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Arcade ROMs for Download, Legally
jgoeres writes "StarROMs, Inc. has just launched a pay-per-download service for classic arcade ROM sets. These are what you need to make your emulator fun and legal. This aims to bring ROM collection & emulator use out of the semi-underground and turn it into profit, but will it fly? They currently have about 60 games, all from the various incarnations of Atari over the years, with more on the way. Prices range from about $2 to about $6 per game. And no, they don't have Marble Man."
I can go to the video game store and buy used games cheaper.
If only I didn't already have all the ROMs I might be inclined to buy some!
It'd be nice if this stayed legal and we could all get ROMs for unattainable games in a legal way. Somehow I feel that there's going to be one bad company that will ruin it for everyone.
This is like that iTunes store Apple is trying to pull on us, isn't it? HA, I'm not going to fall for that.
What about Mame and http://www.classicgaming.com ? That's pretty free...
There is a want out there, and someone finally realised it and looks like they will be able to make it legal and profitable. Good job guys
I like this idea, but until there's a reason (lawsuits or whatever) for people to be scared of illegally downloading ROMs, they're not going to want to pay for them. In the public's eyes there's nothing wrong with downloading a 15+ year old game because many of the companies are defunct now, and if they're not they probably won't care anyway.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
Maybe Nintendo should take notice of this for original nes games.
It seems almost wrong to play Jumpan on an AMD 1800+, but it is such a pain to plug in the 386, or Commodore 64.
Good luck with the ROM plan. I hope it fares better than the "legal MP3" industry.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I guess better late than never for this, but as you pointed it out most people I know got hold of ROMS years ago. You might even see Amiga ROMS on there as well which I a few of.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
By making even more money out of old back catalogue technology that broke even a couple of decades ago.
Okay, I DARE someone to come up with a "Well, I for one welcome our new ________ overloards" post for this story.
Double-dare!
$8.95/mo web hosting
I, for one, welcome our new Galaxian overlords! ;^)
It's already moral, what with them being 20 years old and generating no revenue for the original coders, artists and musicians, which is all I care about. Whether the company which bought up the company which bought up the company which did the work makes any money from their sale is not interesting to me.
Console Classix (www.consoleclassix.com) has a legal console emulation service, offering titles for the NES, SNES, Genesis and Atari 2600.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
This is a great smart move and I really wish more companies would understand that there a lot of nostalgic gamers out here who recall the heyday of the arcades.
We need Sega, Midway, Nintendo, Namco, et al to get on this. I would love to have a 100% true version of the old Space Harrier, After Burner 2 and OutRun.
I remember back in the day getting After Burner and OutRun for my Sega Master System.. I could've cried. Definitely NOT up to par with the arcades, but then again the old SMS was a pretty limited system. They made up for it (some) with the later versions that came out on the Genny.
Bravo Atari - I'm sure there are more than a few gamers out here that'll be playing Gauntlet with a broad smile on their face.
The site mentions that a portion of their profits goes towards supporting unnamed emulators. On a different page explaining how to play the game, the only emulator they link to is MAME. Does this mean that they are supporting MAME?
(sorry I don't have url's to the specific pages - the site is slashdoted)
why would anyone want to pay more than 0 cent to download Atari's Tetris to play on an emulator, when there are many Tetris games freely available that works on more common and recent technology?
if it's for hardcore Atari fans, they SHOULD still have a real Atari at home.
I'm so glad to finally have a chance to put my money where my mouth is. A lot of these games are classics. Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, and APB can be had for $15 total. This is a dream come true -- I loved all of these games! Now I get to play them again and feel good about it. (I would blow more than $15 if these games were at my local arcade. :-)
Of course, the question is, how many people will actually pay for them? All of these files are quite easy to find online for free.
Don't sell people digital content! It'll turn everybody into a pirate and put you out of business! You must DRM it to the point that nobody can use it.
Hey.. that was pretty good. I'm gunnin for Jack Valenti's job now.
Though some of these are just simply fantastic games. 720 Degrees - I dunno WHAT kind of controller you'd be able to find to play it like the original. And who has a dual joystick setup to play Battlezone with? :) The Griffin PowerMate is just _made_ for games like Tempest, though. I'll take one in black, thanks.
