Is this Even Accurate? Asalieri Targets the Repro-Makers

[BlastProcessing402]

Your first point is taken.

I remember in the past quite a few people insisted on clauses talking about having the right to a back-up copy at home, but in the end most of the people in the scene agreed that it was just as illegal to play a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any other circumstances. USA only, of course.

I think it's more like "illegal to download a ROM when owning the original game as it was under any circumstances". If you dump your own, that should be okay under copyright law, but since there's never been a real court test of this exact thing, and courts are pretty wacky sometimes, who knows.

[Kitsune Sniper]

The more convincing point I think hack authors could make is they don't want the game companies getting wind of things and coming down on them for someone else selling their game.

THIS IS WHY I'M AGAINST TRANSLATION REPROS. I don't want X or Y company to come after me saying that I made this for them. One particular idiotic repro maker actually wanted to hire me to translate games for him after I released Samurai Pizza Cats - I told him to kindly go fuck himself.

Also, people are dumb and pay money for several repro carts to play hacks and translations instead of getting a flashcart. Fool, money, are parted, etc.

[CastlevaniaDude]

THIS IS WHY I'M AGAINST TRANSLATION REPROS. I don't want X or Y company to come after me saying that I made this for them. One particular idiotic repro maker actually wanted to hire me to translate games for him after I released Samurai Pizza Cats - I told him to kindly go fuck himself.

Also, people are dumb and pay money for several repro carts to play hacks and translations instead of getting a flashcart. Fool, money, are parted, etc.

I've been seeing Mother 3 translation repro carts popping up on Reddit and forum spam lately. Roughly 55 a piece before shipping. Then the people argue that that is simply their cost, they're not making any money. WHAT? THAT makes me absolutely sick. Those guys (the translation team) went out of their way to make sure Americans who would play the translation supported the game in any way humanly possible, including but not limited to buying the official Japanese cart. They offered to pull their work and allow Nintendo to use it if they decided to localize. And now, with EB doing great on the WiiU VC, some jackoff is going to take all that hard work and that spirit of fandom and try to sell it?

I hope NOA does a VC release of Mother 3 tomorrow and sues the crap out of these morons.

It's one thing when its a repro of a leaked official translation that was never released (Earthbound Zero) -- to take someones hard work without their authorization when they were obviously doing it in the spirit of being true fans who simply couldn't play a game makes me sick.

[Tanooki]

If you're talking about the mother 3 shipping any day now, you probably shouldn't spout off not knowing all the facts. Do you know what it costs to manufacture a small run of legit boards, chips, batteries, gba shells, labels and the rest? The less you buy in bulk the more the cost increases per unit and I know he didn't have like 1000 or even close to 500 made because any project like that is a gamble. Also I do know the repro maker was going to or has already gone and emailed Tomato about wanting to donate a cut of the profit for his work. He's an online buddy of mine and I do assist him in some matters now and again with stuff. Sure there is a profit margin there but it's not ungodly huge.

I agree translation jacking isn't great but in the end the translator also doesn't own their work as its the original owners work creating the original game. I'm also unaware of any other repro maker who does offer a cut of the profit to either translators or original game makers as it's a first to me. I think anyone using a fan translation to profit on a repo should give the writer a cut in all fairness so I respect that in this case.

[Panzerfuzion]

I don't even care what there talking about, the guys in the video are absolutely disgusting. There overweight gluttonous looking pigs that have more adipose tissue then muscle. They look like they choke down triple cheeseburgers with a bottle of prilosec. If you want someone to listen to what you have to say respect your outward appearance.

[CastlevaniaDude]

Also I do know the repro maker was going to or has already gone and emailed Tomato about wanting to donate a cut of the profit for his work.

That right there says it all.

Do you honestly think that your friend believes for a second that Tomato is going to agree to something like that?

