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Ask Slashdot: Where Can I Buy Legal Game ROMs?
PktLoss writes "I'm interested in building an arcade machine, following the footsteps of Cmdr Taco among many others. Not being all that interested in piracy, I need to find somewhere to buy games. StarROMs used to be the kind of thing I was looking for, though with an incredibly short catalog. The MAME people have a few available for free (non-commercial), but this isn't going to sate my needs. There's an entire cottage industry supporting this goal. People are ready to sell me plans, kits, buttons, joy sticks, glass marquees, and entire machines. That's fantastic, but where can I get the games? I refuse to believe that this entire industry is built on piracy."
EOM
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
contact each vendor for a license...yes, this entire industry is built on piracy..unfortunate, but true. Your mission is fail.
It'll cost you about $10.
Who would you be buying it from? In most cases you'd just be buying a shady company for a pirated ROM regardless. Most of the companies that made these games no longer exist. Any IP is going to be owned by a large corp like Nintendo, who will want you to buy their console and not DIY You are saying you do not want to pirate, while at the same time you want to use this content in an un-authorized/un-approved way. Piracy is your only real option if you want to play "popular" game ROMs.
There is no model for legal roms. The only authorized emulators are built with newer gaming systems (e.g. the 3DS emulating GBA games). There needs to be a model, however.
The only real non-pirate way to get a significant number of ROMs is to buy the physical games and the equipment to image a ROM from them.
A few university libraries have started digitally preserving culturally significant games, and that's what they end up doing, because they can't really pirate the ROMs, yet can't buy legitimate digital copies either.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Piracy is inevitable with MAME, unless you dump your own ROMs. No one offers legit ROMs for sale, and I'm taking it you're not the type who plays modern arcade games like Street Fighter or Blaz Blue.
Just buy a cab and boards instead.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Keep in mind that every unofficial copy of a protected work isn't necessarily copyright violation. Look up fair use, and consult a lawyer for its application to a given field. You can also ask that the library of Congress put a DMCA exemption on a particular use, IIRC, although that would be more for the field than for your personal use.
http://transformativeworks.org/projects/vidding-press-release-DMCA-EXEMPTION
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It's my understanding that under certain countries' laws regarding backups, if you purchase the game in one format (say, an actual cartridge) you can legally download the ROM, considering it's technically a backup.
Or you could always buy the cartridges and rip them yourself.
I wonder if you own an old defunc machine, if you could legally then own a rom on a remake? I mean people used to say you could backup your games to floppy in case the original died. I think some games for c64 even told you to do this.
I also wonder if you can rent digital copies of media over the internet if you own a copy, but are not using it at the time.
God spoke to me
The only entities which can legally distribute roms are the publishers themselves (in which case they obviously will not). Rom usage came about from the fact that it's legal (well, grayish legal when you add in things like drm thanks to newer laws) to make a backup of your rom. That means if you want the game legally, you must buy the physical games themselves and perform a rom dump. (Where do you think these rom came from originally?)
Try Ebay. however, most of what you will find are pirated games anyway. (Wouldn't it be nice if electronic works went into public domain after 10 or 15 years, or after the company creating the work folded up?)
That's the whole idea behind them, selling you ROMs and a license to use them.
You kids today aren't hardcore enough to program your own ROMs? Geez.
To be "legal" you have to own the logic boards, then you are in the grey area of legally owning the game. Downloading the ROMs is still a copyright violation (go figure). There are arcade machine surplus companies that repair/rebuild arcade machines online: DAGS! Craigslist is another source.
You, a single person, possible a collection of a hundred or so similar people, are
1. Asking dozens of giant corporations to provide legal licenses to use their software on your system, in a way they haven't accounted for.
2. Expecting them to take the time out of their busy schedule to write over a license agreement, a copy of the software (which they don't have, unless they have copied the ROM themselves), and expect you to use the software in accordance with the license agreement (which if you ever sell or give away the arcade machine, would be in violation of the software license)
Understand that aside from the possible liabilities of releasing such software to parties which may not have the best interest of the companies at heart, what can the companies expect in return? You're looking a few hundred dollars for a few lawyers to come up with the agreement for each game, and then another few hundred for the software development time to make sure these "legal" roms aren't bundled in with all the other illegal software currently floating around the internet.
"More trouble than its worth" applies to serving a niche market just as well as it applies to serving a lawsuit against someone emulating.
| - | - |
Same way all those things are available, you can also get the kits to extract the data out of an old NES cart.
