Sorry for not posting for a
bit. I have a conundrum, and its name is
digital preservation.
First, some background. I just finished a series on Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the
Nintendo 3DS; the only detail that I left out was that I had purchased it
digitally, along with a number of other eShop hidden gems, like Steamworld Dig, some of the Guild02
games like Bugs vs. Tanks, and a
score of virtual console games. I
expended real money, money that I worked hard for, to play games that are by and
large good.
I would like to retain access to
these games, much as I currently have for the DS, Wii, Gameboy Advance and Gamecube
games up on my shelf, and much as I have for earlier 3DS titles (Fire Emblem: Awakening, Castlevania,
Resident Evil: Revelations). As long
as everything just works as intended, I, and I’m sure others, can ignore the
question of how. As long as everything
just works…
My 3DS has encountered a
technical fault, and encountered it just after my three month warranty
extension ran out (it was purchased in February 2012). After exhaustive Googling of the problem, I
found at least confirmation that others have had the problem before – it’s a
loose fuse. There’s even a wiki to
detail how to fix it, and good news, as loose fuses are easy fixes … after one
has managed to completely disassemble the 3DS in a 22 step process handling
circuit boards small enough to require tweezers. Then reassembling the device!
Nintendo didn’t build the 3DS, or
any of its hardware, to make tampering inside easy, and I respect their reasons
why. Any attempt to do this myself runs
the risk of completely scrapping the device, and with it the only system on
which I can currently run 3DS software, including the boxed 3DS software up on
my shelf with the classics. I could
still send it in and pay Nintendo for the work – that starts at $85 plus
shipping. That is already half the cost
of a new device. Also, I live in
Ontario, meaning that my service center is in Vancouver (Nintendo of Canada –
sheesh).
After adding an extra eighty or
so dollars Canadian onto the price, it really isn’t any cheaper to send it in,
than it would be to buy new. Heck, I
could chip in $15 more (plus tax, oh the joys of Ontario) and try out that 3DS
XL. This brings me, tangentially, to
another problem – there are now some awesome looking games on the WiiU I’d like
to try, and $200 or so to replace my 17 month old 3DS, when my DS Lite is
happily chugging along at 6 years old, feels like a terrible drain on a hobby.
And that is what this is for me,
a hobby. I don’t want to keep spending a
fortune every 17 months, and if I did, I would game on a PC! Isn’t the benefit of a boxed video game
machine supposed to be that it just works?
Purchasing a new 3DS is now more
or less mandatory for me, as I have a lot of money tied up into it in both
digital and retail copies. The retail
copies are fine, and they will transfer over no problem, as easily as inserting
the cartridge into another cartridge slot.
The digital content is the content that I need to make a move to
preserve.
So this makes me understandably
introspective. I never liked the MS/Sony
conceit of accounts, though I do experiment with Steam. Accounts are a frank truth, at
least; purchasers do not own the content that they purchase. As long as everything works, then there's no difference, but as soon as
they online system drops for maintainence or hackers the purchaser loses all of
the content hosted remotely that they purchased. I’ve been dealing with computers since my dad
caved in and started sharing his computing hobby with me, back before
preschool. Also, I’m of the 1986 crowd,
so before preschool was a good deal before my fixation on Mario and Zelda, just for clarity. I can take responsibility for my own digital
content, I don’t need accounts and high cost servers to manage it for me, and I
don’t want to pay monthly to access it.
I want to own my content. I want all of the rights and privileges that
I used to have on the NES and SNES, and Gameboy, not because the games were so
much better than PC knock-offs of Battleship and Pac-Man (they were), but
because the rights are better. I
acknowledge my responsibility to back up my own content, I know what that means
and I stay current on it. Downloading
eShop games almost means the same thing.
I have a responsibility to back up my own content, and I have the rights
(de facto, if not for any other reason) to save the content onto any save
system that works in Windows today. Even
the supreme conceit of Nintendo, that I must play Nintendo games on a Nintendo
system, I can acknowledge. I see why
they did that, anyway, and DS/3DS games would look terrible on any other
display because of the screen cropping. But
Nintendo still has its DRM to make sure I don’t try it.
Nintendo has released a data
transfer tool, that takes all of the data from on system (a DSi, or a 3DS) and
transfers it to a valid other system (a new 3DS; there’s a whole separate one
for a Wii/WiiU transfer). If I wait too
long, I can’t run the 3DS, and the content becomes trapped.
My 3DS still works today. I can still get my Animal Crossing: New Leaf fix, and I can still look forward to Zelda: A Link Between Worlds in a few
months. I have precious little extra,
and it looks like I had better forgo Mario
& Luigi: Dream Team, to say nothing of a WiiU, until better days roll
around. Even at this, I will probably
get over it. What can I really do,
besides experiment in cheap emulation?
But I’m still upset. This
represents a good $200 extra out of pocket, and would have paid for a lot of
great games.
It’s left me wondering what other
means to preserving access to content might be out there. The door to PC gaming is still wide open, and
the Playstation’s account systems have been restored, eventually. The overly drawn out affair is something I now
have all too much sympathy for. Maybe
Sony’s way is the correct way. Don’t forget, when the network was hacked,
gamers were all screwed together!
Nintendo’s way doesn’t have that central point to attack, but each
device will fail in its own time, and this is much sooner than it had any right
to be.
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