[Tanooki]

I think this got brought up on NA as well considering timewalk does a good bit of business out of there. These two large trolls are completely pathetic. I'm still listening to the gamereproductions.com trail of selective lies, mockery and hypocritical bullshit from these assclowns. I take a little more offense to this one as I've got a game off him before, he's a local, and I do talk with him and they're making the guy out like he's some evil self serving piece of shit who has no life other than to serve people in shoveling out bootlegs while being a lazy ass who takes a month to turn it around.

It's annoying even listening to them with their combo rambling/whining diatribe against his faq page which clearly is a mix of truth and cover your ass text to pacify the buyer, and that's a given. But to rip on him for $30 games when the moron on the left says donor games are $2 and he could make one for someone else for just $9 is the epitomy of hypocritical lying garbage. I know that guy has been asked before on price, he doesn't sell for $9. The GR guy is married with children, has a full time real line of work, so like you figure out why there's a month turn around to delivery time. 40hours work, another 20-40 of kiddie time, wife time, other needed chores/shopping, and the rest and you tell me why 1 month is unreasonable. Looking at that goob though, he doesn't appear to have much if any of those things in his way so perhaps that's why he's clueless.

[Metalwario64]

I don't even care what there talking about, the guys in the video are absolutely disgusting. They're overweight gluttonous looking pigs that have more adipose tissue then muscle. They look like they choke down triple cheeseburgers with a bottle of prilosec. If you want someone to listen to what you have to say respect your outward appearance.

While I think these may be Asa's worst videos (he really seems to try to be propping up his buddy, or he's just run out of things to rant on :/), insulting someone's appearance like that is childish, and yet pretty funny if you watch this video.

Trust me when i say that his criticisms aren't really criticism, as much as it was slander, distorting evidence and information, and forcing people to believe what he says and attack and shun other people who disagrees.

How the heck do you "force" someone to believe something?

[Daria]

Maybe he straps people to uncomfortable chairs, tapes their eyelids open and plays his YouTube videos on an endless loop?

[InsaneDavid]

Maybe he straps people to uncomfortable chairs, tapes their eyelids open and plays his YouTube videos on an endless loop?

Still not as bad as watching Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

[Tanooki]

No it's far worse than Dr. Quinn, at least she's easy on the eyes and ears.

[Ed Oscuro]

The hacking isn't the point of the hypocrisy, it's the the fact that you must use an original ROM file in order to play the hacks. The hackers are committing a type of theft, and then complaining when someone steals from them.

I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

The hackers had to have the ROM on their computer. That's the hypocrisy. It starts before the players download anything.

The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

[Kiddo]

The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

Hahah, taking the DMCA seriously. That crap didn't apply in the era of VHS tapes. Why should it be any different now?
The DMCA's supposedly "trumped" our original rights to physical ownership of what we personally purchase in regard to media for over a decade, yet no company has dared to let the DMCA be challenged up to the Supreme Court. Perhaps it's because they know it won't really hold?

It certainly doesn't help that Europe is finally putting it's foot down on the abuses of copyright law over the years. The DMCA as it is would be laughed at there.

I agree translation jacking isn't great but in the end the translator also doesn't own their work as its the original owners work creating the original game.

To start, let's take this question into a scenario where there's no supposed illegality involved: Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on? If not, then why bother re-writing these in every re-release, especially as the fandom for said franchises gets more broken with every re-script?

Second off, I would like to add that there's more to many, if not most, fan translations than merely plastering a script over the Japanese text. Besides the text and graphics hacks required to get the translation across, many hacks go the extra mile and add degrees of polish such as extra fonts, enhanced graphics and effects, and bug fixes. Perhaps most dramatically, the Satellaview-based fan translations up to this point stripped out BS-X-specific code and replaced it's specific save format with a standard SRAM format, among other more specific changes on a game-to-game basis, which essentially amount to -porting the games from their originally released add-on hardware to the base Super NES.-

[Kitsune Sniper]

I think you should look up Sega v. Accolade. If a hack is provided as a patch file, it's up to the user to legally provide the original ROM. Yes, I know that many hacks aren't provided this way, and especially when you buy a complete cartridge of a hack - but the hack makers are reasonable in asking to be paid for their original contribution as the maker of a cheat device or the publisher of an unofficial expansion pack for DOOM or Quake, or indeed as the original game publisher.

