🧑‍⚖️ Hello and welcome to another edition of The Memory Core newsletter. It's been a relatively quiet week, but I have two stories to share with you from the world of emulation.

The first has to do with a recent court victory for Nintendo and what it could mean for emulation going forward.

The other is a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in RetroAchievements' history, and the changes it brought to the platform this week.

As always, the rest of the news roundup is at the end. Let's get started.

P.S. If you haven't already, consider signing up to get every new edition in your inbox, free of charge.

Nintendo v. Keighin: A warning shot at switch emulation

This week, Nintendo’s legal team got plenty of time in the spotlight, and I’m not talking about the 4.5 million lawsuit against Switch piracy mods on Reddit.

Instead, I’m talking about a case that was filed back in November of last year, with the default judgment landing last Friday. Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, was sued for streaming emulated Switch games that hadn’t been released yet.

From 2022 to 2024, Keighin streamed leaked titles on more than 50 occasions, including games like Mario & Luigi: Brothership and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

Despite numerous notices from Nintendo and DMCA notices shutting down several of his channels, he continued to create new channels to stream pirated content. He also openly linked to emulators, keys, and ROMs from his channel.

To his credit, Keighin knew that he didn’t stand a chance in court and refused to defend himself. Last week, the initial judgment was handed down, and unsurprisingly, he lost.

There are a few things I want to talk about here, but before I get to that, it’s worth pointing out that it won’t set much of a precedent for future emulation cases. Not only do the specifics of the case deal more with streaming/sharing copyrighted content than emulation, the default judgment doesn’t represent a fully litigated opinion, since only one side was argued.

But the interesting thing is that despite Nintendo being the only party arguing its case, the judge still didn’t rule entirely in its favor. Here’s where the court differed from Nintendo’s claims:

• The court declined to enter judgment on Nintendo’s claim regarding ROM links, as it was not properly framed as copyright infringement. Instead, it was lumped in with unrelated Technical Protection Measure (TPM) circumvention charges. It’s still illegal, of course, but not in the way Nintendo claimed.
• Charges for sharing cryptographic keys (prod.keys, title.keys) were also rejected, since they don’t constitute a TPM circumvention “device” on their own. They are just data, and need to be combined with an emulator to circumvent protections. In other words, they’re an ingredient, not a tool.

The rest of the charges were largely accepted by the court due to the default ruling. That includes Nintendo’s uncontested claim that emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx exist only to bypass security measures and have no other commercial value.

Of course, if this were actually litigated (and not a default ruling), the court would have to resolve factual disputes about the use of emulators. For example, it could easily be argued that Switch emulators can also be used for game preservation or homebrew games.

However, it does highlight the primary vulnerability of emulation, particularly Switch emulation, which is that it bypasses security measures and thus violates the DMCA.

After all, despite rejecting the claim that cryptographic keys are “tools” for TPM circumvention, the court agreed with Nintendo’s claims that sharing links to emulators and keys together constitutes trafficking in circumvention tools under the DMCA.

As for Keighin himself, he will now need to pay $17,500 to Nintendo and stop streaming Nintendo games.

Compared to some of the cases from the Napster era, Keighin got off easy. His actions were not just flagrant violations of the law, they were also a direct threat to the future of emulation.

Free speech, hate speech, and RetroAchievements

RetroAchievements, which adds a modern achievement hunting element to retro emulation, also got into some hot water this week. Not with Nintendo, but with its own fanbase.

Recently, an achievement set for the controversial ROM hack Pokémon Clover was released, and a series of missteps from the admin team caused quite a stir in the community.

You see, Pokémon Clover isn’t just any ROM hack. It’s an edgy, offensive, and often outright racist and sexist ROM hack. As the name implies, it’s heavily inspired by a particular brand of humor from 4chan. The official website describes it as such:

In other words, it exists to shock and offend players. Here’s a quick list of some of the offensive fakemon in the game (brace yourself):

• An Arab suicide bomber Pokémon (this is one of the starters).
• A furnace Pokémon performing a nazi salute.
• A black slave Pokémon.
• A lazy Mexican Pokémon.
• A feminist Pokémon that is “often seen destroying things made by males.”
• A Jamaican Pokémon that’s always stoned.
• A greedy Jewish Pokémon with a big nose.

The dialogue in the game is even worse, but I won’t quote any of it here.

Despite this, Pokémon Clover is regularly listed as one of the best Pokémon ROM hacks. It’s remarkably well-made and coded, featuring interesting new mechanics, sprite work, and music. It’s been listed on RA since 2017, but the things didn’t come to a head until last week.

Community developers make RA achievement sets, and after years of abandoned attempts, an achievement set was finalized for the game a few weeks ago. This immediately sparked controversy, but the admin team’s initial response made things even worse.

In a forum post that made it to the front page, the team clarified that the Code of Conduct, which prohibits racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, only applies to user behavior, not the content of games that RetroAchievements supports. They claimed that RA is merely an “archival platform” and that hosting an achievement set “does not constitute endorsement for a game’s content.”

Hundreds of comments poured into the thread, with the community split between support for free speech and criticism of platforming hate speech. Several users attempted to post content from the ROM hack as examples of its offensive content, which the moderators removed because they violated the Code of Conduct.

