So Nintendo's really gonna just keep on DMCAing Switch emulator forks, huh?
Plus: PS3 emulation on Android makes impressive progress and two cult classics get English translations.
You know those head colds that never really get bad, but leave you just sniffly enough to never get a great night's sleep and feel mildly annoyed that your stupid nose won't just get over it already? That's been my week, which means I'm kinda limping across the finish line with this issue. My no-brainpower-required Saturday night comfort food of choice is Baby Assassins 2, which I can report is A Good Time, if not quite curative.
At any rate it's a nice mood reset after this week's main topic, in which I'm annoyed about the DMCA once again! Surely this time my words will shake the very foundation of the US Copyright office. It's not like the government's got anything else going on at the moment, right?
On a happier note, we've got three really cool fan translations in this issue as well as some cutting edge emulation tech to look forward to. I also wanted to take a sec to recommend some fun reading. Marc Normandin's great newsletter Retro XP recently made the leap away from the walled garden of Substack to Beehiiv, where it remains free to read and a trove of regular looks back at cool old games. Here's a recent one from Marc about the fan translation of Ganbare Goemon 2, a game I love!
Marc Normandin from Retro XP
And here's a deep dive into one of those games I really need to scratch off my to-play list one of these days, the successor to Fire Emblem from series creator Shouzou Kaga.
Marc Normandin from Retro XP
I'm very happy to be off Substack and glad Marc is, too, but it did make it easier for people to passively stumble upon your work. So there's an active recommendation instead!
The Big Two
1. Can't teach an old Nintendog new tricks: Big N is DMCAing Switch emulator forks once again
Sigh.
It shouldn't be surprising. It isn't surprising, really. But I guess I did think that after suing Yuzu into oblivion and making Ryujinx's lead developer a Godfather-style offer he couldn't refuse, Nintendo would consider Switch emulation effectively busted down to the nubs and more or less ignore the few scavengers picking through the wreckage. Wrong! Cue the Terminator theme, cuz the notices are rolling out once again to crush Github forks under the steely foot of the DMCA.
Sudachi developer Jerrod Norwell (that's one of the Yuzu forks, you may remember) had created a Ryujinx repository; it got hit. Ryubing, an in-development fork of Ryujinx promising to deliver "a QoL uplift for existing Ryujinx users," also received a takedown notice and has now moved off of Github. Its Discord channel includes a bolded declaration that Ryubing will never support Switch 2 emulation, which unfortunately feels like it offers about as much protection as a shield made out of construction paper.
It is possible that these DMCAs aren't coming from Nintendo itself (but, c'mon) and I don't want to be too doom and gloom here. Backup repositories are still out there, and other forks like Citron carrying on the work continue to see some development. I'm not writing about this because it's some crisis — Switch emulation wiped off the face of the earth!! or whatever. I'm just writing about it because it really pisses me off.
Here's the text of the notice for one of the Ryujinx repositories that got hit, which states the code is not licensed under an open source license (uh, okay?) and cites the settlement in the Nintendo v. Yuzu case as, basically, proof that the Ryujinx code should be taken down. This is the part of the takedown notice that eats at me. Quoting Nintendo's lawyers:
Ryujinx is primarily designed to and unlawfully “circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under” the DMCA and distribution of Ryujinx constitutes unlawful trafficking in technology that is “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access” to copyrighted works. 7 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) and (2). See also Final Judgment & Permanent Injunction, Nintendo of America Inc. v. Tropic Haze LLC, No. 1:24-cv-00082 (D.R.I. Mar. 6, 2024), ECF No. 11 (finding that the distribution of software which primarily decrypts Nintendo Switch games without authorization violated DMCA anti-trafficking provisions).
Now obviously I am not a lawyer, but the way this reads to me is Nintendo is pointing to its settlement with Yuzu — not a win in court with any legal judgment rendered whatsoever! — as supporting evidence. And the entire justification for the takedown is its argument that because the Switch includes encryption, a Switch emulator violates the DMCA by being "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing" that encryption.
The lawyer's just playing their role by making this argument, but it speaks to truly fucked the DMCA is as a legal framework that a massive corporation gets to declare "this is illegal!" and, completely untested, that assertion is taken at face value. Unless the person receiving the takedown contests it — and risks having their life ruined. We all know this is how power works. It's beyond obvious that our laws will protect capitalism long before they'll see the value in open source software or consumer rights or any such idealistic things. I just really wish we lived in a world where laws like the DMCA were built with the opposite framing in mind — that corporations would be the ones having to prove a damn hard case that any kind of encryption-breaking truly caused more harm than good.
