by the ZHQ
To say that the ZHQ staff thought about this matter is underestimating. Emulation is a very controversial topic, and for quite a while the Zelda HeadQuarters's official position was to avoid emulation. When Steve Fairbanks wrote an editorial called The Illegal Link, pro-emulation fans scorned Steve, that web site, and everyone else standing in their way. Negative E-Mails coupled with messages on a their board flowed in. Steve Fairbanks discussed the situation with Niels, and they decided to take another look at the subject and they arrived at the same conclusion, documented in the editorial To Emulate or Not To Emulate. Later on, Adam Lawrence was given a chance to write an article in support of emulation, and he took the opportunity to disagree with some previous editorials over technicalities of legality and so forth.
Finally, on January 13, 1998, the webmaster of the Zelda HeadQuarters made an official proclamation that "Zelda Headquarters is keeping the classics alive"; alive via emulation, and outlined the current policy.
The 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is dead. Let me help define dead for you. Nintendo doesn't make any 8-bit NES anymore. Nintendo of America, the only company to have ever produced an officially licenced Nintendo cartridge, doesn't make a single 8-bit NES game anymore. If you go to stores around America, chances are you're not going to find a NES console or catridge for sale. And even if you do, there's a good chance it's something used (packaged up and sold through a third party), meaning Nintendo doesn't make a dime off it anyway. The company that brought the unit into mass production basically doesn't care about the NES anymore, and has left the system to be an excellent piece of its history. The NES made history, and now the NES is history.
Early on in the world of Nintendo emulation (in June 1997), Conrad E-Mailed Nintendo@Nintendo.Com about emulation (as well as other things), and part of Greg Wallace's responce was "Emulators are illegal. Nintendo has an international team of lawyers who pursue manufacturers and distributors of such products. Usually, we are able to shut down such companies extremely quickly..." However, the emulator in question, as well as many other emulators, continue to exist and get developed.
The truth is emulators are not illegal. An examples of a 100% completely legal commercial emulator you can run is the Atari 2600 Action Pack (by Activision). OS/2 emulates EMS for it's DOS sessions. There's also hardware emulators. A lot of sound cards used to claim 100% SoundBlaster emulation (nowadays they usually use the word "compatibility"). To better what an emulator is, look at the Super Gameboy (lets you play gameboy games on a Super NES)it works, by most technical definitions, as a hardware-based emulator (whichreads software in the "native" Gameboy format, and converts the Gameboy's output codes into something a Super NES can use). So Nintendo's statement was really quite inaccurate: If for no other reason than just because it is very unspecific and seems to cover way too much ground.
Nintendo hasn't been too forceful in challenging emulation, and any action the company has taken has pretty much been against Super NES related emulation(and illegal distribution of Super NES games). The company hasn't explicitly given anybody legal permission to distribute copies of the 8-bit games. Similar issues (namely over DeHacked, the illegal DOOM editor)has shown that sometimes a company doesn't give out permission to have their copyright infringed because if they actually gave out permission they might lose some legal rights over their work. Nintendo seems to be strangely silent at times about discussions regarding emulation when the topic is limitedto an 8-bit NES, just as they don't seem to pursue the copyright infringement of using their graphics in a non-commercial production (such as screen shots using copyrited sprites being shown on a web page).
So, instead of pushing for an answer (which might result in Nintendo's easiest option becoming vocalizing a loud "NO!" just to shut us up), Zelda Headquarters has decided to use discretion and support some emulation which we believe will do nothing but increase interest in a couple of games which Nintendo published. ZHQ supports emulation of a NES, as well as the8-bit NES games. However, emulation of any other Nintendo system is not supported and is in fact discouraged, due to the fact that systems (and the Zelda-series games for those systems, if you look hard enough) are still sitting on many store shelves hoping to receive your dollars.
Will the Zelda Headquarters ever support emulation of a later Nintendo system? Probably someday. The Super NES is losing market share as developers(including Nintendo) and gamers alike are switching over to other platforms. The SNES probably has a year or two left during which new SNES games will be made. The SNES is not dead yet, although surely the 16-bit technology will someday be unmarketable. Perhaps after a year or two into the next millennium you'll see ZHQ supporting SNES emulation. That's assuming there are no legal, commercial SNES emulators(such as an addon for the N64 to play the older games). First we need to wait for the SNES to not receive any new updates (including new games). Second, there needs to be some time that passes (because we don't want emulation to help drive a system to an early grave).
There's no way right now to tell when the N64 will become unmarketable, because we don't know exactly how much expandability the N64 will exploit. (Had the SNES gone through with a CD-ROM addon unit, it's estimated product life would probably be longer than what it is today.) Consequently, we don't even know when ZHQ will ever support Nintendo 64 emulation under this policy, but suffice it to say that it's quite a ways off. (Consider this: ZHQ didn't support NES emulation until more than a dozen years after the first Zelda game appeared for that system.)
To conclude, the Zelda Headquarters emulation policy supports only systems which have been dead in the market place for a significant period of time.
Considering most BS-X games could be played only for a few hours, the subject is very similar. Also this is a non-profit site. If Nintendo asks for the roms to be removed, we will very willingly do so.
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