The legal way is to get the original game, the kit, and rip it yourself.
Other than that: piracy.
With a Retrode you can dump your own SNES and Genesis ROMs as easily as plugging in a cartridge to a USB mass storage device, and adapters have been made to also dump Atari 2600, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Turbo Graphx 16, and Virtual Boy ROMs. Probably as legal as it's going to get if you own the cartridges - the Retrode might not classify as a circumvention device as it simply asks the cartridges for data and the cartridges supply it. The few cartridges with copy protection that don't simply surrender their data (eg. SMRPG) tend to not work.
Given that you mentioned MAME you're probably more interested in arcade ROMs; maybe an EEPROM reader would be more useful to you? Much trickier though.
Alternatively, think how nice the world would be with a 20 year copyright term (same as patents, and patent holders are still going strong). Every January 1st a large batch of new ROMs would become available free of charge.
Next time you are at any political meeting, just bring up why inventors get 20 years of protection and why this term wouldn't work for everyone else. You can use "Happy Birthday to You" as an example (bonus points if you can let the politician(s) sing it as a 'public performance' first).
There are many titles that were on obsolete systems people would love to play again. Unfortunately the publishers behind those titles don't care about the people who still want to play them. Either you have to ignore the legal ramifications (you could, of course, try to challenge them in court if they actually came after you) or not do it at all. The choices aren't great, but those are about it for you.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
http://www.factor5.de/downloads.shtml
Factor 5s first game as a free download for everybody who loved the Amiga or just plain historical interest – also known in other parts of Europe as Denaris. 50 frames per second of high-adrenaline shooting action very reminiscent of R-Type.
Note: This only works 100% with the UAE emulator .
Katakis, R-Type and BC KID are not provided for the public domain. You are entitled to download and use these games only for non-commercial purposes. All copyrights are retained by their owners. Any distribution of this data through any medium unless specifically permitted by the copyright owners is not allowed.
I've downloaded a ton of fullsets from EmuParadise, deal with it.
1.) Buy the original arcade board 2.) Dump ROMs Of course, you could use your cabinet to play the original games instead of emulating them.
The only way you're going to get any games is piracy. Even if the original IP holder is still around (which many of them aren't), there isn't enough interest for them to offer a commercial product. They're not gonna be satisfied servicing the desires of a figurative handful of DIY'ers making MAME cabinets, the only way to see these in commercial release is through emulation on a console so they can ensure they get their $10 or whatever out of it. Frankly, the MAME emulation scene just isn't popular enough to ever really see even that come to pass, except for those select few titles like Centipede or Breakout that have stayed relevant in the popular consciousness.
You have to move up to the 8-bit home consoles like the NES and Sega Master System, and beyond, if you're looking for actual legal re-releases, and you will NEVER see that happen in ROM form. If you want a legal way to play old arcade games, go buy some old arcade games. Otherwise, I wouldn't feel too bad about piracy when it comes to this stuff. They have no legal alternative.
You can download the roms from any source as long as you own the games so I suggest you buy the arcade PCB's of any rom that you download. http://www.jammaboards.com/store/arcade-game-boards-and-pcbs/cat_21.html http://www.quarterarcade.com/Browse.aspx?c=All.Parts.Boards Those are only a couple of the places that you can buy the arcade boards.
Chris Sheppard
For the most part, those ROMs are not protected by the companies. At worse, you will get a letter saying to please stop. They know that those that love the old games (downloading old ROMS) are not the people to worry about and that they are not the ones that taking money out of their pockets. If anything, these hardcore fans are keeping the spirit of old classics alive. And most if not all of htem would pay several hundred dollars to legitemately buy all the games. The thing is, if there are 10,000 people in the US that are in this category, how much money can really be made? Low millions? That is pennies to comapnies liek Nintendo. Just not worth the effort.
With few exceptions (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong), alot of the franchises are dead and unprotected.
My build:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=105534.0
For what it is worth, join the BYOAC forums and ask there or search for topics on the matter. I know it has been discussed in the past.
To play vintage pinball machines, there is the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas (is it still there?). Is there a similar place to go for lovers of coin op arcade video game machines?
It's completely legal to own a rom (even a pirated one) if you also own the original game in whatever physical form it came.
This is actually what most of those rom Downloading websites advise
You don't buy legal ROMs, because they don't exist. Your only way to be 100% legal is to buy every arcade machine, cartridge, or disc of the game you want to play and rip them. Which, as I'm sure you're aware, is not a palatable option.
