This morning, I was taking part in my usual routine. This consists of making an effort to wake up, hoping it won’t be a migraine sort of day, groaning while reaching for my phone, dropping my glasses, shouting an obscenity, and deciding if the first site I visit for the day will be an illicit one, or something of the wholesome persuasion.
Well, Christmas is on its way. Thus, Team Wholesome prevailed.
While scrolling through that monster conglomerate known to the culture as ‘The Facebook’, I saw an image that caught my attention:
Alas, another handheld bootleg system had risen from the depths of the sludge tank. But what boggled my mind in this specific instance? Thank you for asking, I will share. All right, do you see those 1.3K comments posted in this here screen shot? Upon my scrolling of them, what did all of them have in common?
No one called this system out for being an illegal bootleg piece of Chinese garbage.
Sure, you had people tagging their friends. You had exclamations of “I want one!” or “Does it have the original Dr. Mario on it? It better or I won’t buy it!”
And so on.
People can’t be immediately faulted– it’s hard for me to remember that not everyone is neck deep in the way collecting, copyrights, and media works. Some people are normal and not every hobby or interest has to be an obsessive lifestyle that includes knowing everything about everything and hyper fixating until you catch em all. Great– I understand that. But in my scouring quest in the comments section this trash-heap…
Why did no one call out this thing for being staunchly illegal?!
Fine– call me a Mary Sue; I don’t care. I will be the first to admit that when I go to the mall or conventions and see the booth set up with ‘1,000 Nintendo Games in One’, I glare at them. Sometimes, I’ll even go talk to them. What they’re selling is wrong. I don’t support piracy, and honestly, no one else who considers pop culture their career/hobby (be it in its creation or criticism) should either. Artists need to be paid for their work.
Stop downloading Game of Thrones torrents.
So, moving on to the beast itself– what is the Retro Advance? Well, it looks much like the body of the 200-in-One that I bought as a gag gift from my local Walgreens. The long and short; this is an emulation system. The manufacturer downloaded a bunch of Nintendo ROMS and stuffed them into this tiny-tiny handheld device.
Oh man– wouldn’t it just be the icing on the cake if this thing had OG Sega and Nintendo games just mingling their juices together?
Radical.
Per my expectation, Retro Advance didn’t have a website where they’re selling these. They just want you to buy them. And I’m telling you why you might want to reconsider this:
1) These games are protected under copyright. They’re the property of Nintendo. Why do you want to shaft Nintendo and its artists? Don’t you love them?
2) Nintendo just went out of its way to shut down EMUParadise and all of its ROMS. Remember, while ROMS might be an excellent source of game preservation, owning them is illegal unless you own a physical copy of the cartridge or machine.
3) I’ll spare the sweatshop point because I’m sure Nintendo proper has their DS handheld systems made in China too. But lets just talk simple specs. I really doubt the video and audio capacities in these booty systems match the integrity of the Nintendo ones.
4) And lastly– it is so easy to play Nintendo games now. Even if your original NES doesn’t work, you have the Virtual Console. You have the new rotating library on the Switch. The NES Classic is out. The SNES Classic is out. And at the risk of sounding smug…Super Nintendos never break. Ever! There’s no such thing as a SNES that’s ever broken. Nope, not in the history of ever. That’s a legitimate fact and statistic that I’ll eventually track down a source for at my convenience. But until then, just remember…
When you steal games, you’re stealing from this guy. Look at his face. Look at it!
Wasn’t the newest Mario game always your favorite Christmas present?
Exactly.