With 4 gigs chock full of arcade machine roms I don't give a flying fuck, and neither do you, I suppose.
Kind of a cool idea to legalize the ROM's of your favorite derelict console. My biggest problem with it is that they don't supply or support an emulator. It's basically all at your own risk, and if it doesn't work, too bad.
;)
On the flip side I'd love to actually see this sort of thing take off and, get licenses out for games and emulators for other systems. Not to mention it's nice to have a piece of history without the ritual blowing, rubbing alcohol, smashing and praying for hours, for one round of Double Dragon
As a gamer sometimes all the new fancy-smancy graphics from the X-Box and PS2 and the like are cool, but dammit, sometimes Gannon or Bowser just need to get owned!
As the (still) great Pat Benatar once sang:
"It's a little too little, it's a little too late."
While noble, I'm afraid the proverbial cat has shredded the FUCK out of this bag...
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
Damn you !
Here's a sample of the software license. "This License allows you to use the Software on a single personal computer for non-commercial entertainment purposes only..."
But why would I go and buy legitamite ROM? I would really miss all the free pr0n ads you get from going down the warez root. Oh, and don't forget viruses,everyone loves viruses.
I actually learned how to speak spanish from illegal ROM sites.
Do you consider "illegal" ROMS, WAREZ? I mean,this isn't photoshop.
Businesses like to make as much money as they can.
Shocking, I know.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
It seems to me that many of these games do not use the standard joystick configuration. I don't have a spinner or a track ball, let alone something weird like Warlords 4 spinners, set up on my MAME machine. Games like Battlezone, Marble Madness, Missle Command, Millipede (hmm, lots of the 'M' games) Super Breakout, some of the driving games, etc., all require different controller layouts. Someday I hope to have a trackball control shelf for my game, and a spinner one, too. I'd like to see more available games with a standard joystick and buttons control layout.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Slashdot readers don't like doing anything legal on the computer. Fuck copyright!
..Slashdot readers except you, right?
Trolling is a art,
Would the extreme gamer rather sign up, hand out their credit card number, and buy 60 Atari 2600 games for a sum price of about $320, or illegally download a small zip file containing 500 of them in about 30 seconds after 2 minutes of searching on Google?
I don't condone piracy but that's the reality of the situation. Same with music & such. The problem with media sales nowadays is that there are no bulk discounts, in a time where reproduction costs nothing and the aim should be to get the max of price time quantity from each consumer. Someone who wants 60 games rather than 6 is willing to pay more than the person who wants 6, but not 10 times more, because the average enjoyment they'll get out of each is less. So that kind of person, though willing to spend more than the average consumer, is completely cut out of the market and has to resort to more extreme measures like piracy to get what they want.
You just have to own the original boardset, and it doesn't have to work, either. You can get a busted Asteroids board on ebay for $10, and a broken Street Fighter will run you $5. So really, for a small sum, you can download *any* game legally, already.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
As long as they eventually get Zero Wing, I will be happy and all your base are belong to us.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Who cares about Marble Man....will the have Karateka is the real question.
:-]
The grandfather to Prince of Persia has to be the hardest *stable* ROM to find of all time. How many times must I download another copy that gets me to the basement and then I can't go through the door to the final level?
IMHO it is hands-down the greatest game ever and I will easily pay $7.50 for the whole thing.
Karateka! Why have you foresaken me!
Sorry about the rant
i know it's not about the topic... sorry! ...but what happened to mame.dk???? :(((
List of games:
720 Degrees, A.P.B., Arcade Classics, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Atari Baseball, Atari Football, Atari Soccer, Avalanche, Batman, Battlezone, Beat Head, Black Widow, Blasteroids, Centipede, Championship Sprint, Cloak & Dagger, Cloud 9, Crystal Castles, Cyberball, Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters, Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Gravitar, I, Robot, Klax, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Marble Madness, Millipede, Missile Command, Monte Carlo, Off The Wall (1991), Paperboy, Peter Packrat, Quantum, Qwak, Rampart, Red Baron, Relief Pitcher, Road Blasters, Road Riot's Revenge, Road Runner, S.T.U.N. Runner, Shuuz, Skull & Crossbones, Space Duel, Sparkz, Super Breakout, Super Sprint, Tempest, Tetris, ThunderJaws, Toobin', Vindicators, Vindicators Part II, Warlords and Xybots.
