Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

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tsalim
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Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by tsalim »

So, I am brand new to this forum. I am wondering if it is legal to make homebrew NES games that DO NOT have any copyrighted material. In other words, the homebrew game content is purely original or draws from sources in the public domain?
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rainwarrior
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Re: Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by rainwarrior »

Yes.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

You can write, share and sell your own software perfectly legally regardless the platform. Same now as in the 80:s and 90:s, just that back then fewer had the means to do so, and nintendo would also try to persuade stores not to accept unlicensed games back then. This maneuvering had no legal backing even then, and they're not interested in that fare now since the NES (the console itself) isn't a medium for revenue anymore.
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tokumaru
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Re: Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by tokumaru »

One of the legal problems of making NES games used to be the lockout chip. I'm pretty sure that reverse engineering it and cloning it was illegal, but now that all NES hardware patents have expired, that's not a problem anymore, and everyone is free to make NES cartridges that are fully compatible with the original console.
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Oh, that's right. I guess that's why some old unlicensed games were pretty creative about how they defeated the lockout mechanism - piggybacking the chip of an official cartridge, or simply provoke the console-side lockout chip to behave differently.
tsalim
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Re: Is It Legal To Make Hombrew NES Games?

Post by tsalim »

Great! I guess its fine then.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply!
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