hmmmm, i'd have to agree with scanff, the industry does spew so much BS im drowning in it. And the 99% of the junk that doesn't come from nintendo has roughly the same "Quality" of DK: Barrel Blast. And as for the DS emulator being piracy, none of the DS emulators i can think of play any good games at full speed. So what's the point? Just to say you did? I WOULD be interested in a full speed emulation of pokemon diamond......, but that probably won't happen before i graduate from high school, so the ds emulator is just a proof of concept, really. If people start putting their money where their mouth is however, the DS emulator is going to be a pirate-special.

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Arikado
Emulation = playing games on a console they weren't made for. That's cool and convenient to the end user.
Piracy = playing games on the console they were made for illegally.

There's also the convenience/coolness factor of being able to playing hundreds of Wii games off of one USB drive. The fact that emulation isn't on the original console is irrelevant when you're playing games at full speeds, sometimes with the original controllers, etc.
On the Wii specifically, Nintendo can say you're stealing from their otherwise proprietary Virtual Console. If you're pirating the ROMs, they have a point; otherwise it's just business greed :P

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scanff

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daniel_c_w

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ninjafish1990
Doesn't is have to be? unless you rip your own roms...almost all emulators are technically pirated.

I basicly agree with you. But the emulators themself are not piracy.

I Agree and as a coder I'd feel darn right mad if someone classified my hard work as piracy. Everything in an emulator is done from painstakingly spending hours reading over a systems technical specs. Understanding how the soundchip, graphics and CPU work, then writing something to do the same thing in software.

Hah, in that vein of thought what makes reversing and reimplementing IOS to allow a game to be booted from alternative storage mediums any different? I guess as a coder you just have to know that your work will be used for piracy and deal with it.

As a matter of fact, the process of ripping your own Wii disc for use of legitimate backups is much more convenient / common than someone ripping a ROM out of some ancient cartridge; not to mention having to dig into the depths of the internets to find a copying device.
Okay, in the DS's case the cartridges aren't ancient, and you can dump them with a simple warezcart. It's still a special order or Chinese bootleg mall item compared to Wii softmods.

I guess I'll end my rant with this. In the end it comes down to three views... (oversimplified)
1) Anti-piracy for the sake of fairness. People work to make the game, companies invest. Sure the corporate giants are making huge amounts, but buy the games to support the creative individuals who made it. Feel good about supporting future quality titles. You'd want people to treat you the same if it was your hard work on the shelf.
The fact is that there are too many people who just don't care. Piracy is a daily occurrence in society, very few could really care less.
2) Or... be realistic rather than some moralfag alone in their beliefs. Buy the game for the tangible box, the quality of owning the real thing rather than a cheap copy. Hell, I buy CDs rather than downloading for that purpose; nothing beats the lossless quality of actually owning the real deal. This is where internet distribution lessens the feeling of owning tangible goods. When you buy a song off iTunes, you might wonder what the hell you just wasted your money on, since you'd mind as well have pirated it :P
Here it isn't about morals as much as being a sort of mutual agreement between the consumer and publisher. You'll support the developers (pay for the game) in return for a unique product, support, updates, etc.
3) You just don't give a shit. Steal, rape, plunder. You wouldn't pay for the games anyway (so long as they're free).

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daniel_c_w
How you play it doesn't matter. The question is: Is a DS emulator primarely used for piracy?

In the spirit of 2), a DS emulator will never amount to the experience of simply playing the game on a DS. If you're serious about playing the game, get it for the goddamn DS. I see the Wii DS emulator as being just a fun experience/demo, not so much practical entertainment.
But with the piracy definition being piracy == games you didn't pay for, I'm going to say yes. People won't dump their official carts, they'll download the ROMs. And where they can download games they do have, games they don't own are only another click away.

... Anyway, that was fun.

i just realized the video was of diamond. oops.