Yuzo Koshiro, one of the video game industry’s living legends, has come out with a strange request; stop pirating his game!
Who is Yuzo Koshiro?
Koshiro is a video game composer and CEO of game studio Ancient Corp. Koshiro and Ancient worked on the Genesis games Sonic The Hedgehog, Streets of Rage 2 and 3, and Beyond Oasis.
While Koshiro is best known for his Genesis games, he and Ancient never really went away. Through the years, they also worked on Car Battler Joe for the Game Boy Advance, Fusion Frenzy 2 on the Xbox 360, and Gotta Protectors on the Nintendo 3DS and the Switch.
Which Yuzo Koshiro Game Is Being Pirated?
We’re 100 % certain every game we’ve named above has been pirated at some point. But Koshiro has a new game that just released on Steam called Earthion.
Earthion is a side-scrolling shooter that has been programmed in such a way that it can run on a Sega Genesis. Ancient and their partners Bitwave Games and Limited Run Games plan to publish real Sega Genesis cartridges of it next year.
Yuzo Koshiro’s Message To His “Fans”
Koshiro shared this statement on Twitter:
A hacked ROM of Earthion is being circulated online. Some people may think it’s official, but it’s not.
The official version is available only on Steam for now.
The MD/Gen version will launch next year as a cartridge only. No downloadable ROM is planned.
Please support us through official channels.
We’re sincerely grateful to everyone supporting Earthion through official means. Pirated ROMs hurt small indie teams like ours.
We’ve poured our hearts into this game and want people to enjoy it as intended.
Your support makes a real difference.
Koshiro also explained why the Genesis/Mega drive cartridge has not yet been published:
We’re still pushing the MD to its absolute limit in terms of cart size, so adding additional content is quite difficult. But we’re aiming to make it the most polished and complete version possible. There are still some updates planned before release, so please stay tuned.
Not All Emulation Is Piracy – But This Is
The debate around video game emulation, piracy, and video game preservation is a necessity. Many games are no longer easily available, but the owners of those games are frequently in the way of making them playable.
At the same time, we can be honest about piracy. A lot of people have embraced the video game preservation rhetoric to justify openly pirating games.
We already found one content creator claim they have Earthion running on FPGA. We won’t debate the finer details on this, but this isn’t the way Koshiro and Ancient intended for it to be played.
That should factor in whether you decide to make your own copy of the game to run on an emulator, FPGA or real Genesis hardware. And yes, it’s completely different than people who are just downloading the ROM that is circulating right now.
Emulation is not illegal in itself, and neither is emulation just for video games. But the line is clear here. Koshiro and Ancient are the developers of Earthion, and they are not constrained from releasing it in any way. In fact, they just published it to Steam, and it’s releasing on Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S too.
Some gamers have claimed that this notion that there aren’t really any Japanese game developers missing out on money when their games are pirated. Well, this is a situation where that can actually happen. And Yuzo Koshiro is the CEO of the game company making the game itself. There’s no argument to be made here to ‘ethically’ pirate Earthion.