2. Metal Gear Solid 4? In your Android phone? It's more likely than you think
You could be walking around with a PlayStation 3 in your pocket without realizing it. And no, I'm not just talking to the 2 people reading this right now who happen to be wearing JNCOs, though I applaud your fearless fashion. PlayStation 3s have suddenly gotten a whole lot smaller than the chunky 11 pound launch unit sitting under my TV, because RPCS3 founder DH has been tinkering with a new version of the emulator for Android phones.
While DH hasn't been involved in RPCS3 in a number of years (more recently, you may know their name from starting up PS4 emulator RPCSX as I wrote about in 2023), in just the last two weeks they've released four alpha builds of RPCS3-Android, with much of its native code also already merged into the main project.
So what is RPCS3-Android at this point? A semi-functional port of the emulator to mobile that includes touch controls and can boot a wide range of games. Actually playing them... well, different story. Framerates are crawling, sound's screwed up, and there's a lotta different Android hardware out there to properly support. Unless you're interested in helping test or develop the Android fork, this is very much a "keep in mind for the future" bit of software; I wouldn't recommend anyone try to play gmaes with it for funsies.
Still, seeing RPCS3 even halfway functional on phones is one of those "damn, we've come a long way" mini tech epiphanies for me. The Cell processor was once heralded as a supercomputing beast; 19 years later, I'm still amazed that it can be emulated so well on top-end PCs. The fact that it's somewhat possible to accomplish that feat on a smartphone? Lordy. After some more work, how well could RPCS3 run on a handheld like the Ayaneo Pocket S with a beefy Snapdragon GPU? We're not at the point yet that a phone has the muscle to emulate MGS4 at full speed, but the fact that we're even orbiting that possibility? Wild times.
Patching In
3DS emulator Azahar's first release candidate arrives – If you want to be on the bleeding edge, here's a pre-1.0 (but getting close!) release of Azahar, the Cirtra successor featured in the last issue of ROM. Time to play some E.X. Troopers?
Dolphin gets better per-game resolution saving, support for hacks with RetroAchievements, and more – The latest Dolphin Progress Report is a great read, as usual, covering some notable recent additions: "cheats" like widescreen hacks are now compatible with RetroAchivements via an allow list, every game's properties tab now has a nice visual interface for ticking off specific graphics options, and major improvements to the control mapping process.
Core Report
Jotego adds beta cores for Tecmo Knight and Strato Fighter – Jotego's Patreon backers can now play this beat 'em up and shmup duo from Tecmo! If that doens't include you, well, you'll get access to them eventually when the cores leave beta.
MiSTer Downloader 2.0 – This major rework of the MiSTer's downloading infrastructure "is designed to maximize parallelism—not just during the file-fetching process (which has been parallel since Release 1.6), but across all stages of the update process." It's roughly 20% faster than before, a benefit you may notice next time you run update_all!
Translation Station
Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut: English Cut – Famously the last officially licensed Super Famicom release, this remake of a HAL Famicom game came out *LaBamba voice* in the year 2000, when even the N64 was getting up there in years. The original visual novel is known for being produced by Satoru Iwata and for being a costly production at the time (here's a fascinating Bluesky post from the game's creator showing how he'd draw art on paper for the pixel artists to interpret). Here are some translated interviews on Shmuplations if you want to dig deeper. The fan translation has been in the works since 2018, and includes a very nice optional feature: an MSU-1 audio patch for use in bsnes and other compatible emulators "for those purists that prefer the original NES music."
Suda51's Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special explores the dark side of the ring – This one's a bit legendary. The translation dropped juuuuust after my last issue went out, and definitely feels like one of those "wow, can't believe this was never translated before" games. Wanna know why? Read all about it over at my friend Baxter's site Tsundoku Diving.
Arcana Strikes the Saturn with a full deck – The translation for this Saturn-exclusive cardPG came together surprisingly quickly, with the team behind it only making the project known a couple months ago. The game, developed by Red Entertainment of Sakura Wars fame, has a wildly garish mix of nice 2D sprites and borderline illegible 3D; where else are you gonna get that but on the Saturn? I dig it, and I also am a sucker for a card combat system, so this one's going on the pile to check out someday.
Good pixels
That's it for me this week, but let's close out with a good ol' PC-98 dump.
Images via the PC-98 Megapack
