Romulation.net is Dead!!!

Update 06/23/08: Romulation.net Cheated Death!

For years NES & SNES Emulation has been continuously growing more popular. But for those years Nintendo was not loosing any money from people Emulating there old games. But with the Wii's Virtual Console, suddenly Emulation becomes a guanine threat to there swimming pools full of money. And sadly it seems that they are cracking down and taking out that threat.

One of the biggest Nintendo ROM sites on the net Romulation.net, has officially been shut down by the ESA with a cease and desist notice. I am not sure when they officially closed shop, but it is definitely a sign that Nintendo is starting to take action against the piracy of there old games.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) is a very ageing console and it's games have slowly but surly gotten harder to come by over the years. Which of course means that the SNES games that are out there have had steadily rising prices. The result of this is people like me who grew up on the NES & SNES are starved for there favorite classics but don't want to fork out the ridiculous asking prices on sites like e-Bay and Amazon for the original cartridges.

So what options does that leave us? I know that the virtual console has some great games on it but it is mostly only the high profile games that are being ported over to it. And even if all of the games you want are on the Virtual Console there is still something to be said for playing them with the controllers they were made for.

So that leaves only one option, PC Emulation. I in no way do I endorse piracy, but what a mighty temptation it is to just go get all of your favorite classic games for free, no mater how obscure they are. And then you can play them with enhanced graphics, Classic controllers and you can even get mod's and expansion packs for them and that is not even mentioning the ability to play them online.

With Nintendo doing what they can to put a stop to the mainstream availability of NES & SNES ROM's they are also making it very hard to acquire many of there greatest classics. So it is my hope that they already relies this and will start working on more quickly building the VC library and also start offering them at a fairer prices. Or even possibly start offering a PC equivalent of the Virtual Console and still allow all of the gaming community to continue Modding and enhancing the games like any other retail PC game.

The only thing left that needs to be said is give me back my EarthBound, Harvest Moon and Metal Warriors Nintendo!!!!