Official site: https://www.cartreader.net/
US$249.99 ready-built, for anybody curious. Not saying it's not worth that, but that will price a lot of people out of it.
Me.
I was like "oh cool!"
And then I saw the price.
I had someone build one for me a while back. I don't have any rare cartridges, but the games my dad and I played together have saves that I value. Hopefully the thing works!
Yeah if you can do it yourself it's about half that. Save the hero builds an older revision but it's also cheaper.
Better make a full copy of this project before Nintendo comes after it too.
Someone should buy this and then charge like $5 to backup someone's cartridge for them.
Too expensive for everyone to own
Yeah seriously.
Also are we not at a stage where most games have been dumped perfectly already?
This is for preserving one’s own library, which makes emulation fully legal instead of the wink wink “legal” that many gamers find themselves in.
Some people care about piracy laws?
Nintendo bootlickers salty about having to pay a subscription for Super Mario Bros.
This is really cool, but I wonder how long it’ll last before they are bullied with legal threats.
I think dumping your game cartridges is legal, otherwise you couldn't emulate games legally.
The thing about legal threats is that they can work even if the theory they are based on isn't any good. Fee-shifting isn't always guaranteed, if it is available at all. Capital has already budgeted for its lawyers this year, have you?
Yep, this even has a name, SLAPP.
I'm not sure if this would strictly be a SLAPP rather than general litigious bullying (GLiB has a nice ring to it actually.)
In this respect though open sourcing it was a good move. Even if the creator were to be blocked from distributing, it's out there.
Nintendo sent a bunch of thugs to the home of an emulator developer last week, and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Everything he did was legal, but that doesn’t stop Nintendo from literally threatening harm to your family.
If you dump a game cartridge, Nintendo can kill your wife.
yes tiptoe around that eula
Since when did cartridge games have EULAs?
Also: in sane countries (i.e: not the so-called US), EULAs don't overwrite civil laws.
The only dangersis when DRM is circumvented.
In glorious people-protecting America, we actually have something called “shrink wrap” EULAs which state that you agreed to the terms by opening the box. Even if those terms were inside the box.
so-called US
I know what you mean but it’s funny to question what a country has named itself.
Cartridge dumpers have existed for decades. They are 100% legal, just like any physical media player (VCR, DVD player...).
At this point are there any cartridges on earth I couldn't find a torrent of in about 2 mins on Google? They'd have to be deliberately being kept for rarity.
Probably not, but it does add a touch of legitimacy to the claim that emulators are for playing your own backed up games.
Nintendo doesn't even care about that so tbh fuck em.
Did that claim have any actual grounding in reality? Or is it just an urban legend that keeps persisting?
It did, yes. Emulators as a piece of software that does not do anything illegal are not themselves illegal. But piracy is illegal, and downloading roms of games you haven't purchased constitutes piracy. But if you purchased a game and used an emulator to play it that's a perfectly valid use case that falls within the law.
Nintendo has been trying to push the envelope on that for years though. And it seems like they might recently be succeeding in some fashion.
Very few. However, this type of devices can also backup saved games.
This is neat!
Honestly, as cool as this is, I just keep collections of downloaded entire game libraries like PS1, PS2, PSP, 3DS, NDS, GB, GBC, GBA, NES, SNES, etc.
I'm more interested in preserving my save games, which I can dump myself on my modded 3DS for 3DS and NDS games, plus my PSP I can just copy paste those save games from the memory card. Those are more what is really irreplacable. Everyone has my games, not everyone has my save games.
Idk about this one but my GB/C/A dumper can do both the ROM and the save (well, no save on GB because there are no batts, but on the C and A it can.).
I used it to back up my Pokemon Yellow cart, solder in a new batt, and put my save back on the cart.
I assume this likely can do the same with at least most of those systems. But out of your listed systems GBC/A would be all you need as this doesn't seem to do disks but only carts, you could just get a dedicated GBC/A dumper for backing those up, idk if they still sell the Joey Jr but that's the one I use.
Yeah, I could also use my DSLite to dump GBA saves at least. My GBC saves are unfortunately all long gone because the batteries dried up.
It is really cool being able to dump save games, so if these multi-dumpers can do so, that's amazing.
In a just world, you could just download ROMs for free.
Vintage gaming community.
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