Imagine how useful services like this or the iTunes store could be if they were more comprehensive in the titles they carry.
Imagine how easy it would be to make them comprehensive if the copyright holders were forced to offer you a license at a predetermined rate, instead of having to negotiate deals with everyone separately.
Imagine how much revenue filesharing could generate for copyright holders if it was easy to purchase legal licenses for the files being shared at a reasonable rate. On our own terms (for example; MP3 and AAC are not a formats I wish to purchase music in).
I haven't thought about this terribly much, but compulsory licensing seems like it could be a solution to the standoff that currently exists between filesharers who won't give up filesharing and the industry that refuses to make it easy to legally purchase digital content.
That was one hell of a game. I would like to play it again.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Wow. That was definitely an out-of-the-blue observation.
As far as I'm concerned, Marble Madness was the supreme mid-1980s arcade game. I played that game hundreds of times in high school, and won it at least a dozen times. A couple things set it apart. It had a cool 3D-style isometric viewpoint, which was done infinitely more convincingly than similar presentations like Zaxxon. Plus, given how hard you had to throw that trackball around, you could get a legitimate workout playing Marble Madness.
I think Marble Madness was sort of a smart person's Donkey Kong. It had a great subtle sense of humor, and a Steve Jobsian attention to detail. Like, fr'instance, the marble you controlled had glitter in it that would roll around as the ball rolled. And it could die in several twisted ways, from shattering to getting eaten by acid. The graphics were some of the best yet for 1980s videogames, and the music was likewise sensational.
After Marble Madness' success, a sequel was inevitable. The trouble was, some genius in marketing thought that for people to identify with our beloved marble, it had to assume human qualities. Thus, Marble Man was born.
Unfortunately, Marble Man never quite got out of testing before the crashing arcade scene made Atari withdraw it from market. I'm not sure if anyone knows where the few original ROM's are anymore. But one thing's for sure...there are thousands of Marble Maniacs out there who would buy it in a heartbeat, just to see if the original was surpassed.
One last note. The creator of Marble Madness programmed the game at the tender age of about twenty. He's since gone on to do a number of successful games, including Ratchet & Clank on the Playstation 2.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Unfortuantely, I'm afraid while this is overall a noble attempt, it's going to go down in flames quickly just because, right now, there's just not enough there to attract enough people to get their business going.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
As others have noted, the price is kind of silly. I mean you can get a copy of one of those "arcade classics" games for your console or PC and end up with a dozen games for under 10 bucks.
The newest title is 1992, and is Relief Pitcher, an utterly forgettable baseball game. I was hoping to see some of the good titles, like the capcom titles that ship with the Hot Rod joysticks..
Actually they're all atari games now that I look twice. I'm sure Capcom and others would be willing to talk turkey, all those old SNK titles might be worth a few bucks.
Though, emulators aren't the real thing. I like my full sized bad dudes and SFII machines.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
From the EULA:
You acknowledge that the Software in source
code form remains a confidential trade
secret of Atari and/or its suppliers and
therefore you agree not to attempt to
decipher, decompile, disassemble or
reverse engineer the Software or allow
others to do so, except to the extent
applicable laws specifically prohibit
such restriction. You further agree not
to modify or create derivative works of
the Software.
Me no like. But for two bucks, who's going to care?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
...and a 360 degree joystick....that was quite a game...one of the best non-Atari arcade games from the early 80s...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Starfuckers Inc. is a reference to a Nine Inch Nails song.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Vector games are the least satisfing games to play on MAME. Raster games look great on a 19" Wells Gardner 4900 or Electrohome G07 and crappy on your PC monitor, but MAME can fake the scanlines and pixelization to a point where it's OK. But vector games look *TERRIBLE* compared to a real G05 (for Asteroids) or G08 (For Tempest). And to play Star Wars on a med res, 25" Amplifone in the cockpit version is to see the face of God, whilst playing it on MAME with the mouse is to follow Lucifer down to Hell.
