packardmelan
New member
The music industry claimed that it would die if the market allowed cassette recorders on the market. Did it happen? No
...
Fact is, even old shit like News Papers, comic books and the Radio are still alive today, a form of media is just too hard to kill.
Here's a little problem, kiddo.
You're comparing "mass media" to something that could never hope to compare. If I pick up an old cassette, do I need to find, say, a 1983 Sony Walkman to play it? -- Or a VHS tape. Do I need to hunt down a top-loading Emerson deck to watch it?
Fact is, if I want to play a NES game I have few options. I hunt down a working NES. I buy a clone unit/NES-on-a-chip. I buy an officially-supported emulation/port on a newer system. I get a 'virtual console' title.
Or I pirate it.
The reason why so many forms of media have endured in the public is because it's so very easy to find a compatible - and legal - method of continuing to use them. On the other hand, it's not like I can buy a Playstation 3 and play Sony Imagework's "Hook" for the SNES on it... despite 'SONY' being stamped on both.
The closest legal recourse I'd have is if it were released on the virtual console/xbox live arcade/playstation network. See, the companies are starting to learn - "Retro" is very much in because, as pretty as new games are... often the gameplay lacks something. Simplicity, ease-of-use, tight controls. Mega Man 9 is a shining example of this - after years of complaints about the more recent 3D Mega Man-based games, Capcom finally relented and let Inafune go and just make a good goddamn game again. Digital distribution is the ONLY thing that made this possible.
On a similar path, companies are porting and re-releasing games more and more often. In some cases we get games like Rondo of Blood's 3D remake on the PSP. In others we get Rondo of Blood's re-release on the Japanese Virtual Console. By making these games available on modern systems at low prices, we will -hopefully- see mass video game piracy start to wane.
It'll never go away. But hopefully it'll wane.