There is a reason that StarROMS shut down. All these games are still under copyright, and the rights holders don't want you to buy the ROMs and use an emulator; they want to sell you the games for use on consoles, phones, PC, etc. Why sell you 1 ROM when they can sell you 5 versions of the same game, one for each platform? There is also the support/QA aspect to consider. If they sell you a ROM and it doesn't work with your emulator, then what?
So put legality out of your head and download all the illegal ROMs you want and enjoy them. Trust me, you'll sleep just fine at night.
Please remember to check your idealism at the door.
At the computer game museum in Berlin there is a great piece of computer art where these roms are randomly tossed together and the resulting mash up is funny and interesting gameplay.
While there may be some gray area debate about 'fair use', but if you want to stick with the moral high ground, i don't see a problem with buying the game on a cart at your local store ( be it new or used ) then copying the data off to use in your emulator. ( im also assuming here you have an old console in the closet, just to be 100% legit )
One step further, since you own the physical cart ( and license to use it ) i don't see a problem with downloading it. It's only 'piracy' if you don't own a license.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... that copyright laws are fucked up and piracy is the necessary response. The fact that he's trying to submit and "be moral" to a bankrupt system of laws is the first problem. There is no ethical quandary here. Software licensing for unlimited time due to copyright has has always been a scam it prevents old software from being modified/studied/updated as well as preserving older applications. Companies would like to just sit on/throw away or control works for eternity.
The fact is you already live in a tyranny when you need "permission" to do things with things you already own or that should have legitimately become public domain after all these years. I'm not a believer in eternal rights for corporations and 'business people' that's our fundamental problem of this age - everyones sucking corporate capitalist dick and needs to get their heads read.
Did we not learn anything from DRM and stallman's prescient "Right to read"?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The next time you are thinking of "doing the right thing" by submitting to laws made by lobbyists and corporations and their supporters just remember this video about the secret (at the time) trillion dollar give-aways by the fed reserve to the banks and other corporations who had huge investments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJqM2tFOxLQ
These people don't give a shit about anyone but themselves they are greedy bastards.
The various media industries, when they're being selfish, say "Piracy" to mean "You made a copy when we asked you not to." Generally, the courts force this to only be a crime if you then share it with others. The existence of ROMs at all, even ones you dump yourself, are nevertheless piracy in that definition.
Now look at the logistics of it. At this point, they're not manufacturing these products anymore. Unless they remade games for a new device, there is no product you can buy from them anymore--you can only buy secondhand games and secondhand systems. You say you don't want to pirate, which for games that are currently being sold is marvelous. But when they aren't selling products to you, they aren't losing money if you pirate instead of buying secondhand. Understand, if they ever decided to release ROMs, they would release them along with first-party, copy-protected emulators, and that's an investment of time, manpower, and money in and of itself. (It does happen; the PSP for example emulates PlayStation games, which you can get from their store, if you can stomach going there after the security breach nonsense.)
If you want to support game developers or the industry, buy new products, whether it's games or licensed T-shirts. There's precious little to be found in emulation that could possibly help their bottom line.
AFAIK the easiest way to be legal about the whole thing would be to get a Nintendo Wii, wire your own arcade controls from a GameCube controller and get games from their Virtual Console service. The selection is extremely small if you compare to just finding ROM files from some place, but at least there's 29 Neo-Geo games and 19 arcade games in the list.
Oddly enough, there's the SEGA Master System and the Turbografx-16 versions of R-Type, but not the original arcade version.
The real pirates here are the content producers and lobbyists who seem to think that copyright should be valid 20+ years after the game was created. I do not feel the least bit guilty for pirating a ROM for a game system that doesn't even exist anymore.
Innocent until proven guilty? That's a nice thought. It's fantasy, but a nice thought.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
If you have an ethical dillemma contact the rom copyright holders. If they cant be reached dont add the game or do, according to your conscience.
The TL:DR here is: The law is murky, there is no true authority to buy the ROMS, any money you pay will almost certainly not reach anyone truly relevant ot the game or anyone that is empowered to license the game.
Good-bye
Capcom had all of their arcade games available, bundled with one of the arcade style joysticks.