MAME is a good "gateway" drug though. I started with it, and now I own 7 dedicated full size classic video games.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
These are still the main dumps, or are they official 100% dumps from atari?
Or, in other words, what happens when the copy of Batman you downloaded is redumped, and no longer works in the latest release of MAME?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I haven't used MAME in a while, but one of the more annoying issues I had with it is the changes in ROMs from version to version. The ROMs that work with a current version may change with the new version (or maybe they've fixed this since I last used it.) I realize the MAME team is always changing things to get emulation as close to the original as possible, but I'd hate to pay for a ROM pack that wouldn't work with the next version.
finally i can get
"tatsumakisenpukyaku!!!!" out of my computer...
(that's hurricane kick for streetfighter)
my blog
Bittorrent links to the mame romset, just because I felt like it.
MAME 0 72 ROMS 0-C
MAME 0 72 ROMS D-F
MAME 0 72 ROMS G-I
MAME 0 72 ROMS J-K
MAME 0 72 ROMS L-M
MAME 0 72 ROMS N-Q
MAME 0 72 ROMS R-Se
MAME 0 72 ROMS Sf-Sz
MAME 0 72 ROMS T-Z
But do they have the elusive Lucky Wander Boy?
Is that like Pocket Pool?
You don't need a ROM for that.
they need to provide ROMs by other companies too before I would buy. Is Atari the only company they worked out a deal with?
I noticed they offer no technical support, so if someone can't get MAME to run, they are SOL unless they log on the MAME forum or access a UseGroup on MAME.
I wonder if you buy the ROM, do you get unlimited downloads of it? Like if you accidentally deleted the ROM, or reformatted your hard drive, could you download it again, or do you need to buy more credits?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
That really isn't very much like what the article suggests, now is it? It seems you can't really get a clean version of the ROMS, and you can't keep them - it's a DRM thing.
now I have to wait for the PC version of iROMs!
Bundle them all...give me 'upgrade insurance' so the latest releases I can get as well...and oh...please send them via CD-ROM in a neat little AOL-like TIN...with varying game art on the TIN, like the boxes the old cartridges came in...
Then I would be satisfied!
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
Shinobi Super System
The old STB Velocity 128 video cards WITH TV out will work with an old standard resolution arcade monitor by directly connecting the inputs to the CRT. You can even run the windows version of mame on it. Please no comments about my HTML I have not updated the site in several years and my HTML back then was so bad I'm amazed browsers don't choke.
I don't think any of the games offered are worth the prices charged. The only Atari home game I'd pay those prices for is be Adventure, and this service doesn't provide it.
As far as arcade games, there's few that I'd pay for. However, if these guys were to come up with a copy of Xevious, I'd buy it in a second.
wbs.
Huh?
Yeah right.
I just had a ROM burner from www.freemameroms.com burn me the entire .72 MAME ROM set on 3 DVDRs.
I don't think people should pay for games that do not produce revenue anymore for the company who produced them.
Do you think Jaleco gets revenue from Earth Defense Force?
I'm saddened to see all the comments like "I can already download it illegally for free, so why should I pay now?" or "I wish it were free, so someone should pass a law making it free" or "Well I think it's ethical to just take the ROM images, even if it isn't legal".
Personally, I would like to see copyright limited in some way; I think it's crazy that nothing has lapsed into the public domain since the 1920's. But even a limited copyright term would probably be long enough that arcade games from the 80's and 90's would still be under copyright. Anyway, whether we wish for limited copyrights or not, we have the system we have.
So now here's a chance to legally buy ROM images. You don't have to go to a garage sale and buy an old Rampart game to get legal. In many discussions of MAME I have seen the comment "Well, if there were some way that I could buy the ROMs legally, I would." Now's your chance.
And! Notice that they are just handing over the ROM images! There is no attempt to wrap them in DRM. You don't need a special DRM-enabled version of MAME to play the ROMs. You are buying a legal right to use the ROM image, and you can run it on your PC, your Palm, your laptop, whatever.
I plan to buy several games from that list. I'm hoping that whoever owns the Atari rights will make lots of money, and maybe some other companies will start licensing ROM images. I'd love a legal copy of Elevator Action and a few others I could name.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Before any more moderators mod this up as "insightful", go find the part of the FAQ that he quotes. Can't find it? Don't mod the comment up, then. The comment is WRONG. The FAQ DOES NOT SAY THIS.
