I never said I don't understand the reasons why someone chose not to release the games they themselves hacked. I am saying that if someone else decided to hack them and made a different decision that is fine by me.
Hell I am not an arcade operator, and yet I have willingly spent thousands of dollars on original arcade equipment to play games the way they were originally released. I would happily pay Capcom/Taito for the games directly but they have made a business decision not to sell to me. That is their choice as a business. Hell I have 3 USFIV type X3 setups for my vewlix cabs. I know that I cannot use them today (even with the full nesicaxlive server/router/cardreader I also have), because Taito is never going to sell me an account. But I hope to use them one day.
That said I would willingly buy a nesica drive, and pay someone to crack those games so that I could play them on my original hardware. I am not in it to put game companies out of business. The fact that probably 20 dudes have access to play them today makes no more sense to me than if 50 of us total here did. If someone can crack a game, they could put their own protection in to lock it to certain peoples typex2 system for example.
If you want me to dump USFIV I can, and you can publicly release it if you wish. I'm not the best at cracking the games to run offline but I've done a few before and could give it a shot. Worse case, I dump it and cant crack it. Then you release it and someone else patches it run offline and everyone gets USFIV.
^This is all that needed to be said. Ultimately it's your game, and if Niko's going to crack it then it would be up to him whether or not he gave you permission to release it publicly... and even then, you could say screw it and release it, then possibly get him in trouble with his group.
I'm not privy beyond knowing that there's a group that dumps and cracks games. I Imagine that the individual that provides the game is given the cracked version as well as the ability to use it. That's the only reason why I offered the English version of Darius Burst: Another Chronicle. The original owner is worried about the game taking a dive and knows that I know people that can help. As for releasing it to the masses.. I would not only need to ask the owner's permission, but also the permission of the individual that cracked it.
I would LOVE to have USF4, but I think it's more important to be CONSIDERATE than it is to have anything. After all, we're relying on a group of other people to crack and release these games. Saying I'm policing the forum implies that I have sway.. I don't. I'm a peon, just like everyone else here.