Meet Four Developers Making Brand-New Game Boy Titles In 2024

So fucking good I bought the physical copy and played through like 30 times after buying the rom. It kinda spoiled me because I haven’t been able to find another new GB game of that quality since, even from that same developer.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality is still put on Nintendo games.

My physical copy of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus on Nintendo Switch has one on the back of the box next to the barcode.

Illegal to develop for? No.

Illegal to bypass security mechanisms? Gray area. Courts typically side against the hackers, historically.

Illegal to display trademarked material? Yes.

The NES has defeatable copy protection which led to a decent dev scene that could 'legally' publish games. The game boys copy protection is interesting in how they approached it:

https://piped.video/watch?v=ix5yZm4fwFQ

Basically the catch is you either have a hacked cart or display Nintendo's logo ... so they can go after you either way.

I doubt Nintendo will let them buy a license. Why would Nintendo sell them a license for a handheld console they don't even make anymore? It would not encourage sales of their newest product, and therefore they don't care. Nintendo has historically stopped people from developing homebrew games for their older systems if they get too big or popular, why would they suddenly change now?

Nintendo is the MOST anti-consumer company of the three major console makers, with Sony following in second. There is no indication they would ever change to do anything that benefits the consumer. They tried to make us all buy NES Mario on Virtual Console twice, and now you can't even buy VC games, you have to rent them.

Why would be this be a concern?

Because companies aren't cool about stuff like this (even companies you think are cool are not always cool).

This is not direct action, but remember that this shows the thinking to avoid the wrath of a super-litigious company:

"Because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, [Valve] have asked me to take the project down."
Speaking to PC Gamer via email, Lambert shared that he believed Valve "didn't want to be tied up in a project involving Nintendo IP."

(context note for above: Nintendo 64 version of Portal)

I wouldn't doubt the library used to make these games catching a DMCA (even if there was no legal standing for it).

I also doubt a company would even bother talking about licensing cartridges for platforms so old, though even if they did I don't think pricing would even be viable for most games/developers.

Side-note: I can also see newly-made games as an extremely clear-cut non-piracy use for emulation which sounds like something companies would foam at the mouth to prevent.