If I actually owned (for instance) the arcade board of Centipede, and then went to download it off the internet, I would be in the clear because I actually own the physical game. However, if I bought Centipede from this company, would I have the same legal rights? Could I just then go ahead and download Centipede from wherever I please? I know it's a minor issue, but I'm just wondering that if by purchasing the ROM if I have the same legal rights as purchasing the actual arcade board.
Odd that their website says as low as $2. Their press release [PDF] dated today (October 1st, 2003) says:
...it takes less and less time to download anything. Do you really think the media companies would see their products be devalued at the same rate as bandwidth costs? What if next year I could get 1000 ROMs in the same time? 2000 the year after that? 4000 a year or two after that?
Media companies can't nor won't compete against the cost of individuals passing around pirated copies for free. Your argument is basicly that since it got cheaper to pirate, it should be cheaper to buy legally.
And your definition of "has to" is pathetic. If I can't buy a Ferrari, I'll have to resort to more extreme measures like stealing it to get what I want. Yeah uh huh.
They have the right to licence it at whatever fucking cost they feel like. I'd understand if this was your cancer medicine, your fresh water supply or some other necessity. But what you're arguing is that you decide what is a fair value, and take whatever isn't.
Well, I'm a fucking egoist and hereby decide that I want it all. Since there's so much of it, for that to happen, the price of everything must be zero. I'll start with your car, house and computer. Do I sign a $0 check, or do I have to take it from you?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It would not hurt if it was a tad cheaper also..
Anyone else seen the Online NES Emulator ?
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
They dont even have Polybius!
I'm just saying that they can probably make more money and reduce piracy if they could offer discounts to the people who are interested in buying several games rather than one or two.
"It's not YOUR land and it's not YOUR property so YOU don't get to choose whether or not YOU want to pay to use it or not."
The trouble is, its not clear to me what's copyright-able.
Okay, the actual program code (i.e. ROM image) that's copyrightable. I *get* that.
But what if I look at the game and code a game that looks just like it. Does the copyright on the original code prevent me from making a work-alike? I sort of see it, but its spinning off into never-never land.
What if I view the game, and use my considerable artistic skill to draw a picture that looks just like the game. Why can't i?
Or if I make a game that uses the same plot elements. What's copyrightable? The idea?
See, this is where I have a problem. Copyright is supposed to protect people from making unauthorized copies. But the definition of "copy" has been stretched to the point that if I whistle a Brittany Spears tune, I'm probably liable for copyright infringement.
That's going too far, and intellectually, its not a big leap from prohibiting "look-and-feel" to prohibiting people from discussing a computer program without the copyright holder's say-so.
And if you look at what Copyright is supposed to do, that seems a real perversion of the attempt. And for what? Certainly the arts and sciences aren't helped by any of this.
I feel we're well along a slippery slope here on copyrights, and I don't like what I see at the bottom.
I'm getting sick of seeing intellectual property and physical property considered as similar; maybe this will be more accurate when matter duplicators are freely available. Argue for the preservation of value of intellectual property through artificially constrained scarcity all you want, but please stop comparing it to my car, house, etc.
deus does not exist but if he does
OMFG, I have a much larger collection than this. Maybe I should start a rom pay-per-download site. I could be the very first competitor.
I think most old ROMs have been available for free up until now because none of the copyright holders have had the commitment and a business plan to turn a profit. But if this website starts earning serious cash you better believe copyright holders will start cracking down on illegal downloads. It will be difficult since there are thousands (if not millions) of copies out there.
