[game_preservation] EarthBound DEFINITELY NOT coming to the US

[Devin Monnens]

Starmen.net has commented that EarthBound will NOT be coming to the US
Virtual Console. As a result, it will be impossible for anyone to play this
game in English without forking over $100+ for a copy of the SNES version (I
hear copies of EB are now selling for upwards of $200 on E-bay). The main
reason cited was copyright over the music in the game. It's a horrible
reason that one of the most classic games of the SNES era will likely never
see the light of day again. Thank you again, lawyers, for screwing over
innovation yet again.
http://starmen.net/ebvc/

Unfortunately, it looks like these kinds of issues are going to plague game
preservation for a long time. Altering content affects preservation (so
StarTropics on the VC is definitely NOT preservation of the game), and
copyright problems prevent otherwise good games from being rereleased (which
in some ways is worse because we would at least have SOME version that's
easy to obtain). So Disney videogames and the like stand a chance of being
lost due to the company's own over-defensiveness of its copyright.

Devin Monnens

-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
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