In other words, the game’s content could violate RA’s Code of Conduct if a user posted it in the forums, but not if it was embedded in the game itself.

Xkeeper has an excellent blog post on the controversy, but I want to highlight one particular quote that appears to have broken through the noise and influenced the RA admin team:

After a few hours, the thread was locked by RA’s founder. Another forum post was opened less than 10 hours after the previous one, apologizing and stating that Pokémon Clover would be removed from the site. It still held the position that RA is an archival site, but promised that the team was discussing how to move forward.

Five days later, on October 8, RetroAchievements founder Scott returned with another forum post, clarifying the team’s final position. Here is the TL;DR from the top of the post:

More specifically, RA would no longer host achievement sets for games with illegal content, glorified hate speech, sexual exploitation, or extreme or abhorrent content. Four games were removed after the policy update, including the controversial Atari 2600 title Custer’s Revenge.

In the end, the Clover controversy wasn’t really about one ROM hack, it was about what RA wants to be. The admins could have leaned on “archival” status as a shield, but instead they drew a line and made it clear: RA isn’t just a database, it’s a community. And communities have to decide what they’re willing to platform.

Handheld highlights

👀 Just minutes before sending this newsletter, AYN gave us a fresh look at the Odin 3 in a new teardown. Development appears to be on schedule, with thermal testing to start next week. In the next two weeks, the company will send 10 developer units "to facilitate early adaptation of third-party GPU drivers..." This further demonstrates that concerns over 8 Elite drivers were massively overblown. [Discord]

💲 The Retroid Pocket 5, Flip 2, and Mini V2 have all dropped by $20 in price. This is almost certainly in response to new devices like the KONKR Pocket FIT, which offer a far better value. It could also indicate that the Pocket 6 is coming soon. [Retroid]

📈 Despite the high price, the Switch 2 is on pace to set a new record for console sales in the US, selling 2.4 million units in its first three months on the market. There are more great industry insights in the full thread, so check the link for more. [Bluesky]

🩸 The Pocket DS crowdfunding campaign is coming to a close, and the YouTuber What Obi Plays put out a great explainer about light bleed. The short version is that it is an issue, but pictures from phones make the problem look way worse than it is. [YouTube]

📦 On that note, international orders for the Pocket DS will begin shipping next week. The company took the opportunity to remind buyers that if you’re really sensitive to light bleed, you should probably just cancel your order. [Indiegogo]

FPGA Focus

1️⃣ Last week I wrote that the SuperStation One will be delayed a little longer, but this week we did learn pricing on the Dock attachment, which will cost $45 for Founders. There’s still no word on pricing for later orders, and they won’t ship for at least a few more months. [Reddit]

💡 At Crowd Supply’s Teardown 2025, the creator of the portable FPGA Game Bub console Eli Lipsitz gave a presentation about why he started working on the project and how he brought it to life. [YouTube]

The Emulator Report

⏩ Switch emulator Kenji-NX released its first update in months, and the big changes are a new turbo mode and Hollow Knight: Silksong support, plus a few extras for the Android release. [Git] [Android release]

💮 Nintendo 3DS emulator Azahar dropped update 2123.3 this week, officially bringing dual-screen support. Most of the code comes from SapphireRhodonite, whom I interviewed a few weeks back about his dual-screen forks. It’s available on GitHub and the Play Store. [GitHub] [Play Store]

❌ aX360e is a new Xbox 360 emulator for Android, ported from Xenia. It’s from the same developer as the PS3 emulator aPS3e, but it still needs some time in the oven. Once ready, it should be available on the Play Store, but I’d temper your expectations. [Blog]

🆕 Speaking of the Play Store, a new paid PS2 emulator called PSX2 was added this week, but you probably shouldn’t buy it. It’s based on the open-source PCSX2 emulator, and the source code is available on GitHub if you want to compile your own APK. [Play Store] [GitHub]

🔜 There’s more news for PS2 emulation on Android though, as the ARMSX2 team announced its Play Store application is underway. The team also announced that the app will be officially released and open source this month, with v1.0 coming very soon. [Discord]

Retro archives

🏇 The demo for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is now available on Steam. It leans more heavily into HOMM3 and HOMM5 than later releases, and it might be the first game to capture the classic HOMM magic in decades. [Steam]

👾 ModRetro announced a new Atari ‘90s Rewind Collection, which includes three separate cartridges for Asteroids, Centipede, and Super Breakout. I’m glad that it exists, but the $100 price tag is a tough pill to swallow. [ModRetro]

📱 Keitai Archive is a new website dedicated to preserving Japanese feature phone games. It hosts a wide variety of pre-smartphone era mobile games, although only games that are considered abandonware are hosted on the site. [Website]

🫧 The Commodore 64 classic Bubble Bobble has a new fan remaster, with a new intro, redesigned graphics, and other fixes and improvements. [Itch]

🗾 The PS2 title Tales of Rebirth has a new fan translation. The sixth entry in the series later received a PSP port, but neither had been translated into English until now. [ROM Hack]

🐉 The Double Dragon Trilogy is free on the mobile version of the Epic Game Store this week. It includes all three original arcade titles, with an optional remastered soundtrack and gamepad support. [Epic Games]

That's all for this week. Stay safe out there, because spooky season is just getting started.

Signing out,

Archivist Rowan