UFO 50 has solved my crave for the old Nintendo games, highly recommended

What rootkit? I wasn't aware of this.

They're going to have a real big problem with this one because playing the games on an emulator isn't illegal so first they need to prove they don't own a legit copy and they need to figure that out before bringing suit.

They've been phoning their games in since the WiiU era anyway.

The last real Nintendo release I felt was original and packed with content was 3D World.

Everything since feels like they let interns design things en-masse and half bake most of their releases. Zelda and Mario get sandboxes, one 2D release in years, and remakes. There's Metroid Prime 4, but... if we're being real, it should've come out half a decade ago, not to mention tossing Gamefreak the BOTW engine and apparently not helping, at all with recent Pokemon games if the bugs are anything to go by, Smash netcode issues and not being taken seriously as a competitive sport, gatekeeping their classics behind worse in-house emulators than what you get for free on GitHub, you could write a book.

Regardless of the legality of the action or the product itself, a video reviewing, showing or reporting on it shouldn't be passable of a copyright claim.

Even if the video shows copyrighted material, it still shouldn't be allowed for Nintendo to claim it, as that would fall under fair use. Just showing a few screenshots of a video game for the purposes of education in an otherwise unrelated video would never fall under copyright infringement.

The piracy argument has nothing to do with Nintendo claiming a video as their own, despite them having no rights to do so.

Guess you can't even show videos of legitimate Classics Library content on a real Switch since those are being emulated. 🤷🏻‍♂️

these emulation handhelds – which often come pre-loaded with hundreds of games

I can only speak for the retroid pocket I have. It's not far off from a stock android phone, sans camera and modem, plus d-pad and sticks.

It only came preloaded with a few open source emulators available on play store for free in addition to GApps (with official play store support).

I imagine they're mostly going to target videos and channels that review those devices that you buy pre-loaded with 1TB of ROMs or whatever. Videos about and highlighting products that are blatantly infringing on like a billion copyrights.

If you make money from emulation, you'll get fucked (and honestly I'm kind of ok with that). However, it is a bit extreme to copyright claim videos that are just talking about said products.

With all that's said, I would think people doing video essays and shit will be fine. Then again, this is Nintendo so who knows.

Then there's all of the speedrunning videos that were performed on emulators. Including on Nintendo developed emulators. How can Nintendo tell if you're using NSO or VC instead of BSnes or Mupen64?

I don’t like Nintendo’s attack on emulation any more than you do, but video capture cards have existed for a long time. You don’t need an emulator to record footage of console play

Like everything these days, ten bucks says "Naw you licensed it" with all these conditions attached.

Corporate fine print is so out of control in the 21st century.

Exactly. This is settled law. Backing up your own games and playing them via emulation is legal and not copyright infringement. DMCA's should not apply here.

I have heard that Nintendo has never lost a lawsuit which is a real shame if true.

That's not actually their prerogative. Protecting their IP is, so it's very legal for them to go after ROM sites, but emulation is perfectly legal and isn't copyright infringement. Legally speaking, sending out DMCAs to channels that feature footage of emulated games is frivolous and should not be taken seriously by Youtube. But it's Youtube. They hate their own users with a burning passion.

Nintendo doesn't want you to play their games if you're not willing to follow their rules.

They don’t want you to play their games at all, seeing as they’re not selling them anymore.

Pikachu eating ryujinx (which just got taken down today)

Sounds like a prompt for generative AI to sink its teeth into.

edit: Here's a starting point if someone with photochop skills wants to bring it to the finish line.