Is fine, different strokes after all, and I have no doubt that everyone’s experience is different.
To answer your last question though, because frankly I just don’t care. I recognize that it may be legally and in some cases morally wrong but that dosn’t really matter to me, without me needing to make excuses for it or justify it. I could easily post pics of my massive collection of both digital and physical games or tell about all the games I bought because of piracy early in life/how piracy cultivated my interest in the hobby thus getting me to spend a lot more then I ever would have without it, but I don’t think that that is justification, and so I don’t use that as a way to excuse piracy. I buy what I feel like, don’t what I don’t, and play what I want. And generally try not to talk about it on forums.
Even the early days of 99c iPhone games burned me out, and you hear the same with people’s Steam accounts now - too many cheap games mean you don’t play or value any of them.
But getting a nice new complete FDS game… the ritual of loading it up… it’s the equivalent of vinyl records - something physical creates a feeling of reality, of history.
But the feels you have come from the physicality of the medium Vs digital files, not the legality of its acquisition. The object makes you feel good, not the fact that you gave money to an eBay scalper to get it.
Kinda hard to draw the line when Everdrives, 160-in-1 carts, repro carts, counterfeits, jailbreaks, mod chips, and even emulation, are commonplace in retro discussion.
I pirated before, don’t do that anymore (since I have financial stability and cast away the “gotta play them all” mentality) but I don’t judge who does it.
But I loathe the hypocrital argument of “everdrive, jailbreaks, mod chips, emulation, etc don’t mean piracy” that GAF and other places enforced. We know better than that.
It’s more of a wink and a nod then hypocritical tbh. People know what they are used for, even if there are legitimate uses for them that people do use them for, but people also know you can’t talk directly about piracy on a respectable forum. Just roll with it.
We are not here to pass moral judgment. Really. We just don’t want you linking to unauthorized bootlegs and files. It’s purely in the interest of Retro Game Boards and our community that we enforce the rule.
The ethical discussion is a separate, nuanced thing that not even our staff is in agreement on. But for the sake of how the site is run, the ethics don’t come much into play as it’s our policy to err heavily on the side of what is legal and prudent for our own well being.
If you said “hey I just pirated BotW for Wii U,” we aren’t going to ban you (even if some of us will judge you). It’s only when you start to discuss where you got the image that we are going to have a problem (and I am using “you” in a hypothetical “y’all” sense, not in any real world accusatory sense to you personally).
But I also happen to know that some users here really do use emulation, flash carts, and mod chips for legitimate purposes only. Rich is a well known example of someone who rips his own stuff. And I’m sure there are others. For many, it may not be a “wink nod” scenario. I happen to know other people who prefer emulation over real hardware because they just want their games rendered in the highest resolution possible. There’s nothing wrong with that and nothing illegal.
Yeah I use Everdrives/FDStick etc for all consoles that you can get them for, but only play games I own on them, plus hacks/translations of them. It’s just more convenient for a quick game most of the time, especially versus carefully unboxing minty CIB copies.
Same with hacked PSP/Wii etc, like as if I can be bothered dragging out the discs (in the PSP’s case I use a Go so it literally cannot play the games I own and ripped myself without hacking lol).