I present to you my new site / project
I can't wait to let everyone in, but for now I working out a few kinks (I know on the site it says we but this is just so people would think that not only me is behind this
. Soon you will be able to use this site and all the features it will provide. When the site opens the database will be small but later on it will grow and grow You can always help by adding content to our database or by making donations. This site is not only about nes or famicom it is about all pirte carts and games like pirates for sega, gameboy etc All content will be added and approved by moderators first and only high res images/scans will be tolerated (there will be some exceptions if good images can not be found. Hope you are exited as i am about opening this site
Also i am planing on having a mobile version too ... just think about it siting in front of the tv with a pile of carts and a phone in your hand
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So tell me what do you think about the idea.
Oh and here is some preview of the design:
http://piratecarts.info/beta/
Tell me what do you like and what you don't like or what do you want to be added
Thanks in advance for reading this long comment and / or taking time to visit my site
How exactly are you defining "pirate"? For example, would Tetris by Tengen be considered "pirate"? I clicked Help and couldn't see anything. And what's that on your design preview about pain for its own sake?
welll tepples pirate game or pirate cartridge is everything not released by nintendo for example all of those XXXX in 1 carts or all those hacked games like nuts and milk with pokemon sprites or all those pirate original games like somari or super mario world for nes. And this is only a design preview so you can't open anything for now and what do you mean by " pain for its own sake "? If you don't like anything just tell me and i will change it
tonev wrote:
welll tepples pirate game or pirate cartridge is everything not released by nintendo
That's "unlicensed", not "pirate". Games not licensed by Nintendo include things like Klax, Action 52, Bee 52, Krazy Kreatures, Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril, Bible Adventures, Bubble Bath Babes, and Little Red Hood. We'll have to find some way to distinguish "legit" unlicensed releases from pirate hacks and multis, or to distinguish Somari and Kart Fighter from Tengen's version of Tetris, etc. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people use
the term "pirate" without specifying what is and isn't "pirate". Perhaps a bit of self-interest is involved: under definitions proposed by some people I could name, some of my own works would be considered "pirate".
Quote:
And this is only a design preview so you can't open anything for now and what do you mean by " pain for its own sake "? If you don't like anything just tell me and i will change it
It's
in the Latin
Well what do you suggest? Having 2 databases for "unlicensed" and "pirate" ?
Or the database should be one but it will be specified if it is pirate or unlicensed game ? Oh and about the ipsum stuff they are just placeholders...
Well I would admit that, personally, while I have nothing against Unlicenced games (heh, if I ever made a NES game it will definitely be unlicenced so it'd be quite paradoxal for me to be against them !), pirated games, that copies copirighted trademarks and characters off legit games and are pasted on VERY crappy games, such as this FF7-pirate, tends to piss me off.
First those games sucks, and it is disrespectful for the legit developers who put a lot of trought to make good games to see their work copied in extremely crappy games.
That being said I have nothing against the projetct - but considering the huge mess pirated games are - good luck making an organized database of them.
tonev wrote:
Well what do you suggest? Having 2 databases for "unlicensed" and "pirate" ?
Or the database should be one but it will be specified if it is pirate or unlicensed game ?
Mostly I suggest trying to come up with a clear definition to distinguish unlicensed from pirate.
I don't see the problem. Pirates=Stolen source, graphics, etc. Unlicensed is self made just not licensed. The only game I could see having a problem with it something like Noahs Ark on SNES. I mean shouldn't be a big problem IMO. Just have a column that says what it is, pirate or unlicensed. Good luck with this, a pirate database would be really useful!
Pirate: It infringes on somebody else's copyright or trademark. Unlicensed Harry Potter game? Pirate. Unlicensed ports of existing games? Pirate. Hacked games that throw in Pokemon sprites? Pirate. Genesis "Squirrel King"? (A Chip & Dale rescue rangers clone) Pirate, due to stolen music in there.
Unlicensed games based on Somari which don't contain Mario or Sonic? Debatable, because the levels may be somewhat based on Sonic, but are different enough.
Dwedit wrote:
Unlicensed ports of existing games? Pirate.
Kevtris for ColecoVision and LJ65 for NES? Pirate, at least if Henk Rogers has his way.
Quote:
Genesis "Squirrel King"? (A Chip & Dale rescue rangers clone) Pirate, due to stolen music in there.
Earthbound? Pirate, due to stolen Beatles music.
