Nintendo Slays The Threat From Modded Nintendo Games For The Commodore 64
from the nintendon't dept
Any review of the recent posts we've done on gaming giant Nintendo would certainly reveal a disappointing trend. That trend appears to be the company, which has always maintained an aggressively tight grip on its IP, upping its efforts to take down all kinds of ROM sites, fan-made games, and gaming leaks. Gamers here may also already be aware that there is something of an odd fascination in gaming communities with the Commodore 64, an 8-bit gaming computer created way back in 1982 and discontinued in the early 90s. There are thriving modding and porting communities dedicated to figuring out how to get the C64 to do things it was never intended to do.
Which perhaps makes it surprising that it was only in the last week or so that someone figured out how to get a working C64 to be able to play a port of the original Super Mario Bros. The whole enterprise appears to have nothing to do with wanting to play an illicit copy of the 80s game and everything instead to do with a community of enthusiasts simply tinkering and seeing what could be pulled off for fun. Getting Mario on a Commodore apparently took something like seven years and was hailed as an achievement by the Commodore community. Reactions such as the below are indicative of the responses.
What an achievement. It runs great on my C128D, with slowdowns on the later, more busy levels. But overall, really really impressive.
You get the idea. Much better, it appears, than Nintendo does, which of course waited for the release of years of enthusiastic work before DMCAing everything it could find about this release.
Links to the image squirreled away on hosting platforms started to go down, with the suspicion that the Japanese gaming giant was behind the deletions. Seven years of hard work taken down with a few lines of text. Early this morning, the Commodore Computer Club revealed that it too had been hit with a copyright notice, effectively confirming that Nintendo was behind the action against Super Mario Bros. 64.
It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Nintendo has targeted the project. The company has been extremely busy in recent months taking down sites that offer ROMs that infringe on its copyrights. Furthermore, Super Mario Bros. is also available on its Game Boy, Wii U, and Switch platforms, so the ….erm….Commodore 64…is also a market threat.
No, it absolutely is not a threat. This is plainly ridiculous. We can stipulate all we want that Nintendo is within its rights to issue these takedowns... but why? Seriously, what the hell is the point of taking down this labor of love and geek enthusiasm? Does Nintendo truly suspect there are tons of people out there who have been sitting by with their Commodore 64s, or their emulators, just waiting for this release of Super Mario Bros. in order to play it, instead of buying it on one of Nintendo's current generation consoles?
No, of course not. This was tinkering for the sake of tinkering. Or perhaps for some bragging rights. Whatever all of this is, it's not a threat to sales of Super Mario Bros.
But Nintendo's going to Nintendo, I suppose. Because, gamers, as I keep telling you, Nintendo hates you.
Filed Under: commodore 64, dmca, fans, super mario bros
Companies: nintendo
