SMB3 Disassembly

[southbird]

Hey guys. I've been working on a disassembly of Mario 3, making some decent progress with it... I'm kind of wondering of your opinions regarding the legality of it (and if it's already been done, feel free to point me to where it is so I stop wasting time.) I mean OBVIOUSLY its active Nintendo IP, and by default that hampers any distribution of the work I'm doing.

But I was thinking, if I were to distribute such a thing, I could possibly do something "interesting" like make a ZIP file of it and form an IPS of the ZIP against the SMB3 ROM... so that to actually use the source you must have the SMB3 ROM in the first place, making it unusable without. That way all I'm distributing is "broken" without you already making the conscious choice to acquire the ROM. :) Plus it won't build to anything useful without a dump of the CHRROM banks anyway. (The logic there is that you could only make a hack of Mario 3 in any case based on already having the ROM; having the source just permits you to make a greater level of hack, but you still need the ROM to hack in the first place.)

Or I could just keep it to myself and dodge the whole issue and only make some awesome hacks... but just thought I'd get an opinion.

[InVerse]

The disassembly of the original Super Mario Bros. has been around for years and nobody has ever caught any flack for hosting it, so I wouldn't imagine that any would come for SMB3. Nintendo has always turned a blind eye to retro hacking projects that don't generate income and even some that do. I don't think you'd have anything to worry about by just directly distributing the source.

And won't you have to have the ROM to make a hack anyway? I assume you're not disassembling the graphics data as well? I don't know much about assembly but I have read repeatedly that the biggest problem with disassembling a ROM is figuring out what is code and what is data. That might be your best solution right there, only providing the disassembled code and requiring the ROM and it's graphics and other data to reassemble it.

[southbird]

The disassembly of the original Super Mario Bros. has been around for years and nobody has ever caught any flack for hosting it, so I wouldn't imagine that any would come for SMB3. Nintendo has always turned a blind eye to retro hacking projects that don't generate income and even some that do. I don't think you'd have anything to worry about by just directly distributing the source.

I saw one quick and dirty disasm, but it wasn't really formatted or figured. Is that the one you mean? But yeah, probably the bigger one is the Metroid disasm. I suppose at the end of the day, Nintendo isn't AS worried about NES software...


And won't you have to have the ROM to make a hack anyway? I assume you're not disassembling the graphics data as well? I don't know much about assembly but I have read repeatedly that the biggest problem with disassembling a ROM is figuring out what is code and what is data. That might be your best solution right there, only providing the disassembled code and requiring the ROM and it's graphics and other data to reassemble it.

Well, I mean one COULD include all the CHRROM banks and all you'd have to do is run "nesasm" and build the thing. I'm not disassembling them, but binary including them. But yeah, just dropping the CHRROM banks and maybe some other key data would probably work just fine.

[InVerse]

This (http://romhacking.net/docs/344/) is the SMB disasm that I was referring to. There's also a disassembly of FF1 on RHDN, along with the Metroid disasm you mentioned.

But frankly, I don't think Nintendo particularly gives a shit about 8 bit stuff anymore as long as you're not blatantly making a profit from it. Look at all the ROM sites that have been up for years without a single C&D.

[southbird]

Ah, okay. That's pretty nice then.

As far as ROM sites go: There WAS a move by Nintendo around the time the Wii and its VC came out where they began attacking and forcing removal of any ROMs of their major titles. Or maybe it was just scare tactics. In any case, you'll find old ROM sites that USED to host files like with notices like "This is protected by the ESA and we can't provide it" or some such. But of course, other places still do have it. So I dunno. But if it doesn't appear they're actively targeting, I won't particularly worry about it.