Nintendo files suit against five DS hacking firms

[wraggster]

"Touching is good," but hacking? Not so much. Nintendo has gone on the war path against five Japanese companies that make their living helping users rip off DS games. Of course, a primary use for such hardware -- such as the R4 Revolution, pictured -- is homebrew and emulation, but good luck convincing Nintendo (or any large console manufacturer) of that. Details of the actual lawsuit are slim, but Nintendo has brought along with it 54 Japanese software makers to lend a bit of gravitas to the suit. If you haven't managed to hack your DS yet, now might be a good time to score the requisite hardware -- we might be facing a scarcity before too long.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/29/nintendo-files-suit-against-five-ds-hacking-firms/

[ChaoticanarchyX]

Well I don't think that this directly relates to this, but the Team Cyclops Forum is down, citing account suspention. Weird that with Nintendo going on the warpath about these types of cards that the forum would go down.... Anyone agree?

[DSmanic!]

Can anyone find out what the hell is happening with Team Cylops? Thers a whole community relying on them including me. :(

[Kulawend]

I have also noticed that Team Cyclops is unavailable at the moment. It started with their CycloDS site going down for "running out of bandwidth" and then now their whole Team Cyclops website is down including the forums.

Definitely not good news, hopefully it gets resolved soon and everything goes back to normal.

[spinal_cord]

Of course, a primary use for such hardware -- such as the R4 Revolution, pictured -- is homebrew and emulation,

If that were the case, commercial games would NOT run on these cards. Their primary use is piracy, nobody can say otherwise, especially the R4 as its homebrew compatability is much lower than its commercial compatability.

[Kulawend]

If that were the case, commercial games would NOT run on these cards. Their primary use is piracy, nobody can say otherwise, especially the R4 as its homebrew compatability is much lower than its commercial compatability.

Wrong, the primary goal is profits, so making the cart do as many things as possible is a must.

[TechRat]

Wrong, the primary goal is profits, so making the cart do as many things as possible is a must.

I hate to do it, but I have to agree with spinal_cord on this. I believe that the R4 is primarily marketed as a device for playing "backups" of DS games. We in the homebrew community don't want to admit that. We want to believe that the focus is on homebrew and that piracy is an unfortunate side effect. I think the reverse is true. Otherwise, how would you explain the constant firmware updates to improve compatibility with DS ROMS? The makers know what most people use it for and they are catering to them.

And to those who say that they don't know anyone who has an R4 or who uses it to pirate games, my understanding is that this is a larger issue in Europe and Japan.

Datel should bring the Games 'n Music back. I'm pretty sure it can not play commercial DS ROMS, and as an owner I can say the homebrew compatibility is excellent. I think a newer version with faster read speeds (though it really isn't bad now except for video playback) would really do the homebrew community some good.

[Keitaro Urashima]

Is R4DS going to die soon? I wish, they upgrade more after they leave.

[firefoxkatan]

I originally got an R4 to play Homebrew games (like Cave Story) but I admit I got a bit caught up in the ROMs and only just now started getting Homebrew software. I honestly don't blame Nintendo, but at the same time it'll suck if this all goes away.

I noticed yesterday the official R4 site was taken down. :(

[masterchief929]

i think we all saw this coming. a sad day for DS users worldwide.

[AntBUK]

I will admit to playing game backups on my R4. Games as yet unreleased in the UK and some of my favourites which I own.

However I spend far much more time using Homebrew Software, PuzzleManiak, LemmingsDS, DoomDS, DSOrganise, jEnesis, a SNES Emulator of which I can't remember the name, Lameboy, and a large amount of others. The homebrew stuff is better then the commerical stuff at times!

[megaxzeo]

I'm not a coder of any means, but I think that in order to make the homebrew work for these carts, the commercial roms need to work also. Think about it. The nintendo DS recgonizes *what* kind of file? a .nds. to have the convienence of booting up a homebrew off the r4 and other various carts is because its the same type of file that all of the commercial roms are. At least thats how i see it.

And even if these carts are made to play the commercial roms, so what. If I own the game, I should be able to back it up any way I want. And if I want to carry all of the games I own on *one* card, and these guys offer me the ability to do just that, and nintendo dosent, then it sounds to me like nintendo needs to quit complaining and make there own way of doing this.

If its what the people want ( and it obviously is ) then why not *sell* it to them?

[crookedmouth]

I'm not a coder of any means, but I think that in order to make the homebrew work for these carts, the commercial roms need to work also. Think about it. The nintendo DS recgonizes *what* kind of file? a .nds. to have the convienence of booting up a homebrew off the r4 and other various carts is because its the same type of file that all of the commercial roms are. At least thats how i see it.

And even if these carts are made to play the commercial roms, so what. If I own the game, I should be able to back it up any way I want. And if I want to carry all of the games I own on *one* card, and these guys offer me the ability to do just that, and nintendo dosent, then it sounds to me like nintendo needs to quit complaining and make there own way of doing this.

If its what the people want ( and it obviously is ) then why not *sell* it to them?

As was mentioned earlier, The Games n Music card though made by the much derided Datel has very good Homebrew compatibility(thanks to chism) with no ability to run pirated DS ROMs (someone said they got elf bowling or something to run, I guess). It's funny that this card is constantly being made fun of, when it is in fact a decent card and can only be used for homebrew.
Why would nintendo make a device that would allow people to use pirated roms?It would probably be impossible to make a device that would only play games you own. I don't believe it is legal to make back-ups of DS games(or any games really) anyway, don't quote me.

[spinal_cord]

I'm not a coder of any means, but I think that in order to make the homebrew work for these carts, the commercial roms need to work also. Think about it. The nintendo DS recgonizes *what* kind of file? a .nds. to have the convienence of booting up a homebrew off the r4 and other various carts is because its the same type of file that all of the commercial roms are. At least thats how i see it.

Nope, commercial games and homebrew are not loaded the same way. Homebrew is designed to run on these cards, as a result of this, they access the card in different ways. If a homebrew file needs to load something, it will have been designed to load it from a flash card, commercial games are designed to run from official nintendo cards, they access files differently and access the card differently. Commercial games need to be patched and tweaked and al sorts of stuff done to them before they will work on these cards. That is why whenever a new game with different features comes out, they dont work on any of the available cards, a new loader must be written to handle different save sizes etc.

Cards can remain safe by NOT having commercial compatability, it seems far easier that way, from a coding point of view, they wouldn't need to re-release menu's all of the time as there would be no possible updates.