GBA Emulation, the backlash

Following on from Friday's report in C&VG of GameBoy Advance emulation, the originator of the story has come back with official word from Nintendo. Here, in full, is the statement from the Big N as printed by C&VG: "Game Boy Advance has been so widely anticipated that it is not surprising that these emulators and pirate games have already made their way on to the web. However, these downloadable games are illegal and, in the long run, are not good for the gamer or the games industry. "These copies are imitations and since they can only be played on a PC do not bring the uniqueness that GBA as a handheld console brings to the gameplay, which is the ability to enjoy console quality gaming anywhere." Clearly the issue we discussed, the one of publishers distributing ROMs and emulators to help publications screen capture the console, has not been given any consideration. Although here at EuroGamer we have strict non-negotiable rules about this sort of thing, if publishers have been distributing this (supposedly illicit if you agree with Nintendo) software to everyone who asks for it in the name of journalism, you can easily establish where the ROMs are coming from. And of course, we also told Nintendo where the average Joe would obtain the means to produce PC-readable ROMs (using devices easily obtained through importers and other gaming specialists), but that didn't seem to matter all that much either. We did send word of our findings to Nintendo at about the same time C&VG claim to have informed them... For their part though, C&VG do have something sensible to say about the whole topic of GBA emulation. "You should avoid these dodgy programs, not just because of the legal issues, but because it just ain't the same as playing on Nintendo's diminutive wonder machine." Never a truer word hath been spoke. Related Feature - Net rife with GBA emulation?