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Arcade ROMs for Download, Legally

Posted by simoniker on from the could-be-a-constructive-step? dept.

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."

15 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. $2-$6 a game!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can go to the video game store and buy used games cheaper.

    1. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, but why do these cost MORE? They don't even have the physical costs associated with cartridges, etc. These things aren't huge downloads, so even bandwidth costs should be minimal.

    2. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by JVert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      gah...
      Ok, parent established the benefit that roms have over cartiges, yet you want it to be cheaper because... it doesn't cost them as much? Frankly you need to charge at least $2 a game so people take you seriously. Would I feel bad about pirating a $.50 game? at all?

    3. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by Acidic_Diarrhea · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Steve Jobs would disagree regarding your price point. I believe that pay for download music sites and pay for download ROM sites have very similar markets and Mr. Jobs believes that $1 is okay. At least two dollars? I don't know - it seems like people are buying into the idea of iTunes.

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    4. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by SenorMooCow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      people like buying things for a dollar

      Apple did it with iTunes, why can't they do it with these ROMs?

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    5. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by steveha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Back in the day, we would spend 25 cents to play video games once. For the cost of 8 to 24 plays, you can legally own the game, and play it as many times as you like -- hundreds of times, even.

      These will look and play exactly like the original games, because guess what -- they are the original games. The only difference will be that you will be using your own controller, instead of a possibly better (or possibly half-broken) controller at an arcade.

      Today, I can go down to the local movie theater (no arcades anywhere near my home) and I can play Hydro Thunder for $1 a game. Or I can buy the Playstation version of Hydro Thunder for $30, and it isn't even exactly the same game (the graphics were simplified a bit for the Playstation). So Hydro Thunder costs 30 plays to own, more than these ROM images.

      This is a perfectly fair price.

      steveha

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    6. Re:$2-$6 a game!? by macrom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think $2 is a reasonable price at all. They must be charging a dollar a k! They should sell them for the old arcade prices - 25cents a rom.

      But the old arcade price wasa $.25 per PLAY. I think it's safe to say that many of us here spent WAAAY more than that on single games. Don't even TRY and tell me that you spent less than $6 in your entire life on Gauntlet or Gauntlet II (presuming you played it, of course).

      If you could travel back in time and tell a teenager that for $6 he/she could play a game as much as they like for all eternity, they'd pony it up in a heartbeat. I know I would have. Today, people gripe because everything isn't free and won't cough up a couple of bucks to revel in their youth.

      Maybe you would rather spend hundreds, nay thousands, of dollars buying these games individually from eBay, praying that they still worked so you didn't have to spend your weekends pouring over wiring diagrams that you printed from some JPEGs on a classic arcade site?

  2. I hope this works... by chosen_my_foot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. It's a good idea... by The+Human+Cow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:It's a good idea... by L-Train8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It seems to me that sometimes there is a difference between being ethical and acting legally. Is it ethical for the law to limit my rights, if I am not harming anyone?

      The issue of arcade ROMs illustrates perfectly the problem with our messed up copyright system. We can't legally play many old games because they are not for sale, nor will they ever be. The companies that made them are out of business, and their copyrights are either lost or packed away in some warehouse. They won't be dusted off and offered to the public, because it's not financially worth the trouble. This keeps ideas and information, in the form of old games, legally out of the public's hands. These ideas and information are roped off from the public not to benifit the creators of the games, the ostensible reason for copyright, but to protect the status quo of copyright in general, and keep "piracy" in all it's forms outside the law. This is not confined to old video games, but books, movies, recordings, and almost any form of expression.

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  4. Why do I care if it's legal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Why do I care if it's legal? by JustAnotherReader · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      Who cares if the original programmer is making money or not? If the company was still in business and the original programmer quit his job does that make it OK to steal the ROMs? Of course not.

      Sorry, but your argument has some pretty shaky logic. If somebody owns some desert land that they never use is it ok to go start a brush fire? Of course not, but maybe that's too destructive of an example. Is it ok to do some gold mining on their land? Rock collecting? How about 4 wheel drive offroading?

      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.

      It's the same way with these ROMS. So what if the original developing company isn't selling the game currently. I'm betting that the StartROMs is paying the current owners something. So yes, the owner of the copyright IS making some money.

      I think $2 to $6 per game is perfectly reasonable price to pay for a legal copy. It's totally irresponsible to say that because the original programmer or original company isn't making any money off of these licenses that it's OK to just steal their software.

  5. because by SweetAndSourJesus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Businesses like to make as much money as they can.

    Shocking, I know.

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  6. hmm by dtfinch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Legal console emulation by JayBlalock · · Score: 4, Insightful
    That's actually a very interesting test of legal theory. Go read their FAQ on how their setup works. Apparently Nintendo considered their claim, while a bit shaky, stable enough to not be worth going after.

    On the other hand, it seems like, if they get too many users, the service would become useless.

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