To put into perspective how old this site is, it introduced me to ROMs. I was single digits years old, I'm in my 30s now.
As someone that grew up poor and therefore couldn't get many games, This site and Zophars Domain are the only reason I grew up with the games I did.
Earthbound, for example, didn't come out in Australia when it was first released. I saw Ness in the first Smash Bros. Game in 1998 and thought "Huh, Earthbound. I wonder if that game is on Vimms Lair." And discovered what is now one of my favourite games of all time.
Speaking of pirates, piracy is the only way Westerners even can play the sequel to Earthbound, Mother 3.
Piracy and access to ROMs is so important. Not only because corporations are bad at preservation and localisation, but because kids who are poor shouldn't be stuck with only shitty mobile games to play.
Fuck copyright. Fuck corporations, and fuck capitalism
Corporations aren't just bad at preservation like it's some kind of skill issue, they are actively hostile to it.
A shame for sure, but piracy in general is far too decentralised for "site taken down" to be an effective block. All (or at least 99.5%) of those ROMs will be available elsewhere.
The reason it's sad is that it was one of the first, and it's been around since 1997
Dang, fair enough, that is a long time. Can't believe I've never heard of it in all my ROMgetting. Emuparadise was my old default goto but they got slammed by Nintendo way back.
Oh man, I remember emuparadise.
Zonesega was another one I used to use, and emurussia which is still going strong
Damn. I knew this would happen eventually, I guess. I've been avoiding mentioning them by name on public sites for years in hopes of keeping the heat off.
There's an audio log in the first Bioshock where Andew Ryan talks about a time when a property he owned got eminent domained by the US government to be turned into a national park so he burned the forest to the ground
A tragedy, for sure. Vimm's Lair also happens to be one of the best examples of a great Web 1.0 site. It gives me a warm feeling, browsing around static, text-mostly pages.
