This week, GitHub posted a takedown notice it received from Nintendo of America's legal representation. The Mario makers believe that a popular Javascript-based Game Boy Advance emulator hosting its source on GitHub violated the company's copyright for the games involved.

“Nintendo requests that GitHub, Inc., disable public access to the website at http://jsemu.github.io/gba/,” the letter reads. “This website provides access to unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyright-protected video games and videos making use of Nintendo’s copyrighted Pokémon characters and imagery in violation of Nintendo’s exclusive rights.”

The takedown notice cites both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and GitHub's own "Guide to Filing a DMCA Notice." In total, Nintendo identified more than 20 games and two franchises (Metroid and Pokémon) with copyright being infringed, and the individual titles run the gamut of popular (Pokémon Silver and Gold) to obscure (remember Golden Sun?). The company requested GitHub immediately remove 32 unique URLs corresponding to various emulators. The notice denotes each infringing URL, and the sites in question now deliver 404s.

TorrentFreak notes despite fan interest in such nostalgia projects, Nintendo has largely been unhappy with user-made initiatives. As far back as 2008, the company was shutting down homebrewers who created Nintendo DS-compatible carts filled with old, pirated games. As recently as March, the company issued a takedown notice to Cloudfare because it hosted a browser-based version of Super Mario 64's first level (created by a computer science student).

If you're hankering to play old games via an emulator of some sort, the Internet Archive remains (perhaps) the best option. Its cache of thousands of playable, retro games even includes Nintendo's beloved ape with Donkey Kong. How is that different than some random GitHub user trying to offer a vintage gaming experience? As Giant Bomb once reported on the collection, the Internet Archive has a specific DMCA Exemption. The organization has applied this to much of its hosted software due to that specific code's rarity and need for preservation.

Update (11:20pm): The article has removed a reference to "patents" made in error. Rather than any patents, the takedown notice identifies individual copyrights involved. Ars regrets the error and the text has been updated accordingly.