#6639 - shoaib - Sat May 31, 2003 3:18 pm
If I have developed a game for the GBA do I have to be a licensed developer from nintendo to publish the game legally; if yes then please tell me how do I go about getting the development license from nintendo
#6649 - jenswa - Sat May 31, 2003 9:40 pm
Yup,
you should have (or be) a licensed developper to publish your game.
Somewhere on the boards iss a topic which contains a lot of this
information.
Sorry, i can't find it now, maybe someone else knows,
i believe link started the topic.
Jenswa
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It seems this wasn't lost after all.
#6662 - torne - Sun Jun 01, 2003 12:59 pm
You should not need to be a licenced developer to publish the game, unless you want to use Nintendo's development kit. Whether vendors will accept your game is another matter entirely, but there is legal precedent for developing for a so-called 'closed' platform without the company's licence; Datel were taken to court by Nintendo over the original NES cheat carts and the courts ruled that Datel could do whatever they felt like, including reproduce the required header data (for the NES, it was the string 'NINTENDO' I think, for the GBA it's the nintendo logo code) because it's the only way to make the cart boot. I.E. it's not legal to use copyrights to force companies to licence your platform. =)
As long as you use only free tools and the specs which have been written from reverse engineering, you should be fine.
T.
#6670 - tepples - Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:22 pm
| torne wrote: |
| there is legal precedent for developing for a so-called 'closed' platform without the company's licence; Datel were taken to court by Nintendo over the original NES cheat carts and the courts ruled that Datel could do whatever they felt like, including reproduce the required header data |
In the United States, this was Nintendo v. Galoob (patch carts) and Sega v. Accolade (games), both decided in favor of the independent publisher.
| Quote: |
| (for the NES, it was the string 'NINTENDO' I think, for the GBA it's the nintendo logo code) |
On the NES, it was a program called "10NES" stored in a separate chip with processor and ROM on one die. The Tengen case, Atari Games v. Nintendo, went in Nintendo's favor because Atari Games (Tengen's parent company) defrauded the Copyright Office to obtain the source code for 10NES.
| Quote: |
| because it's the only way to make the cart boot. I.E. it's not legal to use copyrights to force companies to licence your platform. =) |
This may or may not have changed after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and foreign counterparts, but Datel continues to independently publish Action Replay brand ROM patching software and hardware on Nintendo platforms.
| Quote: |
| As long as you use only free tools and the specs which have been written from reverse engineering, you should be fine. |
And as long as you have money to pay lawyers to defend you against frivolous legal actions.
To summarize, you need at least all of the following in order to publish software on the GBA without affiliation with Nintendo:- CONTENT: A high-quality original program.
- LAW: An adequate legal defense budget.
- REPLICATION: A fabricator of electronic devices (to make cartridges) and a print shop (to make manuals and boxes).
- SALES: Agreements with retail chains. If you can't get your product into Wal-Mart, forget about significant brick-and-mortar sales in the States.
- PROMOTION: Money to pay other entertainment channels to let readers know that your product exists.
Of course, Wario Ware Inc for Game Boy Advance glosses over most of this because Wario immediately sets up his company as affiliated with Nintendo. (How this is possible, without shattering the fourth wall between mushroom world and America, beats me.)
_________________
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-- Who?
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-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#6673 - torne - Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:47 pm
Okay, my details are slightly off, but yeah.
T.