While this sounds good, I have a very, very hard time believing any small company can do this. It is a monumental task to track down and establish the proper chain of IP for these games, as the remnants of the companies themselves are unlikely to know who owns what. Certain properties are actively protected (Pac Man, Galaga) - but most others are not. The ownership info of, say, Atari Baseball is likely buried in a very long, very boring set of legal documents that are not necessarily accessible to the public (or to any small wanna-ba company that wants to sell roms). If you asked the attorneys for Midway what the IP ownership is on Atari Baseball they would probably not know. It's too much history, and not important enough from a $$$ perspective to bother with. There are a multitude of other things here that also say something is amiss. Nobody would go through the legal hassle and expense of setting up this outfit. Or rather, nobody on the IP owner end would bother with this at $2/romset. It's just not worth the effort to anyone serious. Now, these guys may THINK that they have the right to do this - either they got a legal opinion that the stuff is undefended and therefore public domain anyway, or that the original programmers somehow can be contacted and have the authority to grant permission to distrbute....both may or may not be correct. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how long this lasts....I smell C&D order all over the place...
Isn't the whole point of downloading MAME Roms is the idea that it's just illegal enough to be "naughty" but not illegal enough to get you thrown into jail?
I dropped a test $10.00 and now have copies of Marble Madness and Tempest on my PC. One of the advantages of this service is that "apparently" they test the ROMS and provide a small amount of documentation, suggesting controller etc... The ROMS play well, under mame. So far so good.
If you consider what, some of us anyway, paid to play these things when they were new, the purchase price is a bargan.
Since I sucked at these twenty years ago... I finally, might get a better score... I might even find out how the little marble's story ends...
Other than the statements made on their web site, I don't see any links to Atari substantiating the claims made by these people. What proof is there that this isn't just a scam ? Not being a US resident, I don't know how you could even check to see that they are a registered company as they claim. This could be a rather large ruse, working on the 1% principle. Has anyone actually been able to verify that this is legit ?
I love my Virtual Boy.
Is there anyone that thinks $6 is a fair price to pay for an Atari 2600 game? Not me. Hell, there are (MANY) students who could program the same games in an afternoon--FOR A 6 PACK! Come on guys. That's ridiculous. I can buy Homeworld for 10 bucks. Who the HELL are you KIDDING?
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Unfortunately, Marble Man never quite got out of testing before the crashing arcade scene made Atari withdraw it from market. I'm not sure if anyone knows where the few original ROM's are anymore.
(I'm sure slashdotters will correct me if I'm wrong about any of this)
Marble Man never made it past prototype stage. Essentially, at least 3 Marble Man games still exist, in various stages of repair. AFAIK, they're all owned by one person, who shall remain nameless (Google is your friend).
He has full use and access to the ROMs, because he owns the original cabinet. Now, this particular game, probably in demand more than any other classic game to be dumped, has yet to be dumped. Why?
The cynical among us say that it's because he's a hoarding asshole who doesn't like to share, and is just holding on so he can make some serious cash on eBay from a collector. This sort of thing happens all the time with prototype/one-of-a-kind games.
Apparently the real story is, he got the games by basically signing an agreement stating he would not, under any circumstances, allow the ROMs to leak out to the public. Binding contract, lawsuits, and all that.
Now, as to why anyone would care about the release of a game that not only isn't making any money, but NEVER DID... as always, I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
you agree not to attempt to
decipher, decompile, disassemble or
reverse engineer the Software or allow
others to do so
It also goes on to disallow derivative works.
So, I can use these ROMs in an emulator (MAME) but if I have received said ROMs through your service, I cannot participate in development of any emulator. I'm sure that this was written for Atari's benefit but it's rather limiting.
I think they definately have a good idea, they just need to smooth out the implementation.
Offer discounts to the people who are interested in buying several games rather than one or two. That comes out to $134 for the whole set.
I'm getting sick of seeing them considered as fundamentally different. Scarcity is not the only measure. IP and PP are both difficult to produce, and therein lies their similarity. And for your "matter duplicators" read "mass production lines" and maybe you'll see my point.
I'm coming from a place where 2600 cartridges were available for $1 each at my local Warehouse TEN years ago. Make your own derivative work better and I might consider paying more.
.05 cents for the original 2600 Adventure, but good arcade games are worth at least a few bucks.
On a different note, S.T.U.N. runner is an awesome game and deserves to have at least $5 paid for the game.
Let's not get greedy now. I won't pay more than
To plug myself, KnoppiXMAME 1.1 will be available this winter. Reserve your *free* copy now!
Nothing can ever beat the mame emulator.
