Highlights
- A vendor was selling hacked Nintendo ROMs on Walmart’s marketplace, catching Nintendo of America’s president’s attention.
- ROM hacking involves modifying game files for new experiences or to make games playable on different platforms.
- Nintendo is known for protecting its intellectual property and has filed lawsuits against ROM hackers and mod creators.
A vendor has been spotted selling hacked Nintendo ROMs on Walmart’s third-party marketplace. This has caught the attention of Doug Bowser, the current president of Nintendo of America. For those who don’t know, ROM hacking is when a person takes the read-only elements of a game and modifies them, either to fix bugs, add translations, implement cheat capabilities, or tweak the files to create a new experience using the original as a foundation. Frequently, ROM hacks are used to make a game playable, via emulator, on a platform that it wasn’t originally developed for.
Historically, ROMs have been associated with pirating and illegal distribution of copyrighted goods. Nintendo has often been a target of unlawfully shared ROMs of its games, mainly because the Japanese gaming giant’s consoles were relatively easy to emulate in the past. However, Nintendo has been reliably litigious when it comes to protecting its intellectual property and has been known to file lawsuits against ROM hackers, emulator developers, and mod creators. A recent example is that of Gary Bowser, not to be confused with Doug Bowser of Nintendo, who was sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to pay $4.5 million in restitution for selling Switch hacking devices.
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Recently, another ROM hacker has had an unwanted spotlight shone on their actions, when a Nintendo fan spotted their listing for a game called Shotgun Mario 64 on Walmart’s third-party marketplace. The fan called out the behavior in a LinkedIn post, now deleted, and drew the attention of Doug Bowser, who commented simply, “Appreciate the visibility.”
Nintendo ROM Hack Games for Sale on Walmart.com
It’s unclear if Walmart or Nintendo took action to remove the listing, but as of writing, it is no longer available on the retailer’s website. Whether the vendor’s actions were egregious enough to draw the attention of Nintendo’s well-used legal department also probably won’t be known for quite some time. It is certain, however, that anybody trying to earn money from the Japanese company’s IPs prefers to stay off the company’s radar. Those called as defendants in a lawsuit filed by Nintendo have regularly ended up owing million of dollars.
Many gamers feel that the company’s careful protection of its copyrights is a bit too closefisted, as some of the best Mario games are ROM hacks, for example. Many fan projects have been halted prematurely by Nintendo over the years, and even some fan art and films have been shut down. Despite that, fans continue to release remakes, sequels, and all kinds of creations inspired by Nintendo games. Some of them, like the fan-made sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, have mysteriously been allowed to remain online.
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