No, we're not.

Game translations and unofficial expansion packs for Doom / Quake are -not- the same thing. Doom and Quake are already set up for modding. The mods don't actually change the core game files, they just tell the game "Load these map and enemy files instead of the usual ones."

Furthermore the PC games already allow you to modify them, legally, as long as you follow the game's license for doing so. In most cases this means "change as many files as you want as long as you don't actually distribute the full game or unmodified parts of it." This license doesn't exist for game roms. The closest we could get to this on consoles is the SNES RPG Maker. 99% of the assets are in the cart. The other 1% (scripts, maps, and so on) are stored in memory and that's the only thing you can distribute.

... actually now that I think about it, there's just one legal fan-made SNES game translation: Hyper V'Ball on the SNES got a French translation that the original game developers gave their blessing to.

The hackers had to have the ROM on their computer. That's the hypocrisy. It starts before the players download anything.

The "it's legal to make one backup of your own game" thing is trumped by the DMCA.

Is it hypocritical if many of us admit to breaking the law? :P

To start, let's take this question into a scenario where there's no supposed illegality involved: Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on? If not, then why bother re-writing these in every re-release, especially as the fandom for said franchises gets more broken with every re-script?

Second off, I would like to add that there's more to many, if not most, fan translations than merely plastering a script over the Japanese text. Besides the text and graphics hacks required to get the translation across, many hacks go the extra mile and add degrees of polish such as extra fonts, enhanced graphics and effects, and bug fixes. Perhaps most dramatically, the Satellaview-based fan translations up to this point stripped out BS-X-specific code and replaced it's specific save format with a standard SRAM format, among other more specific changes on a game-to-game basis, which essentially amount to -porting the games from their originally released add-on hardware to the base Super NES.-

1: I think they do. Some translators keep the rights to their original translations, so companies have to get them redone. Maybe the more modern translations are 100% own by companies but back then things might have been legally different.

2: Well yea, no duh. :P It's not just "replace the text". I've spent hours testing my own patches, and some groups have huge private beta periods to make sure things work. It's not just "cut out a chunk of text and replace it."

[SparTonberry]

Does Ted Woolsey own his localization scripts for the Final Fantasy games he worked on? Does Working Designs own the localization scripts for the games they worked on?

It would depend on the case.
From what little I played, it seemed Capcom just copy-pasted Ted's script into the GBA version of Breath of Fire.
I remember Vic Ireland said on the Sunsoft forum Square-Enix wouldn't let him rerelease Cadash for TG16 on Virtual Console, though he said that if SE wanted to release the game themselves, they'd have to make their own new localization. So it imply he owns the rights to the localized script/code mods if he didn't say it himself.

[Parodius Duh!]

This guy is the definition of Chode, and it looks like I could make a ships sail out of his saggy Neck fat. Dudes a typical internet peen, who seriously cares about what him and his trashy fat friends opinions are?

[Kiddo]

The closest we could get to this on consoles is the SNES RPG Maker. 99% of the assets are in the cart. The other 1% (scripts, maps, and so on) are stored in memory and that's the only thing you can distribute.

If you're thinking about RPG Tsukuru Super Dante, then I'll just say that the sequel (RPG Tsukuru 2 for SFC) is a lot more edit-friendly. Graphics can be edited and stored on Satellaview 8M Memory Packs, sound can be imported from Kanaderu (also stored from 8M Memory Packs), and pre-made scenarios were distributed via the Satellaview with new graphics, music and maps specifically in a mod-friendly manner. Unfortunately I'm still in the process of trying to dump much of the latter, it was practically a miracle Ryouma de Yuku Zenpen was uncovered.

Dezaemon for SFC is also really mod friendly, as it's basically a very customizible shmup engine.

Course, in both cases a typical audience would probably prefer using a later version (RPG Maker XP, or the 32-bit Dezaemons.) for the sake of both ease of development and ease of distribution.