Why expect this to be taken down if other decomps haven’t been taken down already? Why expect other decomps to be taken down?
Comment on Mario Kart 64 got finally decompiled!
Matriks404@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I won’t say if that project is legal or not, but expect it (and many others) to be taken down by Nintendo soon. Make a local copy if you want to preserve it.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
Matriks404@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
They will eventually be all taken down. That’s the point. They have no legal framework to exist, and Nintendo could strike any time they want, like Rockstar did with the re3 project.
They also have valid reasons to think that these projects are causing them to lose money, since they give alternative (and technically better) solutions to play their old games, without buying any Nintendo hardware or software (unless you dump your games, but let’s be honest. You don’t).
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
You could say that about Pokemon MMOs too, and yet I’m playing PokeMMO in 2025 on my PokeMMO account I created back in 2013.
There are some things Nintendo don’t go after, and there are other things that they do go after. Decomps don’t appear to be something they go after, which is good because then we can get cool ports of older games too.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 23 hours ago
Decomps are legal because no copyrighted material is being distributed. They typically require the original ROM to run (eg for assets).
phx@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Yeah but Nintendo doesn’t always seem to give a shit just because something is legal. They’ll still play the “but our legal department has more money than YOU” card
Matriks404@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
The code itself is also copyrighted. Decompiled code is a derivative work.
DoPeopleLookHere@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
Decompiling doesn’t give you the code like you’d expect.
It gives you the instructions the code generates.
There’s a Lego island decomp documentary on YouTube that is recomend for more details.
But the actual source code used doesn’t get piped out. Instead you get the machine instructions and you make code that generates the same instructions.
Meaning your still writing the game yourself, meaning you own the copyright
Matriks404@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
No one says that the actual source code (C or whatever) is “piped out”. The machine instructions (in form of a binary) you get is the code that is executed by the machine/emulator and it’s copyrighted like any other data on the disc/cartridge. You are not writing the game yourself if you are decompiling it. And it’s logically a derivative work.
I don’t understand what kind of mental gymnastics you need to do to think that you are doing something original here.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Yeah, that’s why all the IBM clones had to write their BIOS firmware in clean room implementations of new software that implemented the same functionality as IBM’s own documentation described.
Functionality can’t be copyrighted, but code can be. So the easiest way to prove that you made something without the copyrighted code is to mimic the functionality through your own implementation, not by transforming the existing copyrighted code, through decompilation or anything like that.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Exactly. But somehow I got downvoted heavily for saying the obvious.