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God bless you, Katherine!

I grew up in the Golden Age of Commodore gaming and I’ve been trying FOR YEARS to get a decent emulator working on my PC.

I’ll definitely be trying this. And if I can get IT CAME FROM THE DESERT working then I’ll build a statue of you.

Or, at the very least, be REALLY thankful.

I never had an Amiga but a friend of mine did. The only game I can remember absolutely loving on it was “Hill Street Blues” which was like an early version of the old ‘top down’ Grand Theft Auto games.

Why have the screens got so small?

So far, I’ve been watching and keep up with the episodes as they are posted, and I’ve enjoyed them thoroughly.

But ROMs and Emulation is a topic that straddles a semi-blurry line between what is legal and what is not. And even assuming nothing but completely legitimate things come out in the Play Digital videos, it can easily and quite often result in encouraging people to start moving into the illegal side of Emulation and Roms, even if unintentionally.

If doing things related to ROMs and emulation is going to become a regular thing here, I’m going to stop visiting the site altogether. This show, this site, does not need this, and it can easily maintain its high quality and unique personality (thanks to Katharine) by covering things that don’t cross into the gray area of the law.

Please, I encourage you to cover classic games. Use XBLA, use PSN, use the Virtual Console, or whatever. But don’t hold shows cover Emulators and Roms. Please, I think it’s going to turn this show and this site into something that you don’t want it to be.

Arrrr

I be’ no purchasing this land lubber roms

Arrr if yee pirate!

Hello.
I love your show. I have been watching since the very beginning. It would be a lot of fun if you reviewed the open source RTS game Spring. http://spring.clan-sy.com/

Best wishes from Sweden

Jonathan

Dear Katharine & Play Digital,

I’m respectfully requesting that you please consider the issues of Roms and Emulation at hand..

The problem with Roms and Emulation is not the direct issue of “piracy.” It is unlikely that companies are losing revenue/profit when a person downloads an old game, because these games are no longer on the shelf. That would otherwise be piracy, but that is not the issue and the problem.

Downloading an unlicensed Rom is transgression of a company’s intellectual property. Even if you already own a physical copy of the game, it is still legally considered a transgression. The “Delete in 24 hour” rule? This is a bogus rule that is propagated by rom-hosting sites in order to put on some kind of face of legitimacy. The rule is false, it does not exist, and obtaining the unlicensed Rom for any short amount of time is against the law. Even if you own a licensed, legit copy of the game in question.

I’m not posting this because I’m a tightwad that thinks people are “pirating softwarez oh noes!1!!”

I’m posting this because I enjoy the Play Digital episodes, and I care about it and its host website.

There is tons of material out there for Katharine to cover without having to delve into the realm of ROMs. She has been perfectly able to provide a compelling show so far without having to resort to this. There is an endless amount of material out there in the gaming industry for her to do that would be just as worthwhile and interesting to watch her cover than Roms and Emulation, if not more so. Particularly that which does not walk fine legal lines.

But what really bothers me personally is the fact that episodes like this can have the collateral effect of damaging the very industry it seeks to promote. Just skimming over some of the sites linked to from this very webpage themselves contain links that DO lead directly to piracy - links to sites that allow users to directly download image files of current generation consoles. And that’s without even considering whatever reasons current IP holders have against old Rom usage. Furthermore, putting on shows about how to do this and linking to sites that condone other certain things is going to lead to some negative effect in the industry. I don’t want Play:Digital to have any negative effect on this industry, even if remote.

I’m just asking you to please consider the situation… Play:Digital, Katharine, and anyone involved with the site of course doesn’t have to listen to me at all… It’s just that I’ve seen too many good sites get caught up with stuff like this, and ultimately they’ve been off worse as a result in some fashion. The sad thing is that they do not have to do so and can indeed be better off by avoiding the whole mess all together.

* as a side note, copyrights do not enter the public domain just because a game is no longer on the shelf.

** secondly, a few rare instances of ROM download are legitimate, such as Amiga Forever. But this is a special case, and is the exception rather than the rule.

Oh well. Play:Digital, Katharine, and anyone involved with the site of course doesn’t have to listen to me at all. It’s just that I’ve seen too many good sites get caught up with stuff like this, and ultimately they’ve been off worse as a result in some fashion. The sad thing is that they do not have to do so and can indeed be better off by avoiding the whole mess all together.

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback. So many games so little time!!

I’m not annoyed with the legality of emulation, but are you really saying that Rick Dangerous is one of the top two Amiga games ever? It’s full of annoying sudden unexplainable deaths and is very repetitive. I’d almost say it’s worse than Beowolf, but it’s slightly better than that.

And since when did Amiga’s have cartridges?

After 5 years any game software hardware invention is nil in the eye of the law .intellectual property is somthing that was made from scratch and can not be made in any other way.PD the bit map brothers used software created from other sources i end my leagle note on this point after 5 years everything is free or as Micro soft says we improve it and respect the devs behind the original we would not be here if it wasnt for them.

There’s been a PC remake of one of my favorite (yes, I’m a yank) Amiga games from ye olden days, Another World - aka Out of this World. You can get a demo at the author’s site, http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/ .

Here’s hoping we see something similar with Flashback and Syndicate (yay, Gauss Gun!). It’s amazing how much atmosphere these older games had, hardware limitations be damned.