On mame.dk you can download all the arcade ROMs you like (and aren't even obliged to even make a donation)
Actually, US copyright was set up to incentivize authors (not "creator[s]", or "inventor[s]"--a term that is typically used when discussing patent law, not copyright law) to write and publish more work. Copyright in the US was set up entirely for the benefit of the public. RMS has a very readable summary of the background of copyright and the common arguments used in discussions like these. It is aptly titled "Misinterpreting Copyright". It addresses virtually all of your points. I think you'll find that many of the ideas the GNU project expresses on these matters are quite interesting and worth repeating.
No, there is no "balance" being reached by copyright nor was there ever intended to be one. From the aforementioned text:
RMS' essay goes on to explain how the "balance" concept actually ends up reversing the underlying basis of copyright where, practically speaking, the public has to justify not giving publishers all sorts of new power under copyright law. This is exactly backwards from how copyright was intended to work--readers' interests are an end unto themselves, benefits for the publishers can only be justified so as to benefit the readers.
Actually, you're shooting your own argument in the foot by conflating ethics with law. Ethical conduct does not spring from laws. Although the following comes from a discussion of the word "theft" as the word is commonly misapplied to describing illicit copying, I think one particular paragraph of that essay is valuable here:
Sharing is neighborly and good and we should not build laws or use terms that suggests sharing is bad (like when some people, thankfully not you, call others "pirates").
I'm glad to see more people talking about the difference between transferring physical property versus
Digital Citizen
Will this mean that internal refusal to support anything but the *official* purchased roms will now be implemented into mame? After all, MAME is not strictly for playing games, but for emulating the original machines as accurately as possible (hence removal of the dozen or so Sega games which were bodged to work and yet to be re-implemented).
Here is the content of a very interesing message posted to the alt.games.mame newsgroup by "NoRomsMoron":
QUOTE:
THIS IS VERY BAD!
It's bad for the community. Why? Because these guys can now go around
and sue anyone who posts roms they have license to. Even if you
'already had them'. Burners are screwed.
It's bad for mamedev... How much fun is it to spend hours and hours
coding a game only to know some dipshit and 'his buddy' are getting
paid to sell roms that they didn't creat that you make work with your
free code!?
It's bad for the industry... The copyright holders will inevitably
feel compelled to 'defend' their copyrights which NO ONE disputes and
try to make a case that ancient rom sales are a viable business. I
think the MAME market as a true 'market' is VASTLY over-rated. It's a
closed community for the most part of Gen-X'ers and a few late-comers.
We already have most of the mame roms we want anyway. Then, all they
do is close down the distribution systems that exist, scare away
mamedevs and lose a bunch of money. Whoever did that deal at Atari is
a knucklehead.
It's just a bad 'taint' on the hobby which we all have tacitly agreed
to keep above board and defended from scammers/spammers and Ebayers
who try to sell roms over the last few years. If this proceeds.. do
you think any of us will go out of our way to pull Ebay ads down or
flame scammers? Why should we care anymore? Let the guys making the
money do all the work.
Mame is already a 'legitimate' project. No one is getting their front
doors kicked in for having roms or even trading them for free between
friends. MOST of the commercial value of the old games is gone.
Selling them online now only kills the future of the scene and pisses
of those in it... who by the way probably spend a HUGE amount on new
PCs, Video Game consoles and games than the average consumer.
That these Jackasses took it on themselves to 'help out the scene' is
a crock of SHIT. I would like to propose that mamedev code mame so
that whatever roms they're selling WON'T work on mame. If they want
to make money from Mame.. then they better get coding.... from
SCRATCH. Let's see how long they feel it's important to distribute
roms 'to preserve them'.
I would have respected them more (only a little) if they'd just come
out and said "Hey, we're poor, stupid s.o.b.s and we're going to try
to cash in on Mame under the guise of legality and damn the
consequences!"
They are raping the golden goose, killing it, and mounting it on their
wall.... and soon they will wonder where all their precious golden
eggs went and we'll all have moved on to other things because the
scene will have DIED.
Think I'm over reacting? Mark this message friends... it will be cold
comfort I'm afraid when you wonder how come Mame releases stopped
coming out except to remove games from the source code.
