Similar to a Nintendo Power service... hmmm.Originally Posted by kedawa
PIPE DREAM THAT I'VE COME UP WITH:
With all the 'classic' TV systems being sold today... this could work pretty well. Sega/Nintendo/Whoever basically could sell rerelease (yet again) some of their older systems in even smaller form, and sell a cart similar to a flash drive. I'd come with your usual pre-installed stuff, but the bonus would be that the cart would have a USB port. Go to their site, and for a reasonable price ($0.99 to $9.99 at most), you could permanently download games. The catch would be that you would have to register the files, plus only a certain amount of download games/content could be stored on a cart on a time. That could/would possibly stop people from putting a shitload of ROMs on the cart and selling it as a bootleg. Moreover, with all the fansub ROMs there are on the internet, all being done by dedicated teams, the possiblity exist that Americans can legally play many of the games that never crossed the Pacific. Game companies could pay the translating teams a certain amount of money plus give them due credit in return for ownership and distribution of the fansubs they've made. Games that have many translations could have full trials that expire after ten days available for all interested, and consumers could vote on which translation they want, as well as if they still want Japanese title screens/font type (Akumajou Densetsu and Gryzor come to mind here). To me, the fansub thing would be even more far-fetched even though it would be the easiest thing for them. These companies (especially Square Enix) know where/how to find who's been doing the translations, and know that, as fans, most if not all of them would be more than willing to co-operate with Square if both of them are reasonable (Square/whoever doesn't charge a shitload for the game, nor do they censor/alter the game without consent; Translators respect the fact that while the translation may be their work, the subject itself isn't, and should strive to stay as close to the artists vision as possible).
The most far-fetched idea would be a dedicated system for all this. Have a company like Jakks Pacific or Radica make a system, and have Sega, Nintendo, Namco, Hudson, NEC, Capcom, etc. endorse it. However, those companies would have to specify which version you are downloading (e.g. Konami allows both Genesis and SNES versions of Sparkster for download, or states which one their allowing and why). If not, then just have dedicated Genesis, SNES and TurboGrafx machines.
TurboGrafx... who would currently have the rights to that stuff?
Bookmarks