Unlicensed GBA game.

[Jamie W]

I need ideas re: how I can advertise / promote an unlicensed GBA game. I'm primarily considering online options, news sites, forums etc. Any ideas?

[Sol_HSA]

I guess the best promotion I can think of is to win the case when nintendo sues you.. =)

[PoV]

No luck getting any publishers to bite? Being well in to the DS's lifetime doesn't help either.

You *might* be able to stir up some interest via gamer blogs. Kotaku, Destructoid, Go Nintendo, 4 Color Rebelion, etc. IGN, Gamespot, and Joystiq may be too commercial push something, but you never know.

There's always emulator news sites as well (if they still exist). Is there still a Zophar?

[Jamie W]

I guess the best promotion I can think of is to win the case when nintendo sues you.. =)

I wish they would try ...

[Jamie W]

No luck getting any publishers to bite? Being well in to the DS's lifetime doesn't help either.

You *might* be able to stir up some interest via gamer blogs. Kotaku, Destructoid, Go Nintendo, 4 Color Rebelion, etc. IGN, Gamespot, and Joystiq may be too commercial push something, but you never know.

There's always emulator news sites as well (if they still exist). Is there still a Zophar?

I'll check out the sites you mention, thanks for your suggestions. :)

[mustardseed]

Are you going to be selling it on a cartridge? If not I don't think it's going to be very successful for you.

The mainstream news sites won't carry it cause most of their readers won't be able to use it since you'll need a flash card. Well, Kotaku might mention it.

Also your target audience are the people who have GBA flash cards, use emulators, and are not ashamed to pirate anything. The likelihood of them purchasing a rom image is next to zero.

Now if you did sell it on a cartridge, that's another story. Tons of sites would mention it because an average GBA owner could potentially use the game if they bought it.

And don't worry about Nintendo suing. There's absolutely nothing illegal about what you're doing even if you sell it on a cartridge. The law precedent for unlicensed games falls firmly in your favor, and the GBA cartridge doesn't even have any encryption that could potentially cause a DMCA problem like the DS does.

[sgm]

There's absolutely nothing illegal about what you're doing even if you sell it on a cartridge. The law precedent for unlicensed games falls firmly in your favor
Have a link? I was under the impression that nintendo took measures against that to stop what happened many years ago with the flood of unlicensed console games.

[soniCron]

That is the case only if you're breaking their protection to get your game to run as "licenced," and only because - I believe - you have to use proprietary data to unlock the cartridge which is a copyright violation. If you can get your game to run without breaking copyright laws, then you're good to go.

I wish you the best! It's great to see folks releasing games for dead (or soon-to-be) systems. Isn't there a Jaguar development team still around somewhere?

[luggage]

The law might be on your side but it doesn't mean it won't cost a fortune in legal fees to defend yourself.

[mustardseed]

Well Nintendo only took Tengen (Atari) to court because Tengen created their lockout chip bypasser using source code that they had stolen from Nintendo. Nintendo didn't sue Color Dreams because their lockout chip bypasser was created in a "clean" reverse engineering environment.

In fact, Color Dreams discovered that to bypass the lockout chip, you just needed to send -5volts to the lockout chip upon boot. Fortunately the GBA has no such lockout chip.

BUT a GBA cartridge does require a copy of the nintendo logo to be in the header of the game in order for it to boot. Wouldn't copying this image constitute copyright infringement? Normally yes, but thanks to the lawsuit of Sega vs. Accolade, the courts ruled that using a small bit of copyrighted information (like the Nintendo logo in the header) for the sole purpose of creating an interoperable product is completely legal.

Lawsuit info (http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-99-00/intellectual-property-law/reverse_engineering.htm)

The guys over at gbadev.org released sold several thousand copies of an unlicensed compilation last year with no legal action taken or threatened.

[Jamie W]

Thanks for all the info and suggestions Guys,

I apprecieate what you're saying about the Cart vs ROM image saleability issue. I was intending to sell it in Cartridge format, and I already have a supplier for the Carts, which I'll probably burn myself (zzz!) ...

Yep, the copyrighted Nintendo logo needs to be present for the hardware to run the Cart. I was aware of the law suits pointed out, where the judgement went against Nintendo. Also the scale of this, is likely to be so small, that I'm guessing, they wouldn't consider legal action (and if they did, that could be a good thing for me).

The main thing I need to do is to make potential customers aware of the game. I've set up a site here: www.qwak.co.uk (any comments or feedback v welcome thanks).

I'm thinking press-release / news sites / forums ...

