Why shouldn’t it be allowed? The company does not violate any copyright, trademark or patent. Otherwise Nintendo would have sued them for their similar project, but for Game Boy, the Analogue Pocket.
Same reason emulators are allowed. As long as the emulator doesn’t use Nintendo’s literal software/hardware or schematics, and as long as the emulator doesn’t traffic in illegal file-sharing, it is allowed. Or at least, it exists in a legal grey area. And Analogue’s pitch is original hardware, essentially rebuilt from scratch using FPGA technology. You still need actual Nintendo 64 carts to use this device. Or at least, that is how it is marketed.
I think the recent emulator shutdowns by Nintendo were more about software piracy. The devs knew that their emulators were being used to play unreleased Nintendo games. The emulators themselves may have been safe and legal, but the devs are mostly just volunteers, or small time operations running on a patreon. As soon as Nintendo applied even the smallest amount of pressure, the devs caved, because they don’t want to spend their entire life savings and then some trying to defend software piracy on principle. Me thinks that Analogue would actually put up a fight if Nintendo tried anything, and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t try anything.
Agreed. I also want to add that this is not a mass market product, plus its not current gen either. So Nintendo does probably not care at all, in addition to what you already said.
as long as analogue didnt use the devices actual hardware design and code, its completely legal. theyre not selling you games, theyre selling you a piece of hardware capable of playing said games with their own hardware design.
i dont want to say emulation in a soft sense because its not software emulation, its hardware to hardware emulatoion.
This is actually advertised as having no emulation, all FPGA. Idk if those are compatible but they also say the n64 was the first multiplayer console in the header so they’re clearly a little sketchy on the details lol
FPGAs would be considered “hardware emulation” but a lot of people don’t like that term, and think emulation should be a term limited to software.
Like, there aren’t real N64 chips in there. The hardware IS emulating an N64 - it’s just not doing so in a way that’s comparable with software emulation at all.
Analogue likely doesn’t emulate the hardware at the transistor level, as it’s far more difficult than doing what most software emulators do.
From an interesting (altough non-conclusive) HN-thread [1].
Without seeing the code, it’s impossible to know where Analog’s implementation falls on the spectrum of software emulation vs hardware simulation. There is nothing magical about FPGAs that automatically makes anything developed with them a 1:1 representation of real hardware. In fact, there are plenty of instances where the FPGA version of a particular console is literally just a representation of a popular emulator only in verilog/vhdl. In many instances, even the best FPGA implementations of some systems are still only simulating system level behavior. Off the top of my head, one famously difficult case is audio, where many chips have analog circuitry that cannot be fully simulated.
How’s this allowed? Sick, though
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? The company does not violate any copyright, trademark or patent. Otherwise Nintendo would have sued them for their similar project, but for Game Boy, the Analogue Pocket.
Same reason emulators are allowed. As long as the emulator doesn’t use Nintendo’s literal software/hardware or schematics, and as long as the emulator doesn’t traffic in illegal file-sharing, it is allowed. Or at least, it exists in a legal grey area. And Analogue’s pitch is original hardware, essentially rebuilt from scratch using FPGA technology. You still need actual Nintendo 64 carts to use this device. Or at least, that is how it is marketed.
I think the recent emulator shutdowns by Nintendo were more about software piracy. The devs knew that their emulators were being used to play unreleased Nintendo games. The emulators themselves may have been safe and legal, but the devs are mostly just volunteers, or small time operations running on a patreon. As soon as Nintendo applied even the smallest amount of pressure, the devs caved, because they don’t want to spend their entire life savings and then some trying to defend software piracy on principle. Me thinks that Analogue would actually put up a fight if Nintendo tried anything, and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t try anything.
Agreed. I also want to add that this is not a mass market product, plus its not current gen either. So Nintendo does probably not care at all, in addition to what you already said.
I think they probably do care, but they just haven’t got around to strong-arming them yet. There’s still more emulator devs to harass after all.
as long as analogue didnt use the devices actual hardware design and code, its completely legal. theyre not selling you games, theyre selling you a piece of hardware capable of playing said games with their own hardware design.
i dont want to say emulation in a soft sense because its not software emulation, its hardware to hardware emulatoion.
This is actually advertised as having no emulation, all FPGA. Idk if those are compatible but they also say the n64 was the first multiplayer console in the header so they’re clearly a little sketchy on the details lol
FPGAs would be considered “hardware emulation” but a lot of people don’t like that term, and think emulation should be a term limited to software.
Like, there aren’t real N64 chips in there. The hardware IS emulating an N64 - it’s just not doing so in a way that’s comparable with software emulation at all.
That’s silly, thank you for the explanation!
Analogue likely doesn’t emulate the hardware at the transistor level, as it’s far more difficult than doing what most software emulators do.
From an interesting (altough non-conclusive) HN-thread [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37901381