Nintendo’s Bowser has revealed he knows all too well about the people making and selling rom hacks of their own games.
Of course, we are talking about Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who surprised LinkedIn users because he was actually logged on and paying attention to some talk about his company on the website.
As reported by GoNintendo, a Prof. Stephen E. Dinehart IV made a post on LinkedIn explaining how resellers were manufacturing cartridges that had hacked ROMs of games on Nintendo platforms, and selling them on Walmart’s website. To be clear, Walmart was not selling these rom hacks, but their system allowed for other people to sell items on their site.
Professor Dinehart tagged Nintendo’s and Bowser’s LinkedIn accounts, and his little plan worked as Bowser commented on the post. But really, all Bowser said was “Appreciate the visibility.” And he ended this message with a thumbs up emoji.
Rom hacks on original cartridges are certainly as grey a grey area as you can get when it comes to this sort of thing. On a technical level, this is no different than Limited Run Games manufacturing an SNES cartridge of a Super Famicom game like Kaizou Choujin Schbibinman Zero, with a new English localization in the ROM data, to sell it as Shockman Zero for the SNES. You can still pre-order this game we used as an example until July 28 here.
On a copyright level, since these resellers did not clear these releases with the copyright holders, what they’re selling is illegal. Or, it could be, because not all Super Famicom and SNES games still have an active copyright. In fact, it would not be impossible for one such reseller to go legit by acquiring the license for the original game, and then license the ROM hack by the person who made the hack.
Bowser’s statement did not come with a clear condemnation of the practice, and this is the reason. Of course, Nintendo will go after people who made ROM hacks of Nintendo’s own games, but they don’t necessarily have any IP rights to all games that were published on SNES and Super Famicom. That includes the SNES and Super Famicom versions of those games.
And if you needed an example of that, Disney Interactive released Super Star Wars, an SNES game, on the PlayStation 4 in 2015. They did not need Nintendo’s permission to do this at all.
What’s really interesting is that Bowser took the trouble to comment on this at all. Nintendo doesn’t rerelease their games on the SNES or other discontinued platforms anymore, so they may not necessarily have a direct interest in this market. But it certainly comes across as a sign that they know who is making money off of their work, and they’re definitely paying attention.
