Connectix Wins Appeal of CVGS Injunction

The 9th Circuit Court reversed a lower court's opinions on several key issues: that Connectix illegally copied the BIOS of the PlayStation (the new ruling says that it may have dumped the PSX chipset into RAM in order to determine how the PSX worked in the process of creating a non-infringing emulator, and that such a copy is a legal act of reverse-engineering), and that Sony's trademarks would be tarnished by imperfect emulation by the non-Sony product.

On this second point, both sides apparently submitted magazine and print reviews of CVGS to argue for and against the tarnished-by-imperfect-emulation argument but we don't know if the extensive Macs Only! CVGS Watch was among them.

Connectix stated that the Mac version is again available immediately. Connectix also announced it intends to ship a Windows version of CVGS soon, a market already staked out by the somewhat-maligned bleem!, which also trumped Sony in court. bleem! announced plans for a Mac version last year, but it remains vaporous. And those aren't the only emulation headaches for Sony -- while backwards-compatibility with today's PlayStation is a much-touted feature of the "PlayStation 2" console that hits Japanese stores next month, the company now admits that the PS2's emulator won't work on some PSX titles. Check IGN PSX for details.

CVGS is still at version 1.2, but we will be watching the Virtual Game Station website in hopes of seeing an update soon. We're itching to play Crash Team Racing and Final Fantasy VIII on our Macs!

Check out Macs Only!'s CVGS Watch Page with 264 reader reports on the playability of Sony Playstation games on G3 and G4 Macs and iMacs. [Report by Chris Adamson, CVGS Watch Editor]