[Anthony Flack]

Oh! So you're the guy Stu Campbell is trying to convince to put hiscore saving in...

[LilGames]

BUT a GBA cartridge does require a copy of the nintendo logo to be in the header of the game in order for it to boot. Wouldn't copying this image constitute copyright infringement? Normally yes, but thanks to the lawsuit of Sega vs. Accolade, the courts ruled that using a small bit of copyrighted information (like the Nintendo logo in the header) for the sole purpose of creating an interoperable product is completely legal.
Except that the DMCA was enacted AFTER this lawsuit, so now I would think you cannot legal do this.

[soniCron]

Except that the DMCA was enacted AFTER this lawsuit, so now I would think you cannot legal do this. Seeing as it's not a copyright circumvention mechanism, I don't think the DMCA applies. Can you clarify as to what section of the DMCA you are referring?

[Bad Sector]

When they made that unlicensed cartridge at gbadev.org, one of the guys went to E3 and got his cartridge (http://www.gbadev.org/index.php?showinfo=1173) signed by Shigeru Miyamoto. I believe that if they had any problem with small titles, Miyamoto's reaction would be different.

[luggage]

Err.. Why? Would you really have expected Miyamoto to stamp up and down on it in the middle of the show? Tut in disgust with hundreds of journalists hanging around? He probably didn't even know what the bit of plastic was.

Seriously - don't take this "somebody else has done it so it's ok for me to do it line" as absolute. Standing up in front of a court and saying "this website sold a few and got away with it" is not a valid defense *if* they decide to sue.

You have to put a copyrighted image into the Rom header - if they want to stop you selling those carts they can.

Incidentally, after the recent outrage regarding the use of a few copyrighted sound effects in a game without permission, how come the same outrage isn't seen in this thread?

[soniCron]

Incidentally, after the recent outrage regarding the use of a few copyrighted sound effects in a game without permission, how come the same outrage isn't seen in this thread? They're not the same thing. If he's able to discover the unlock "key" (the Nintendo logo) in a cleanroom setting, precedent states he can use it for interoperability. He can't copy the logo verbatim, but if he sets up a brute-force method of discovering it... Does that constitute theft?

[luggage]

What has theft got to do with anything?

[soniCron]

What has theft got to do with anything? You asked why the same outrage wasn't seen in this thread...? Unless you're being pedantic about the distinction between theft and copyright infringement to be antagonistic?

[luggage]

It's clearly not theft - just like copying someone's sfx isn't theft. If you copy a copyrighted image it's breaking copyright law. Doesn't matter if you wrote a brute force algorithm to generate said graphic. Maybe you were using the word theft to dramatise the situation? We're talking two cases of copying a copyrighted file.

All this is a moot point though, and it's what I've been trying to get through. Let's say you aren't breaking the law (and IMO it's not clear if you are or aren't), Nintendo could still take you to court if they want and would you then have the money to defend yourselves in a high cost court case?

[mustardseed]

They're not the same thing. If he's able to discover the unlock "key" (the Nintendo logo) in a cleanroom setting, precedent states he can use it for interoperability. He can't copy the logo verbatim, but if he sets up a brute-force method of discovering it... Does that constitute theft?

Ideally, it would be best to reverse engineer the key so you wouldn't be using Nintendo's key at all, but in the Accolade vs Sega case mentioned earlier, Accolade was able to use Sega's key because there wasn't another way.

Also there have been many Dreamcast homebrew games sold over the years (even during it's lifetime), and they all required the same type of "key" to be able to boot. Sega never sued anybody after that Accolade suit.

The key doesn't break any copy protection so the DMCA wouldn't apply.

[soniCron]

Maybe you were using the word theft to dramatise the situation? No, nothing that glamourous! Just being lazy. ;)


Let's say you aren't breaking the law (and IMO it's not clear if you are or aren't), Nintendo could still take you to court if they want and would you then have the money to defend yourselves in a high cost court case? That's like the guy who never goes outside because "bad things" happen out there... and dies of a heart attack on his bed. You can say that about anything. Don't get me wrong - I absolutely agree with your sentiment. But what's the point in spreading FUD when it's infinitely vague?

[luggage]

It's not like the guy who goes outside blah blah because manufacturing those cartridges is definately on the grey side of the law.

Put it this way - none of us are lawyers yet people are chiming in with "it's perfectly fine, so-and-so did it". It's not us taking the risk. The original poster needs to seek the advice of a proper lawyer - not a few folk on a messageboard.

[soniCron]

The original poster needs to seek the advice of a proper lawyer - not a few folk on a messageboard. Totally agreed.