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I finally had a dream I remember where the dream was in Japanese. I was at a festival of some kind, but it was dream-weird--it took place in a library and there was no one else there other than me, but I still knew it was a festival because that's how dreams work. I went over to a food stall set up in a side room, and when I walked up I said hello in English. The shopkeep gave me free samples of matcha ice cream, taiyaki, and kitsune udon, and I ate the taiyaki and said it was delicious in Japanese. Then the conversation switched to Japanese and stayed there for the rest of the dream. The shopkeep asked why I hadn't eaten the ice cream--it was because I was too busy eating the other food--and then I was very briefly somewhere else. ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
damaskrosechicago was throwing a party in a room that definitely wasn't her apartment.
Then I was back at the festival and the shopkeep was clearing away breakfast and setting out lunch. It was pretty soon after I had already eaten, so I asked about dessert, and the shopkeep brought out two flavors of ice cream and red bean desserts that looked a lot like build-your-own anmitsu, though the shopkeep said it was something else, and I don't remember the word she used. The two flavors were a purple one, murasaki imo (purple sweet potato), and a green one that looked like matcha, and which I kept calling matcha, but wasn't. I think she said it was honeydew (well, メロン, "melon")?
And then I woke up before I even got to eat it.
So, EmuParadise is shutting down basically thanks to Nintendo. They already removed all of Nintendo's games a while ago, but they recognize that companies are getting more litigious and are trying to head off a ruinous lawsuit at the pass. That's understandable. A lot of the discussion I've seen online focuses on a different aspect of the problem, though--history. As video game historian Frank Cifaldi points out in this twitter thread, most companies do an abysmal job of preserving their own history, leaving it up to the fans to track down betas, put old licensed games online, or keep games working on newer hardware or software, though the companies are sure happy to exploit those efforts for cash. The most obvious example is how GoG.com basically only exists because of hobbyists making DOSBox so they could keep playing old DOS games, though Nintendo packaging up downloaded ROMs and then selling them is pretty egregious too. Nintendo definitely comes off as "thanks for your hard work, now stop or we'll sue you into oblivion" most of the time. Or, as this tweet puts it:
Another tweet succinctly sums it up by saying piracy is a customer solution to a distribution problem. ROMs are why Western gamers were able to play translated versions of Seiken Densetsu 3 and Mother 3 at all, for example. Final Fantasy V wasn't on sale in the West until 1999, but it was available from 1997 as a complete fan translation. The various early Super Robot Wars games will never come out in American due to licensing issues, but fan translations and ROMs means we can still play them. I played Trip World thanks to ROMs, since even the downloadable versions didn't get an American release. The Switch has been out for a year and a half, there's still no virtual console, and the most plentiful retro games available on the eShop are for the Neo Geo.
The status quo is bad for many reasons, is what I'm saying.
I stayed up too late listening to nightcore. I finally listened to Angel with a Shotgun, which itself justifies nightcore as a genre (150 million views?). And I had to go through a bunch of hoops to download these songs, since most online sites don't allow conversion of YouTube videos to mp3s anymore. I get why, but hard to get personal copies of nightcored songs any other way. Angel with a Shotgun has a download link, but it doesn't work anymore.
Looking forward to a low-key weekend before an extremely packed next weekend.
Then I was back at the festival and the shopkeep was clearing away breakfast and setting out lunch. It was pretty soon after I had already eaten, so I asked about dessert, and the shopkeep brought out two flavors of ice cream and red bean desserts that looked a lot like build-your-own anmitsu, though the shopkeep said it was something else, and I don't remember the word she used. The two flavors were a purple one, murasaki imo (purple sweet potato), and a green one that looked like matcha, and which I kept calling matcha, but wasn't. I think she said it was honeydew (well, メロン, "melon")?
And then I woke up before I even got to eat it.
So, EmuParadise is shutting down basically thanks to Nintendo. They already removed all of Nintendo's games a while ago, but they recognize that companies are getting more litigious and are trying to head off a ruinous lawsuit at the pass. That's understandable. A lot of the discussion I've seen online focuses on a different aspect of the problem, though--history. As video game historian Frank Cifaldi points out in this twitter thread, most companies do an abysmal job of preserving their own history, leaving it up to the fans to track down betas, put old licensed games online, or keep games working on newer hardware or software, though the companies are sure happy to exploit those efforts for cash. The most obvious example is how GoG.com basically only exists because of hobbyists making DOSBox so they could keep playing old DOS games, though Nintendo packaging up downloaded ROMs and then selling them is pretty egregious too. Nintendo definitely comes off as "thanks for your hard work, now stop or we'll sue you into oblivion" most of the time. Or, as this tweet puts it:
you, foolish: I will download a ROM of Super Mario Sunshine
— It's Kit! (@kitsovereign) August 8, 2018
Nintendo, slicing emuparadise in half with a katana: no
you, completely daft: fine, then I will download a legal copy of Super Mario Sunshine on the eShop on my Nintendo Switch Entertainment System
Nintendo: still no
The status quo is bad for many reasons, is what I'm saying.
I stayed up too late listening to nightcore. I finally listened to Angel with a Shotgun, which itself justifies nightcore as a genre (150 million views?). And I had to go through a bunch of hoops to download these songs, since most online sites don't allow conversion of YouTube videos to mp3s anymore. I get why, but hard to get personal copies of nightcored songs any other way. Angel with a Shotgun has a download link, but it doesn't work anymore.
Looking forward to a low-key weekend before an extremely packed next weekend.
