Emulator expert Robert Broglia bringing entire catalogue to Ouya
Android micro-console could become destination for classic gaming
The forthcoming Ouya console may become a destination for emulation of classic games.
According to a post on the Ouya forums, the leading Android emulator developer Robert Broglia is bringing "all" of his work to the platform.
Broglia's work includes emulators for GameBoy Advance, GameBoy Color, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega Master System, Sega Saturn, NES, SNES, N64, Neogeo and Atari 2600. The first to launch will be Snes9x EX+, which promises , "near complete game compatibility."
Broglia's interest in the Ouya helps to answer one of the major outstanding questions around the validity of the platform: the availability of games. In February, former thatgamecompany exec Kellee Santiago was hired as head of developer relations for Ouya.
"Ouya gets it," said Santiago at the time. "This is the first console company that really understands how important it is to remove the barriers to development. By freeing up the development process, Ouya is opening up new doors in console gaming."
Portal developer Kim Swift was also confirmed to be developing a game for the platform.
Granted, there are still many titles that aren't available which is where emulation shines.
And Broglia needs to look into the Wii U and PS4. They've made some massive inroads towards opening up development to everyone. Though given that emulators are his specialty, his work would be one of the few that get blocked.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jim Webb on 28th March 2013 10:10am
The casuals don't care, and the hardcores like me (I've historically been one of the staunchest classic emulation advocates in the games press) are offended. Doesn't leave much of a market for what is largely an experimental system.
If you want to argue that, say, a 30 year monopoly (meaning all those early '80s games would be in the public domain now) wouldn't have provided enough incentive for the creators of the time to create those games, that's well within the spirit of copyright law.
But if you want to argue that these monopolies should be granted in perpetuity (meaning that someone, somewhere, would still be controlling reproduction to the works of Shakespeare), you've gone right off the rails when it comes to the purpose of copyright law.
And from a historical point of view, long copyright terms and harsh limits on fair use (including, but not limited to, the DMCA) tend towards permanently destruction of protected works. If everybody really obeyed the law on works embodied in, say, old coin-op machines, most of those games would vanish from history long before their copyright terms expired. Is that really what you're looking for?
It's a "wink wink" in the console emulation community that no one buys, for good reason: it's bunk. No one is downloading that Super Nintendo emulator to play Timmy's First SNES Game. They're doing it to play Mario World.
The No$gba emulator was kept private from the public for years before being released (allowed only for professionals paying a fair amount for the software), but yes there is a bit of a "wink wink" in the scene because the homebrew community is very small compared to the piracy crowd.
I've seen a homebrew game of mine appear in a torrent of gameboy games. Can't say I wasn't chuffed, though I doubt anyone played it!
And even if some of them were only downloading ROMs they once owned on cart legitimately, do we open the illegal flood gates for everybody just for that small segment that stays legal?