Ports of genesis / snes games to famicom/nes ARE pirate games because they are not made by the developers of the real game. For example there is a port of DK Country and it is a pirate nintendo never released it for nes or famicom.
And about the argument about Earthbound being pirate because of stolen music? Well this is copyright issue if the beatles music is stolen from another game
Never mind, tepples is just in his trip to contredict everyone just because it's fun to him.
Perhaps the contradicting comes from my programmer mindset. In a computer program, the hardest bugs to locate come from edge cases in the code that weren't foreseen. I just try to find the edges as a proverbial ounce of prevention.
If, on the other hand, you want to find the middle first and take an "I know it when I see it" approach when determining whether an unlicensed game is pirated, that's fine too. You don't have to set down rigid rules at the start; you can let them emerge from examples.
Well i am a programmer too i even study Computer Science at my uni but i don't see things your way and i know how to code in c++ , java , html , php and if you want to locate bugs use the debuger option
So back to the topic my site wont be strict about pirates only it will have pirates and unlicensed games it does not matter if they are ports or originals or something else
So, I'm curios, what will Noahs Ark 3D be classified as? And when do you plan on having everything up and running? How many carts do you have cataloged and stuff? Will you have mapper details and ROM sizes too?
well Noahs Ark 3D will be unlicensed game. It is not port from another system or hack of another game. And yes it will include mapper details and ROM sizes but not about every cartridge because currently i don't have the hardware to dump my collection... and about how many carts i can't tell because i am not the only one working on it
and when it is released you will also be able to add to the database
I believe that everything that's not an official product is pirated. We had a lot of pirated NES cartridges. Why pirated? Two reasons:
1. We never had multi-carts, like 600-in-1 (only 33 unique games, others were hacked versions).
2. Unknown manufacturer. This is important, as a single Rockman 3 rose, orange or black cartridges could be found for sale.
They're not official products.
A game based on Tetris, for example, is homebrew. It's different AFAIK.
Zepper thanks for your comment
Well everything that is not official will be on that site because for example there are pirate cartridges containing original games but they are on cart with different or similar label
tonev wrote:
It is not port from another system or hack of another game
SNES Doom.
3gengames DOOM is official port just like sega ported some of the arcade games to the master system...
To clarify 3gengames's point: SNES Doom falls into the same category as NES Donkey Kong, NES Mario Bros., NES Klax, SNES Street Fighter II, and SNES Mortal Kombat: authorized ports.
But I guess you're on the right track. Start by documenting all NES and Famicom cart releases not licensed by Nintendo, and categories will emerge.
tonev wrote:
3gengames DOOM is official port just like sega ported some of the arcade games to the master system...
Look at the SNES gameplay and then look at Super Noahs Ark gameplay....Nobody is getting what I'm saying yet.
Super Noahs Ark 3d or Super Noahs Ark is an unlicensed game why do you think it uses another connector... simple to disable the lockout chip... and there are not that many pirate / unlicensed games for snes...
Super Noah's Ark 3D is a hack of Wolf3D (pure software), not Doom (Super FX assisted), and rumors still circulate that Id Software licensed the engine to Wisdom Tree in retaliation against Nintendo's censorship policy.
tepples wrote:
Super Noah's Ark 3D is a hack of Wolf3D (pure software), not Doom (Super FX assisted), and rumors still circulate that Id Software licensed the engine to Wisdom Tree in retaliation against Nintendo's censorship policy.
I thought it was built on doom, whoops. But still, that's the only game IMO that's hard to determine what it is. It's unlicensed and a half pirate sorta.
tepples wrote:
and rumors still circulate that Id Software licensed the engine to Wisdom Tree in retaliation against Nintendo's censorship policy.
Yeah, and you're not making it any better by recirculating those rumors.
At least according to Wikipedia (the book "Masters of Doom" as a reference), the rumor is not true.
3gengames wrote:
I thought it was built on doom, whoops. But still, that's the only game IMO that's hard to determine what it is. It's unlicensed and a half pirate sorta.
It's not a pirate, why would it be? Wisdom Tree licensed the engine from ID and used their own music/graphics/game design. "Pirate" means somebody used IP that doesn't belong to them.
So in other words, it's no different from any of the other games licensing Id Tech 0.
My concern just hinges on defining "IP that doesn't belong to them". I guess that'll come as games are added and categorized.
I tend to classify games like this:
Unlicensed - made by a 3rd party that made a game containing all of their own content. No sprites/music/trademarked characters were used.
Pirate - Anything that is hacked (sprite/graphic replacement, NNN-in-1), FDS to cartridge conversions, etc.
