Nintendo is infamous for its strict stance against emulation and ROM sites, but did you know the company has actually been caught using fan-made emulators in its own official games?
In WarioWare: Smooth Moves for the Wii, the developers included a Punch-Out microgame that appears to run on a retro CRT television. However, ripping the raw image files straight from the game disc reveals a hilarious secret hidden beneath that TV border overlay. Instead of capturing footage from original NES hardware, the devs took a massive shortcut and recorded desktop footage from the free VirtuaNES emulator. They even accidentally left part of the developer’s desktop background and the cut-off menu bar from the emulator window in the final game assets! It turns out even Nintendo’s own developers think emulators are just way too convenient.
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