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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."
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."
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..."
true, but I think that the sales pitch here is that it's legal to buy roms from StarRoms.
Now personally, I think that it *should* be legal to get old roms from classicgaming.com, but unless they've signed some sort of royalty agreement with atari (or whoever) they probably won't be able to legally distribute that Asteroids rom for another 99 years (+ life of author) at least. But then again, I'm not a lawer...
-Bill
Or even classic free pc games. And for modern free classics, give Soldat a try, it's pretty damn good.
Used home console games, yes. Not used coin-op arcade games. Yeah, I know, these aren't full games, but just the ROM images - but then, you're not paying the $25 to $2000 or whatever you might pay for the actual physical machine, either.
>why would anyone want to pay more than 0 cent to download Atari's Tetris to play on an emulator
>if it's for hardcore Atari fans, they SHOULD still have a real Atari at home.
Explain your statement, please. The *real* Atari version of Tetris is a port of the Atari Games Corp. arcade edition. It was marketed by Tengen, the subsidiary of Atari Games Corp. The game never appeared on any "Atari" branded console because the consols were marketed by Atari Corp. which was a separate company. Atari Inc. was split up in 1984 by Warner Communications (the owners since 1976) with the consumer videogame and computer division being sold off to ex-Commodore founder Jack Tramiel & Co. with a 75% stake, and the arcade division was labelled as Atari Games Corp. and the majority stake sold off to Namco of Japan until Time Warner regained control ala 1991. The home division became known as Atari Corp., Atari Computer Corp., and Atari Entertainment Electronics Corp through various stages. Atari Corp. had exclusive rights to the name "Atari" for the home market. Atari Games Corp. had the rights to "Atari" for the arcades. Thus when Atari Games decided to get a piece of the home videogame industry, they created the brand "Tengen." Thus you must be speaking of the infamous Tengen Tetris edition for the NES which was later yanked from the market when Nintendo proved nobody but them owned the actual rights to the game. The Nintendo version was inferior and was the reason why dealers were able to charge $90 and more for the contraband Tengen edition.
The one similar Tetris game made in the arcade by Atari Games that did appear on Atari Corp.'s Lynx game system was "Klax." This was because Time Warner forced Atari Games and Atari Corp. to make up with each other and sign a cross-licensing deal to port post-1984 Atari Games arcade titles over to Atari Corp. game consoles. And for an Atari fan, it was a great time since the 1984 Atari Schism/Diaspora (sic)...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Strictly speaking, that's not legal. You're only allowed to make your own copy of the work, not download someone else's. That one court decision against MP3.com, although silly, sort of cemented that one until a better challenge comes along.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
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?
"And who has a dual joystick setup to play Battlezone with? "
$15 for PSX to USB convertor and your all set.
Robotron, Smash TV etc play perfectly. In fact beyond building your own from real arcade controls the DualShock is the best Mame gaming control going IMO.
If you have more money you can easily buy something like the X-Arcade stick.
http://www.x-arcade.com/pc.shtml
That or just build your own with some happ controls like many people have.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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.
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
I e-mailed them (a while ago) to ask if their software supported mouse emulation, as in twisting left would scroll the mouse left and vice versa, and they said the PowerMate does not do that and they don't plan to ever add that feature. I even mentioned how much people spend on creating their own knob controllers and how this could be a new market for them if the added that one feature (which I can't see being very complicated, really) but they weren't interested. I sent links to arcade sites and all, to emphasize the size of the market (mostly, that I just wasn't making this up in case they hadn't ever heard of it.) Their software only lets you set it up to control software they already support, or software controllable by keyboard shortcuts. Seems insane that a knob like that would translate into keyboard commands, but...
Secretly, I'm hoping someone's written their own drivers or something for it. I'd buy a PowerMate just for this, if it did, but since they said it doesn't I haven't bothered. I've searched everywhere for alternate drivers or info. Anyone have any ideas?
If someone doesn't know what we're talking about, here's the web page ... it's a universal knob with a USB plug, and looks killer, except for the lack of mouse support...
Possibly you could config it to use the keyboard and reconfig MAME to take keyboard input instead of mouse/trackball, but I doubt you'd be able to get the fine control you'd want from a setup like that... especially after shelling out for a killer knob, man it just kills me, it would be perfect!
7d9e63e9501751ff4bf9307989d5623d *SheepHead
If it's vector games you want, you should check out Vector MAME. As far as I understand, it's a modified version of DOS MAME which will drive a native vector monitor. I saw one of these at CA Extreme this year, but didn't get a chance to look closely.
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The underdogs site, from what I can tell, only (knowingly) distributes games that are not still being sold by the publisher. It deals purely in abandonware which admittedly isn't strictly legal(well, read not legal). There are a fair few arguments for and against the free distribution of such software, some of which may be read here, and here,.
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.
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
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