There used to be a magazine for those interested in Arcade Machines. It was called GameRoom Magazine and you can google for a wikipedia page about it. Unfortunately they ceased publication a few years ago. BUT there are back issues available on eBay and other places. Also the last thing the publisher did was to make a DVD-ROM with 20 years (1989-2008) worth of back issues in PDF format. The DVD is called "GameRoom 20th anniversary collection" and as it was maied to all the subscribers it should be fairly easy to get hold of 2nd hand. It used to be sold for $99 by the publisher, but alas their website seems to have closed last year.
Every issue had lots of articles about Arcade Machines and also quite a number of advertisments. In recent years most of the ads had web-links and most of the advertisers are still in business. Quite a few of them seems to sell what you are looking for. I think you could be interested in quite a few of the articles as well.
Also there was a torrent a couple of months ago with the entire contents of the DVD, some 3 GB of Magazines that you can try to find and download. But maybe that would not be OK with you since you are not interested in piracy.
Good luck!
and go download the latest mameset you douche.
It has a fair number of legitimate ROMs it includes with its arcade stick. They're probably not the raw ROM file, they're probably locked up in Atari's or whoever's game collection, but it's a start. Game collections are probably what you're looking at if you want to go legitimate.
at the same time you want to use this content in an un-authorized/un-approved way.
Actually, it seems that the poster wants it to be approved and just wants the appropriate price tag attached. People are going to consume the media in this way, it's up to the companies to step up and accept money for it, otherwise they'll be losing out. That's the reality of it.
Twinstiq, game news
Unfortunately there isn't a way to volume license certain roms from game companies for hobbyists.
It can be done however, Multicades are pretty popular in the vestiges of Arcades left. So, somewhere out there Capcom, Namco, etc are open to the idea. I'm sure like most copyright stuff, the prices are exorbitant and full of restrictions.
> The whole point of copyright is to preserve the right to distribute for the owners
Unless you somehow believe that you have the super-human ability to know the motivations of many different governments who have passed various forms of copyright, I think that claiming that you understand the "point" of copyright is a bit over-the-top. The reality is that everyone has their own idea what copyright is and/or should be.
My personal idea is that the goal of copyright is/should be about remuneration, not control. Judging from the moderation on my comment the last time I talked about it, a lot of people disagree.
BTW, it seems to me that the existence of EULAs show that at least some lawyers believe that copyright isn't just about distribution.
Unless you somehow believe that you have the super-human ability to know the motivations of many different governments who have passed various forms of copyright
These motivations can be discerned in part from the major contributors to the various legislators' reelection campaign organizations.
buy legal copies of the games, rip/dump them to roms/ISO's yourself, it takes some special hardware (particularly for cartridge based systems or arcade machines) but it can be done, and it's no more legally slippery I would say then ripping a cd to iTunes, it's the same concept, just not as easy to do. And if that can't be done for some system or reason, buy copies of the games, and get the roms elsewhere. at least you have the right to play the game then, in principal. Probably the most contentious thing maybe is the firmware that some emulators require of the original hardware to run, mostly in the case of disk based systems. While that can be ripped with special tools as well, it kindof becomes a similar dilemma as Apple only licencing OS X to run on Apple computers. Thats true I suppose for any rom or image as well but the firmware is what you usually don't see provided so easily. Though some modern emulators use FOSS firmware implimentations or bypass it entirely.
As others have said it's wishy washy no matter what angle you tackle it from. the best you can do realistically is to just purchase the original games and rip/dump them yourself wherever possible, if nothing else it ought to make you feel a bit better about it, and you'll probably learn something too. With arcade emulation though thats obviously not really feasable. However many arcade games have been ported to emulators on other platforms and are licenced etc, so perhaps you could get those, and then emulate the original via a rom and normal emulator. It's about the closest you can get probably. And as for money going to the devs or someone's paypal account, you could buy re-releases on psn/xbla/wiishop wherever possible, and then get another version you can actually work with for your project as well.At least then some money is going to where the game came from, in theory.
wow longest post i've ever written on slashdot :p
i don't see a problem with buying the game on a cart at your local store ( be it new or used ) then copying the data off to use in your emulator.
This would appear to be legal under 17 USC 117(a)(1). But good luck finding the copier tools to extract the data from the cartridges. A Nintendo DS or DS Lite with a flash card can dump Game Boy Advance cartridges, but that's about it. For Sega Genesis and Super NES, there was the Retrode, but that's sold out. For NES, there's the Kazzo, but that's hand-assembled in extremely low volumes and apparently not intended for sale to the casual gamer.
