Rather than have individual threads for each article I'd like to try to condense it to one thread per issue.

Let us know what you think!

The "Good, Bad, and Illegal" article should be required reading for everyone on the forums. Well done.


And I love the in-depth Shining Force article.  That kind of content is great!

So I think the discussion about legality of hacks and translations is quite misleading. It conflates making the hack / translation with selling it (on a cart). People who make hacks and translations are specifically and are almost always intentionally released as patches that do not include any original content.

The people who make the hack or translation hardly ever sell them on carts and the people who make carts out of them are often going to be infringing on both the creator of the original game and the creator of the hack. It's not right to say hacks and translations are illegal, it would be more correct to say selling reproduction carts with hacks or translations on them is illegal.

It might be true that many people think there is no difference and their only exposure to hacks and translations are through buying them on a reproduction cart, but there certainly could be some fledging / aspiring hack creators or translators out there as well.

Imho, it's not really a great analogy to say it's like translating a book, particularly since with a book, the entire content that is protected under copyright is contained in the text that is being copied (or translated), whereas with a game it is only a very small part of the material that is copied in translated form. In the case of a translation of a book, the book is replaced by the translation, which has the potential for loss of sales / profits / to cause the copyright holder harm. In the case of a NES translation, the translation is nothing unless accompanied by a copy of the original work, which has no potential for harm since everyone wanting to use the hack or translation would need to purchase a copy of the original work to apply it to.

Edit: 
Also, thanks for doing that article Luke, it's a great read!

I'm also wondering about the "only buying a license" aspect.  Is that actually true, are they allowed legally to "only sell people licenses" without making that fact clear to their customers?  There isn't any agreement or anything when you buy one to let people know that you aren't really buying a product.  Is it really no problem legally for them to make no distinction at the point of purchase (and, if we are being honest, to intentionally perpetuate the idea in their customers that they are buying a product)?

Bunnyboy has pointed out on multiple occassions that even the .ips patches often contain copyrighted code that would be an infringement.

Also, virtually no-one has ever legally played a hack or translation, since an extremely small number of people "back up" their own game ROMs to patch with related hacks or translations. 
(there are definitely people that do, but you and I both know they are an itty-bitty minority of ROM users)


Hacks and translations are lots of fun, we just need to not kid ourselves about the legality of what we're doing when we obtain and play them...

Sure, there potentially will be small chunks of copyrighted code and the text that they have translated will be copyrighted as well, but the argument for fair use should be stronger and afaik is still untested.

Yeah, but the rest of the people who grab a copy of a ROM they already own off the interwebs instead of doing it themselves are still in legally untested teritory as well I thought (not sure on that one)  but anyway, it doesn't matter since at any time someone like retrobit could put out a system to let people apply translations to their carts without needing to back up or download copies of the ones they already own.

I thought I had seen that the "downloading something you own anyway" has been tested with regards to music and movies (where it was illegal), but I am not certain and do not have a source.

If you were able to "patch on the fly" with your actual cartridge, that would be incredible, and would definitely extricate you from the grey area.

OK guys, let's discuss your take on the legalities of patches and whatnot elsewhere please.

This is a thread to discuss the ezine but not to debate your personal take on an obviously touchy legal subject.

Retrobit said they are "thinking about it" with the retron 5 in their forums.. I'm not holding my breath, but I do have my fingers crossed and am standing on my tippy toes

We were discussing the ezine and the article content.  Classically, this thread has been the place to discuss that sort of thing.

I think this may be the most on topic I have been ever in the history of Nintendo Age!

Also, the article about Battle Kid 2 echoed my thoughts exactly! I was so glad to finally get ahold of a copy.

One thing that I didn't see mentioned is that BK2 also makes a steller 2 player game, although it doesn't technically have an option for it, if you play with 2 people and challenge each other, the turns are pretty quick and it's always a race to see who can get to the continue point first.

Agreed, the BK2 write up was excellent.

Great read all the way through. I would like to annouce the winners of the free games for this issue and last (I slacked off on the last one and never picked a winner my bad.) Many of you might remember I offer a chance to win a free Repro to those who write articles for the Ezine. The winners were randomly chosen by entering the names of the writers (excluding myself) into a random list generator, hit random 5 times, and whoever is in the 1st spot is the winner.

The winner for the last Ezine: Acidjaguar
For this Ezine: m308gunner


Congrats guys, great articles and thank you for contributing I will be PMing you both shortly.

i thought i was the only bucky ohare collector out there. damn.

There isn't many of us out there eh? lol

I even have some autographed items:



Signed by co-creator Micheal Golden



Signed by Scott McNeil who voiced Deadeye

Since this is a Nintendo forum and you can't see it very well in the pics here is my $40 CIB Bucky O'Hare NES game:



I'm looking forward to sitting down and really going through the Ezine. Great work guys!

Layout looks great! Thanks for all the hard work from Shane, Matt and all the writers.

Hey could we get the Ezine posted on the SA front page

Doing it now

I'm at work otherwise I would have done it right after I posted it here.

Thank you as well good sir

Awesome, Thanks.

Yeah this Ezine was really good. I too enjoyed the Shining Force insight and the Castlevania guide.. Lots of really good articles, thank you all.

No problem and thanks for contributing your Pico article. Hopefully we can continue to get more articles aside from just Nintendo based material.

It was a great read. Your guys' contributions are amazing, as always!

Great stuff! I have another interview planned for the next E-Zine, and I will also talk about something about my favorite system. The idea was given to me by Benihana, as I PM'd him in order to get my Writers award added to my account (Hint:It's the Vectrex)

Skyward Sword Gold Wiimote bundle is a Wii Rarity? Sorry just a pet peeve of mine, but rarity is not the same as price.

Otherwise, great looking eZine but man it's long. No wonder it took several months!

I really enjoyed reading this ezine... some really great content and the layout really made me feel like I was reading a high-end magazine. I especially liked how this one branched out a bit. Oh, and who knew there were Bucky O'Hare collectors!?! Good stuff mangs.

Garbage Pail Kids!! WOO HOO!