would be very surprised if it was a problem on the Wii.

On the other hand, some of the quotes in the first post reference AI and physics, which are areas where additional power could improve gameplay. I guess we will see how well developers actually use the additional power on the PS3 and 360.

23

Nintendo Gaming / RE: 480P

« on: October 15, 2006, 09:06:31 AM »

The PAL cables are probably different. US and Japan both use NTSC, so they will get the same cables. Scart is not an option on most TVs in the US.

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TalkBack / RE: Nintendo Reveals Japanese Accessories

« on: October 12, 2006, 06:52:15 AM »

18 Days: D-Terminal is a digital(?) connection that is not used in the US. I believe it can be adapted to VGA (HD-15; that is, what CRT computer monitors use) pretty easily. The "AV" (composite) video is the lowest common denominator for TV video signals; it just throws everything together into one RCA cable. S-Video is one connector with multiple wires at the end, which most TVs have inputs for. Component is the best analog video connector; it just separates the video signal into three separate RCA cables. Component is much better than the other two because it gives a better picture and can support HDTV signals. For the Wii, that means you can get 480p, so you have have 60 full frames per second instead of 60 fields (basically half-frames) per second (look up 480i on Wikipedia if you care).

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TalkBack / RE: MP3 Playback on Wii

« on: October 10, 2006, 04:15:05 PM »

MP3 is patented, and you can be sure that Nintendo will be paying license fees for every Wii ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues ). Fraunhofer does not tend to go after software decoders, but they do collect fees on hardware like the iPod.