Author Topic: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?  (Read 16876 times)

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Offline Hot_Dog

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Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« on: June 18, 2011, 12:16:35 am »
Are there any NES games that are either public domain or open source?  I don't care whether they're "official" games or "unofficial" games.  However, I am not interested in hacks.
« Last Edit: June 18, 2011, 12:33:46 am by Hot_Dog »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2011, 12:23:06 am »
Hmm good question. It would be nice to know, that's for sure.

Offline AngelFish

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2011, 03:20:34 am »
As far as I am aware, no. I also doubt that I'm wrong about any games that I've never heard of, because Nintendo kept programming pretty tightly controlled for the system (hence the use of the cartridges).

If you'd still like to learn from games, someone did a disassembly of Metroid and went through relabeling everything so it made sense. I actually found a link to it on Omni, of all places :P

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/
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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #3 on: June 18, 2011, 03:25:23 am »
I think it exists indeed. In fact, I'm pretty sure it exists.

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Offline Hot_Dog

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2011, 10:28:00 am »
As far as I am aware, no. I also doubt that I'm wrong about any games that I've never heard of, because Nintendo kept programming pretty tightly controlled for the system (hence the use of the cartridges).

If you'd still like to learn from games, someone did a disassembly of Metroid and went through relabeling everything so it made sense. I actually found a link to it on Omni, of all places :P

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/459/

I actually got all the information I needed, but if a game is protected, I don't think it's legal to take its .ROM and port the game, which was my goal.

Offline Moonrise

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2014, 03:50:25 am »
There are at least two originally open source NES games. Both were developed targeting NES emulators, not the real hardware.

1) Escape from pong: http://hcs.freeshell.org/efp.html
2) NESMine: http://code.google.com/p/nesmine-game/

Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2014, 06:17:22 am »
Please don't necropost. That said, there's probably more homebrew for the NES out there considering the massive fan community for this console.

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2014, 07:40:35 pm »
Although it is an old topic, the post is actually relevant.

Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2014, 07:45:35 pm »
I agree on that point. But even then it's still a necro.

Offline pimathbrainiac

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2014, 07:46:45 pm »
But it's an acceptable necro. That means that it is allowed by forum rules :P
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Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2014, 07:50:26 pm »
Yeah sorry I wasn't clear. I was just warning a new member against making it an everyday practice. :P Heck, I even contributed to the topic.

Back on topic. I found a pretty extensive list : http://www.nesworld.com/homebrew.php Since homebrew dev is mostly open source/PD/free software the most part of it must fall in this category.
* Streetwalrus hides in shame as this is the first result upon googling "nes homebrew" :P
« Last Edit: February 24, 2014, 07:54:25 pm by Streetwalrus »

Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2014, 07:51:26 pm »
That is an acceptable necro. it contributes to a topic that is a discussion that can and could continue on.

regardless nifty. I wonder how they would fair on hardware seeing as they were targeted to emulators

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2014, 11:46:22 pm »
Interesting Street. As for open source and public domain NES games, I assume this would apply mainly to ones that were never sold, right? (If they were commercialized, they would be unlicensed games, like Tengen or Wisdom Tree games and the Chinese pirate carts (I have one of those, but it doesn't work very well due to graphics being glitchy).
« Last Edit: February 24, 2014, 11:46:34 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Streetwalrus

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2014, 03:39:46 am »
Well one thing's for sure is that the NES patents no longer apply hence all the hardware clones. Same goes for the SNES and all three GameBoys. Probably the N64 too since it's older than the GBA. Not sure about the GameCube though.

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: Public Domain / Open Source NES Games?
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2014, 03:51:33 am »
Most unlicensed games would still be copyrighted, and not likely public domain or open source. Tengen in fact was owned by Atari.