Note – This article is for informational/entertainment purposes only. None of the information in this article should be considered actual legal advice. If in any doubt, consult a local legal professional.
With the growing popularity of recompiled games for the N64, you may be wondering how you can legally play your old Nintendo 64 cartridges on your PC, either via an emulator or for use with a recompilation project like the recently released Banjo Kazooie recompilation. You may have wondered if it is even possible to do this legally, or if the only real way is to search the shadier corners of the internet for copyrighted files.
Fortunately, there IS a way to play your original cartridge directly on your PC, enter the JoeyN64 adapter.
This inconspicuous little adapter connects to any USB port on your Windows PC. A Nintendo 64 cartridge then sits on top of it and the data from the cartridge can then be read by your computer. You might expect that the process of extracting the ROM from the cartridge was complicated but, nothing could be further from the truth, the cartridge simply appears in Windows as if it were a USB stick or any other removable media.
You can drag and drop the ROM onto your hard drive or, simply play the game directly from the cartridge. Some emulators will even read/update your save file, allowing you to effectively cross play between an emulator and a real N64. You can even attach a controller with an N64 Memory PAK to backup your save games, though the device does not let you use your N64 controller directly on the PC.
When PAL is not your PAL
One thing that did catch us out here in Europe is that our versions of N64 games were specifically designed for the PAL region. PAL televisions of the time had a 50hz refresh rate, so PAL software ran slightly slower. The recently released Banjo Kazooie recompilation will only work with the 60hz NTSC version of the game, meaning you’re out of luck if you only have the PAL cartridge, so close and yet so far!
Devil in the details
Is this device really a 100% legal way to play N64 games on your PC? Probably, but the full answer is a little more complicated than that. Almost all software that you buy or download has a license agreement and N64 games are no exception. Check the back of the manual and you will see the text “Back-up copies are not authorised”. So, merely dragging the ROM off the cartridge on to your PCs hard drive is a violation of the license agreement. However, since we can play directly from the ROM on the cartridge that’s not a problem, right? Unfortunately, Nintendo might disagree with that statement. Nintendo is well known for its heavy handed, litigious approach to protecting its IP and/or alienating its most hardcore fans. If use of this device ever came to court, Nintendo’s lawyers may argue that as soon as the ROM is loaded into your computers memory, ready to be run, you have created an unauthorised and therefore copyright infringing version of the game.
Of course, in reality, its extremely unlikely that even Nintendo would go after a fan for literally using their own copy of a game to play an emulator or a recomp. Even if they did, and convinced a judge that their legal argument was sound, we can’t imagine the judge awarding them any significant amount of damages considering their financial loss is basically zero. After all, you bought and own the game, you just supposedly didn’t play it 100% in accordance with the licence agreement.
Furthermore, we can’t help wondering what happens when, perhaps inevitably, Nintendo or any other company takes the work from one of these decompilation projects and uses it to create and sell an official remaster of a game. While theoretically Nintendo would have access to the original source code, the often unreliable backup and storage mediums from the 1990s may have failed, causing this precious asset to be lost forever. Nintendo have been accused before of repackaging unauthorised ROMs that they found online. Other companies have even been caught selling pirated versions of their own games, rather than make the effort to remove the now defunct copy protection themselves. In our absolutely not expert opinion, Nintendo should have every right (morally and indeed legally) to download the decompiled code and make their own remastered or improved versions of these games to sell on the Switch. In fact, and again this is only speculation, we believe most people involved with decompiling older games would welcome this. After all, it’s another way to enjoy these games with modern enhancements and improvements, just on a different platform and this time 100% legally with no ambiguity.
JoeyN64 is available to buy now from our sister site VideoGamePerfection.com, based in Ireland (EU) with shipping to most destinations worldwide. They can also be purchased from the creators website directly (ships from Australia).