Is having a GBA emulator considered piracy?

[J sims]

Is having a GBA emulator considered piracy?

[Fly On]

Emulator? No. It's the roms you have to worry about.

[Drift]

Yeah it's just the roms, if you don't actually own them. Also of course if the emulator itself included a built in bios or something pinched from a real console that could be considered copyright infringement too.

[J sims]

thanks.

[quzar]

That is true for most emulation, but not gba emulation on the psp. Nintendo (i think last year?) patented Gameboy Advance emulation on portable systems. This was made apparent by the case between nintendo and tapwave over the zodiac and how it was supposed to have a gba emulator for it.

So GBA emulation on any portable system is illegal because nintendo has it patented.

[J sims]

What about GBA emulation on non portable systems ex dreamcast?

[Terial]

So does that mean that we won't see a GBA emulator on the PSP?
I was wondering why there wasn't one already, with all the great emulators out there already, like VisualBoyAdvance.

And wouldn't it be eaiser to make an emulator on the PSP from ground-up? (Easier... not faster, lol)

[J sims]

If there is going to be one it is probably not going to be posted here.

[quzar]

What about GBA emulation on non portable systems ex dreamcast?

No problem with that. The idea is that GBA emulation on a portable system can actually lead to a large hit to console/game sales for nintendo. I mean, imagine if the DS came out then the PSP came out with a gba emulator built in. The DS would lose a large following.

And wouldn't it be eaiser to make an emulator on the PSP from ground-up? (Easier... not faster, lol)

um.... no? Thats like saying 'wouldn't it be easier to build a car from scratch than to fix a broken one?'. It has the possibility of being better (although ground up does not mean better) but the time required is soooooo much greater that it does not compare. On top of that to write an emulator for a system requires large knowledge of the system, which porting does not. An emulator can be ported in under an hour if it was written in a way that makes it easily portable.

[watoto]

the reason why they shut down the zodiac emu is because the devs were stupid enough to try and sell the thing.people actually paid in advance for it!
that's why it got to court,you can't make profit,otherwise it's a commercial emulator,see?also,it would have been commercial on a HANDHELD,wich is even worse.

there would be no problem if they just developed on and hush it on to websites.

someone was actually working on it but stopped as it was slow,wich is silly,because of course it'll be slow.we'll have a great gba emu in time,don't fear.there's no stopping the psp community!