i picked
"it's wrong,but i still do it"
;;
but i mean,i get games that can't be found
i havn't goten roms/ISOs for anything newer then n64,for GAMES I ADD BEFORE,most the time
and i ushlly don't play them too much
couple hours,at most
and im not paying 10$ for a couple of hours

ok, makes sense

i picked "its ok for games that i already own or are impossible to find" for some simple reasons.
if i own it im entitled to have a backup, and would rather use the backup.
also, games are hard to find here in australia where old games really ARE impossible to find.
mostly cause we either only got a VERY limited release of the game (seriously, to this day i have only EVER seen one PAL copy of legend of dragoon for psx) or it didnt come out here at all.

if it wasnt for roms i would never had played chrono trigger. at least now its a ds game hopefully THAT might come out here, even if not at least an import of it is playable on an un-modded ds.

so ok, now that the games companys are releasing some old games to their virtual consoles its a bit better, but its not worth some of the prices they charge...

Well, now that i have multiple roms on my laptop, i have to have a different stance on this...it's ok if there's no other way to get the games

I voted other. I use emulators for SNES, Genesis, NES and Sega. Nothing newer than that. I figure those systems are sold old that there is no money to be made by the companies anymore.

And I would probably push that up to the N64, Playstation, Dreamcast era except that I didn't play too many games on those systems so there is nothing I would want to play.

I think roms on anything newer is basically stealing. I'm not saying I would never do it (there are some games I just won't pay money for EVER) but I would avoid it for the most part.

that's a pretty reasonable stance; after all, the systems and games aren't being sold by the companies anymore

one could argue for the gaming companys on that last point actually, what with the virtual consoles/games that are for purchase from xbox/wii/playstion online.

but if we're paying for these old games again, should we be able to trade in our old carts for the download?
shouldnt the quality be the same or better, instead of worse? timing issues anyone?

but the argument will always be like this:
we say "well because you dont sell or support these anymore then their public domain now, we can emulate all we want"

gaming companys say "we own it, its ours, if you want to play it then buy it"

we say "but its not available in our country or is so old that its unpurchasable"

gaming companys say "if the game wasnt released in your country, tough. if its un-buyable (is that even a word?) tough. we are rich, so we are right"

I'm not suggesting they -can't- do that but what is the point? By fighting over 10-15+ year old games and gaming systems is so pointless and counter-productive that it would only hurt these companies to do. They won't make money anymore off of the sale of NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega etc era games. They aren't produced anymore.

Sure they own the product officially but there is no upside for them to fight emulation or modding of these old games.

It might even be true of the N64, PS1 era.

I'm not suggesting the companies don't have a legal standpoint in these cases where their products are being used illegally. They own the copywright to the technology that we are using and could if they wanted prosecute if they found out someone had roms. However kind of like people who use P2P for music and movies, you probably won't see anyone get busted unless they either have a huge volume of roms or they are making money off the distribution of the roms.

good point, they wouldn't want to put any effort into anything other than making more and better games/systems

i think its funny then that nintendo have gone after some rom sites in the last 5 years and made them take down every mario and zelda game that they had.

just to let u know, these were free downloads, the sites wernt making any money off nes/snes downloads.

on the plus side, i dont think i have seen sega go nuts over people downloading roms

well, that's because Sega should just be happy that someone actually still plays their games.

I don't really understand the point in Nintendo doing that. All it would do in my mind would create negative pubilcity among a community that is probably buying the newest incarnation of your games. Playing old roms of Mario and Zelda would only create more desire to play the newer games. Seems silly to me to me make a big deal over it.

im not really sure. in some ways its good because your getting the games you want but its bad because it spent the game companies months to make it so they deserve the money.
im really not sure for this one so i chose other

if the game companys made sure we could still buy the games, or could download them and play them as they originally were, id pay them.
but considering the age of some games i wouldnt pay them more then say $1 per 25 nes or gameboy games or per 10 snes or genesis games.

and im not paying for virtual copies on the wii when they dont work properly

i agree with you Dark.but im not sure the game companies will.
And ur right about the wii, no offense to it its a gr8 console and all but after about 3 or 4 months something happens to it. i have had to have mine repaired about 5 times. it comes back works for a bit then crashes. so i just dont bother any more

lol i was actually refering to the timing issues some of the vc games have, but i spose theres that too isnt there

after 2 years, my wii has had 0 problems. the chances of a defect are 3%, same for the PS3. chances for a defect on the 360...17%

I'd say that its OK for previous gens of gaming. Like the N64 or the Xbox. But its not ok for the DS and the PSP and etc.
Well, i guess it would actually be for the games that life spans have ended like the PS1 and the Xbox. But for games that are still alive like the PS2 and 360 is not ok. Any dead systems(like GBA) are good. Any alive systems(like Wii) are bad.

well, I've bought enough games for the DS and now I'm getting an M3 adapter and got 2 2GB micro sd cards for $12 total (the cards, not M3)

btw, those defect rates changed

PS3 and Wii: less than 1%
xbox 360: 17-33%

Lotsa games.

Wait, what? I have no idea where you're going with that one. Could you clarify please?