RomHacking, another site with images of games for retro consoles, has ceased operations. Why are they leaving?

RomHacking

A few days ago, the administrator of the RomHacking website, dedicated to romhacking, statedwhich closes the project. The resource turned 20 this year. Users uploaded not only original images to the server, but also improved the games: created remakes, added new translations, fixed bugs.

Examples include Star Fox at 60 frames per second, Super Mario Land 2 in color, improved smoke in Super Mario 64 and other interesting things. The collection of games on the site was huge, including both popular and little-known titles.

Now the site is being closed. The most interesting thing is that the Japanese company Nintendo has nothing to do with it. Although usually it is the company that forces the administration of such resources to stop working. Those who disagree are invited to court – and after a few weeks or months they are finally “convinced”. We will also talk about such cases below.

Here the situation is different. The founder of the site, Nightcrawler, was simply tired. He was going to hand over control of the resource to a small team of users, but other members of the community did not understand him. They opposed the decision so much that they decided to disclose Nightcrawler's personal information. The situation is difficult.

“I have learned that I have been dehumanized for a very long time. My personal information has been leaked. Secret evil plans have been hatched to get rid of me and drop a bomb on me as if I were a target to be eliminated. My family has seen all of this and after discussion we have decided to immediately shut down all activity related to the site. We are cutting off all social media (Discord and Twitter) and will no longer be in contact with these people. The line has been crossed.”— stated resource creator.

Fortunately, a huge database of game images has been saved and transferred to the project. Internet Archive. The site is, of course, a pity, but it is good that the content collected over 20 years will not be destroyed.

The situation through the eyes of users

Users of the site who visited the resource from the day of its opening tell a different story. According to them, the creator planned to simply turn off the server without transferring anything to anyone. And only the commotion raised by users became the reason why the administrator saved the database of game images.

By opinion users, RomHacking was abandoned back in 2023, and when the community asked the administrator to decide the fate of the site, he initially agreed to move the backend to another server and transfer the domain. But then he refused, deciding to simply turn off the server.

The site is currently in read-only mode, images are available. But how long it will work is unclear.

It would seem that there is a huge community, many fans. What can happen to such a site? Apparently, poor project management, insufficiently good interaction between members of one team – these are problems not only of big business, but also of fan projects.

EmuParadise

This site is almost a quarter of a century old: it turns 25 next year. It works, but there are no game images – they had to be removed at the request of the copyright holders. All the pages with ROMs (and there are thousands) now link to Administrator's statement.

The portal's owner reports that he had to remove this content due to the threat of multi-million dollar fines: “Many of you know that the situation with emulator sites has been changing lately. But what many of you probably don't know is that EmuParadise has faced similar problems throughout its 18 years of existence. From threatening emails we received in the early days to sudden server shutdowns due to complaints. We've seen it all. We've always complied with the demands, but as you can see, it's not always enough.”

The reason was a lawsuit filed by Nintendo against the owners of LoveROMs and LoveRetro. These are two other sites well-known among gamers, which ceased operations several years ago. The Japanese company demanded about 100 million US dollars from the founders. The administrator of EmuParadise stated that he could not risk his future and the fates of the team members: “We launched EmuParadise out of love for retrogaming and for you, so that you would return to the site again. Unfortunately, it is now impossible to make everyone happy and not create problems for us.”

The good news is that the site still has a huge database of emulators – dozens of different programs that allow you to emulate anything. From retro PCs to relatively new gaming consoles like the Sony Playstation 3.

There is also other content left: magazines, comics, game walkthroughs, and so on.

Vimm's Lair

The site existed since 1997, even its design is made in the style of the 90s. It stopped working recently, in June 2024. Like EmuParadise, it did not close. Its owner removed the images of the games. The reason is a lawsuit from the copyright holders.

The founder of the resource commented on the situation as follows: “Vimm's Lair was forced to remove many games from The Vault at the request of Nintendo, SEGA, LEGO and the ESA. Although most of these games (and the hardware to play them) have not been sold for decades, it is their right, so these games are now permanently removed.”

The site has not closed, the emulator database and other content are available. There are video game guides, the forum continues to work. But the most important thing is that the game images have been permanently deleted.

LoveROMs and LoveRetro

Perhaps it was the history of these two sites that led to the closure of other similar resources. In 2018, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Arizona to close access to these portals and collect monetary compensation from the defendants for copyright infringement.

The sites hosted retro games not only from Nintendo, but also from other companies. The Japanese corporation stated: “Defendants used LoveROMs and LoveRETRO to reproduce, distribute, and publicly run and display vast numbers of unlicensed copies of Nintendo video games without the company's permission.”

In the statement, the Japanese demanded significant monetary payments for copyright infringement. For each posted game, the defendant was required to pay 150 thousand dollars. The total amount exceeded 100 million dollars. It is unknown whether they were paid or not. But since then, both sites, whose combined traffic was 17 million users per month, have not worked and have not even opened. The domains have been seized, the servers have been disabled.

These are such sad stories. It's a pity, of course, that old and well-known sites stop working – an entire era is leaving with them. Perhaps you continue to use emulators? If so, tell us what and where you get game images for different consoles.

If you like the article, I will write a sequel – this time with a description of the most popular emulators. They are, fortunately, alive and well. In addition to old developments, there are very promising new ones, including for modern consoles.