Now, anyone who has been reading my website for the last, oh I dunno, 5-7 years, should know by now I'm all about capitalism with limits. This will never change. I don't believe socialism/communism will ever work, humans are just too greedy, and need proof - go take a look at all these various avenues trying to take the I.A. Down with lawsuits right now. And I'm pretty sure not all that content hosted is easily available through a regular commercial source. Even as much crap as Temu or Amazon has, they don't have everything in the world on their websites to buy. Corporations are not people, they are COLLECTIVES of people - individuals - and via strength in numbers and the threat to democracy, a lawful country, and so on, should not be treated with the same rights as a regular human being. Are you yourself, alone, 100+ strong? Are you yourself, as an individual, capable of buying out the entire U.S. Government for your own purpose? Are you capable of leverage over every tech company on the planet! Unless you're someone like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, I don't think you have that capability without hiring a staff to do it, hell, I'm almost convinced they NEED their staff to do it as well.

Where I'm going with this is I hate it, but I'm not surprised. Like I say in the Nintendo rant below, I've seen sites come, I've seen them go. The content will be back online again in the future, and just like anyone else, for right now - until they start with this shit, I see Atari/Infogrames as a shining example of how to do "Retro" right. Hell, E.A., one of the most maligned companies in the world, honored my copy of The Sims 3 to xfer to this Macintosh in a newly patched format of the original content to work on MacOS. THIS is how you operate as a content company. Same thing for books. If Henry Rollins is still selling his books, then don't steal them, but when I'm 97 years old and Policial Correctness has banned every single book by him and Burkowski because it's not "P.C." - fuck that shit, I'm downloading it if I can't buy it! Hence why I'm not too fond of "Cancel Culture" either.

Honestly, this goes back to how our Copyright Laws should be revised in the USA (and likely elsewhere too). CreepingNet's first rule of thumb when it comes to the internet, is if you don't want something on the internet, then don't make it reality in any form! If you do, it's going to be on there, in some form, whether it's a tutorial, or a download. Secondly, you cannot turn back time, once it's on the internet, the cat is out of the bag.

Repeating what I'll say during the Nintendo rant, basically, ALL companies, big and small, should put some percentage of a "risk buffer" into their I.P. that it's going to get put on the internet. YOu cannot control people, just attempt to mildly influence them, but failing that, good luck, LOL. Being in business - as taught to me in the place I criticize a lot - COLLEGE - is managing risk! And a part of managing risk, is the understanding that risk cannot always be avoided, just mitigated or carefully navigated in some cases. And one way to do this, is not to damage your company's image by attacking institutions outside yours that might be covering a customer service issue you are failing to address. It seems there are a lot of missed opportunities these days, hence why my general point of view of your average suit and tie in 2024 is you are a fucking maroon!

My perterbment about ROMS gets more bothersome as we go older. Like I have a feeling this was spearheaded by some internet savvy eight year olds who saw a ROM download somewhere illegit and thought "AW Yeah, Nu Super Mario Bros Switch! HELL YEAH! FREE!!!" And then went on a spree downloading the whole Switch catalog from some gooners server....that's the first place my mind goes.

I've been a patron of VIMM.NET for the times when I wanted to play some super-unobtainium NES ROMs mostly way back in the day (I prefer my physical media to be honest) and I am pissed they are gone. That means the idea that I will relinquish my O.G. NES someday will never become reality, and it just encourages me to soft-mod the two Wiis and Wii-U I have continuously and keep adding ROMS to them that I have on my own to ensure I still have access to my software years later.

Now, my opinion of Nintendo in recent years has not been a favorable one. I'm sick of them retconning Super Mario Bros. to death - to me, they will always be two plumbers from BROOKLYN who found a secret warp zone while unclogging a bathtub, and became protectors of the Mushroom Kingdom under PRincess Toadstool. I hate these miniature "Classic" consoles I can't play my original cartridges on, that offer no benefit to me as a vintage NES user. Now they've gone back to shutting down ROM Sites, attacking YouTUbers who use emulation or ROMs in some fashion....it almost feels to me like, Nintendo is trying to punish people like me for not "moving on" or "getting with the NEW program". Well, some of us don't want to get with the new program!

You know who I think is doing this right? ATARI! That's right, the internet's #1 favorite Pre-Nintendo scapegoat of all things "wrong" with gaming, that's been swept into the darkness for the last 10 years as kids act like the friggin NES was the original game console! No, it was the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972, but the Atari 2600 VCS is the console that brought us this whole shindig as we have it now! Everyone blames em' for the Crash of 1984 and two mid games being the cause (E.T. and Pac-Man - the latter of which I actually rather well like, and I even kinda' enjoyed E.T. as well)!

Atari-does what Ninten-don't! Atari was bought out by Infogrames (who made some pretty nice PC games in the past and haven't sued anyone I'm aware of for hosting their old DOS titles), and now here they are, we have a new 2600 console that runs all my old 2600 games (2600+), they are bringing out a 7800+ soon, they have a "gamestation pro" for those who prefer ROMS for original media - OPTIONS! That's what you have with Atari, that you don't with Nintendo. And while it sounds like I'm being a fanboy - I'm not - I know this gravy train of proper business practice can end at any time, like I always say NEVER trust a corporation. But for eright now, Atari has earned my trust and a soon to be customer. They're coming out with things the customers want, making them affordable enough, and despite their missteps with things like the VCS (the new one that's basically a computer), seems they are making a lot more GOOD moves than bad ones. I don't see Atari attacking YouTubers for emulation, or suing ROM sites, quite the opposite, they actually seem to have some leeway. Because they know it's not financially lucrative compared to MAKING something.