By all means... Boycott Starroms and try to persuade the boys there to
perhaps try to make money honestly by CREATING something rather than
stick their leaching little lips to the hindside of Mame Developers
and the community.
Man.. I'm pissed! I can't believe Atari did anything like this!!!
Someone talk me down... I'm gonna jump!
NoRomSmoRoN
END OF QUOTE
I think I agree with his take on this. What about you?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I checked out the website, no Pong! I won't bother with it anymore then, i mean after Pong all games just seemed pointless...
with antialiasing at 1600x1200 i sure don't notice things looking bad.
1) Greed.
2) For diverting people to new games.
Game companies don't realise that people don't always want to play the big complicated games of today. Sometimes, a quick go on a arcade game is just as entertaining.
I find it highly unacceptable that companies are not donating their 15-year old coin-op roms to the public. These games are outdated right ? they are old!!! their prime time is long gone!!! why don't they release it for free ? that a rom will be for free, that doesn't mean that the material will not be copyrighted.
Maybe companies are afraid that their "OutRuns" and "R-Types" are more entertaining than "Gotham Racings" and "Killzones"...
Doing the rough and dirty math, it takes about $1600 to build an excellent, high quality, 4 player upright Mame-Cabinet (Which I'm in the planning stages of doing right now, btw).
To download all supported ROMs (Mame supports over 3000) at an average price of roughly $4 apeice (between 2 and 6.... heh) you will have spent over $12,000 on ROMs if you planned to LEGALLY build a Mame Cabinet.
What's really funny is that for the past couple of days I've been looking for just this kind of site...
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Crap, I may just have to break out the AMEX card for this. They have ATARI FOOTBALL.
For those of you who've never seen it, Atari Football is a two-player black-and-white arcade-only football game, where each player stands at the end of the horizontal videogame table with a trackball and a pass button. All the players on are little X's and Os (literally) and all motion is controlled with the trackball. (I believe this was the first arcade game to feature the trackball, if memory serves correctly.)
Gameplay is like bitch-slapping a bowling ball continuously for a half-hour or so until the pain in your hands becomes too great to bear and you give up.
My high-school chums and I got pretty good at it, though, and I have many fond memories of buying an ice-cold soda after an long session just to soothe the pain.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I'm getting sick of seeing them considered as fundamentally different. Scarcity is not the only measure. IP and PP are both difficult to produce, and therein lies their similarity. And for your "matter duplicators" read "mass production lines" and maybe you'll see my point.
Then it becomes a political question rather than an economic one; economies of plenty are fundamentally different to economies of scarcity. As a syndicalist anarchist without any respect for the ability of individuals to amass capital grossly beyond their needs, I would say there's something wrong with people who withhold, for example, life-saving medicines in order to increase their profits. Others won't agree...
deus does not exist but if he does
There's nothing in the Constitution about letting the President start wars (I'm talking about you, Dubya), or run Ponzi schemes (Social Security) or own "National Parks", either. A piece of paper won't stop politicians determined to ignore the law for their own ends.
What's to say that I downloaded one and I said I paid for it from starroms. How does anyone know the difference? I have an Asteroids romset at home. I could easily say I paid for it and nobody would be the wiser.
Thank you for recognizing the brilliance of Marble Madness. I couldn't have written a more loving tribute to the game.
Tip: when playing Marble Madness with MAME or MacMAME, connect your computer to a high-powered sound system with subwoofer : )
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I just wanted to play long enough to find the secret room and then get a whole lot of food and um.... the stuff that made you stronger, faster etc.
It was an addictive game.
Was that the first one with a continue function of sorts?
It was a fun game in and of itself but the continue function is one of the worst things to happen to video games. As I got older I found kids whos parents would give them unlimited quarters (I had a good growing up, but I had to earn my quarters and they were precious. My Precious....)
You would be playing a game and all of a sudden a little squirt would join in and use no strategy whatsoever and get you killed.
Arrrrg!
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
Between the local radio stations and web radio, why pay?
Pay because commercial radio doesn't play many recordings by independent artists, and web radio isn't yet practical in a moving vehicle.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What kind of damages could one ever hope to get from a pirating suit.
Up to $150,000 per work, plus attorney's fees and court costs.
Will I retire or break 10K?