The judgement, made public today, ruled in Nintendo's favour and states that the owners of the sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co, will have to pay $12 million to Nintendo.

The complaint was originally filed by the company in an Arizona federal court in July and has since lead to a swift purge of self-censorship by popular retro and emulator ROM sites, who have feared Nintendo might sue them too.

LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co were the joint property of couple Jacob and Cristian Mathias, before Nintendo sued them for what they have called "brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property rights". The suit never went to court.

The couple sought to settle after accepting the charge of direct and indirect copyright infringement. It is unlikely they will have to pay the full figure and a smaller settlement has been negotiated in private. But it should be enough to put the fear of Mario in the hearts of ROM makers everywhere.