The recently-surfaced rumors of Danger’s upcoming NES emulator for SideKick handhelds caused quite an uproar in the community - apparently, the idea managed to find a lot of fans. However, the sobering news came out soon: it all was a “hoax”.

This reminds me of a story that happened in the Palm OS sector a few years ago - back then, the now-defunct Tapwave refused to sign a Gameboy emulator. My 2005 article should shed a bit of light onto the matter - enjoy:

Recently, TapWave rejected to sign Firestorm-a highly anticipated and popular (I dare say hyped) software for the Palm OS 5-it is a (slow) Gameboy and Gameboy advanced emulator. Of course, uproar followed imediately-bad, bad Tapwave!

While the rejection looks like arbitary use of power, it can easily be understood when you look at firestorm’s history:
Right after its announcement, Nintendo attacked the program using its emulation patent. However, the company didn’t oblige to the letter sent by Nintendo’s lawyers and published the product.
I was in the first row when it came to getting a demo(oh, may my TT rest in peace)-the program was buggy, and quickly was booted of my handheld!

Now, the program is said to have improved, but speed still is low. Applications that are signed by Tapwave however are expected to work flawlessly on a Zodiac-thats on of the reasons why the signing procedure was introduced after all. Imagine downloading an M$-signed driver and having your system blown up-you would be in a very annoyed state of mind, wouldn’t you.

Now think of an application that you purchase thinking that it works perfectly-only to discover that it is damn slow. While most users will blame CrimsonFire, many will also have ressentiments against Tapwave-why did they sign it after all…

In addition, altough Nintendo’s patent is IMHO highly questionable(I am not a lawyer though, but I attended a few hours of patent management at my higher technical school) because it is way to broad and since there were emulators way before the day when it was issued(2000)-Tapwave doesn’t have the spare cash to fight with Nintendo. Lawsuits are expensive, and fighting a juggernaut like Nintendo definitely isn’t funny!

So, I can understand Tapwave now-hopefully, you can do too….

Do you think that we’ll ever see a manufacturer endorsing an “unlicensed” emulator? Please talk back!

Original Source: TamsPalm - the Palm OS Blog