Pirate Original - Anything that is an original game (i.e. no stolen graphics or code which is obviously stolen) but uses trademarked characters. i.e. the multiple DKC games, or the Lion King, etc.
Of course there's plenty of grey area here. But this is unavoidable. Stuff like Tengen Tetris is NOT a pirate, it's merely unlicensed (in the respect of categorization). Tengen did indeed buy a license for Tetris, it just happened to be somewhat bogus. The whole thing surrounding Tetris is pretty insane anyways, so I'd call it merely unlicensed... especially since Tengen bought their license in good faith.
Things get sticky when you have a pirate of a pirate original, like a fighting game that has been hacked, but I guess you could just call that a pirate. (it'd be silly to call it a pirated pirate original, haha).
I would also indicate a 4th category just for FDS to cartridge conversions since these are pretty interesting and it'd be nice to know which were converted. I know of at least 8-10 of them so far.
So, if I were doing it, I'd have these 4:
Pirate
Pirate FDS Conversion
Pirate Original
Unlicensed
With possible modifiers, or things that might fall into both categories. One that immediately comes to mind is Action 52, since it uses a ripped off music engine, ripped off music, and that music loop at the start, and they snagged a multicart menu system for their menu... But the rest is all original (cough). So, the A52 would be pirate/unlicensed since it contains elements of both. They are not trying to pass it off as another game (i.e. changing sprites to turn Felix the Cat into Pokemon), so I do not consider it a full-on pirate.
You guys are making it way too hard.
By definition any game using a trademarked/copyrighted character or idea without permission is unlicensed. Meaning they did not get permission from Disney to use their character. Even if everything is coded and drawn from scratch, but the game is heavily "inspired" by another company's work it would be an unlicensed game as it did not receive permission from that company. For instance the Pacman vs Munchkin lawsuit. Munchkin is not a "pirate" game. Unlicensed games are extremely common, but the burden of proof is too high in most cases to warrant prosecution.
A pirate game is a game that is sold that contains another company's work/product/code without consent. For instance those 100 in 1 carts that contain the games from other companies. Technically all sold ports that contain the exact graphics of the game it emulates (without prior consent) is a pirate game.
A homebrew can be an unlicensed game if contains the IP of another company without first obtaining permission. This includes gameplay elements. tokumaru's game could still be considered an unlicensed game (Even if it used no characters from sonic) by SEGA if its gameplay is too similar to sonic's. If said homebrew contained code and/or graphics from previous sonic games and is sold it would be a pirate game.
I think the big problem here is that people are only viewing a licensed game as one that Nintendo authorized to be made for the system. For example, the game Jurassic park by Ocean not only needed a license from Nintendo, but also Universal in order to be considered a fully licensed product. If it only had the one from Nintendo then it would still be an unlicensed game. Many games that are made today have several licenses, as they use resources from multiple companies.
Edit#3 Pirate games are clearly illegal and tend to take little effort to prove, but unlicensed games are a sticky mess and in some rare circumstances can even be "protected" by certain laws.
HJRodrigo wrote:
the IP of another company without first obtaining permission. This includes gameplay elements.
Characters and music I understand. But to what extent are gameplay elements covered by copyright?
This form letter from the United States Copyright Office appears to say not much:
Quote:
Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.
"Methods for playing it" appears to refer to gameplay elements. And
Capcom v. Data East shows that characters aren't covered to the extent that they follow from stereotypes.
Beats me. That is why it is such a sticky issue.
BTW, it is not just copyrights that are the problem... Violations of trademarks and patents are other tools used to sue and win. The US patent office is so painfully broken that people have managed to win money for even the most ridiculous of claims. I imagine that this problem does not exist in most countries.
Some companies have won their claims, while others have lost. (Sometimes it is even the same company) It seems that it is really subjective and depends on what court is over seeing the case. That is why for most cases the burden of proof to is just too high/complex for a company to find pursuing prosecution a worthwhile endeavor. Scare tactics seem to work very well for the bigger companies, so those big companies rarely even need to consider how to prove their case in court.
If some dumb government entity incorrectly registered a game mechanic or idea, then it would be the developers responsibility to prove that it is invalid.
I agree but I'm not even sure where I can split it, given all the comments that address both the "what is pirate?" issue and the project at hand.
Agreed. The threads would flow strangely if split.
Then perhaps I can leave this thread with a link to
a related site that happens to use
Kev's avatar for its favicon.