Of course, what you're talking about, unfortunately, is purchasing dozens of huge, expensive arcade cabinets for the purpose of copying their data into a single arcade cabinet. At which point you might as well keep the original, authentic cabinets.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Should you get sued, do you have the money to hire representation to prevent there from being "a court decision stating otherwise"? The golden rule in this system of things continues to be "he who has the gold makes the rules."
Not much, but maybe these two links help a bit:
Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released!
Liberated Games
Great that you have asked this question, I have the same problem! I was a happy starroms.com customer very disappointed when they had to close their business. The prices for the games at Starroms were very fair and it is sad that not more gamers supported legal ROMs.
The way I am solving this for me so that I can stil sleep at night (while still being illegal): :-(
1) I download and play the ROMs if I once owned the cartride. I did not keep all the cartridges due to lack of space but don't feel bad if I play these games today on an emulator. I made a contribution to the people who created the game.
2) If it is a game I never owned I will try to somehow purchase a product of a company that is clearly associated with the game. Preferably a collection of old games as they are available from Sega et. al.
3) If it is not possible to purchase a related product today and I really adore the original game I might try to find out who the developers were and see if I could somehow contribute to something they are doing today. Maybe they are raising funds for elderly game devs? But I have to admit that up to now I have never done this. I don't even have time for playing the new games I buy for current consoles
or less shady ones selling just JAMMA cabinets.
Can you recommend a reputable maker of JAMMA cabinet kits for the IKEA/Sauder flat pack crowd?
There are two types of people doing emulation. The Ebeneezer T. Scrooge types who think anyone who doesn't have their very own collection of vintage arcade games to reverse engineer doesn't deserve to play them. And the eyepatch-and-jolly-roger set. Personally I find the pirates far less offensive.
It's also supposed to be balanced by the idea/expression divide, which can be thought of as implying a "right to clone". Copyright doesn't prevent you from making your own game in the same genre. See, for example, Lotus v. Borland (uncopyrightability of computer program menus) and Capcom v. Data East (uncopyrightability of character archetypes, even in a video game with mostly the same rules).
Let me know when Earthbound will become available in the Super NES aisle of Virtual Console in the North American market.
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Roms (Binary) - Legal?
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If you need a Newsreader
Slyck's Guide To Xnews: http://www.slyck.com/xnews.php
There are no legit rom sellers as the companies folded years ago, too hard to track down each split up company to aquire any legal licensing or whatnot. So the entire emulator/rom industry other than small amount of free ones are all done via pirating.
We have 3 arcade machines in our office that use pirated roms and takes quarters, so it has that nice retro feel, plus acts as a piggy bank of sorts, There was no way to do it legally, so we pirated the roms and each machine has 25 roms on it.
just suck it up and download them like everyone else in the world does and stop trying to act like it's some holier than thou or morally right.
you can purchase legit arcade ROM boards or chips at these sites:
have to sell body parts to afford
decent prices
on ebay <-- sometimes super deals! however, if super cheap and it's a chinese seller, it's pirated. (sad but true)
after purchasing them, you will either need to dump the chips or download them predumped from the net. it's not piracy if you own the chips. it's going to cost you a boat load of money, so you have been warned.
if you buy just the ROM (not on chips) from someone then it's guaranteed pirated.
but seriously, LRN2GOOGLE!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
is what we call it, not piracy. If you own the game, you can own the ROM. At least thats what the rom sites i certainly have never visited or downloaded in mass quantities tell me. At least, I assume thats what they tell me. I wouldnt know since ive never gone to those sites. Infact ive never even heard of this "rom" thing. You have to tell me if youre a cop you know! I CANT BE COURT MARTIALED TWICE.
Screw emulation. You really need to get the original arcade machines. Part of the arcade experience was:
- playing games in a hot, overcrowded, dim smoke-filled building
- the cacophony of 30+ machines behind and around you with their volumes turned up to maximum, distorting the sound, including your own machine half the time
- the visual distortion and bluriness you only get with CRT monitors that have been badly misadjusted and neglected over time
- graffiti written/painted on the sides of cabinets
- smelly bathrooms that haven't been cleaned in 2 weeks
- the joy of finally getting a turn on your favorite game only to discover the start button or controller is broken
- trying to convince the operator to give you a credit because your machine ate your quarter
- flipping off and refusing to play the 50 cent or multiple token games
- ducking skee-balls if you played the machines next to the skee-ball machines that seemed to be in many arcades
- unplugging the machines when no one was looking to see the test modes
- 5/$1 token Sundays
Emulation can't capture that.
It all depends on two different things.
1: What is your purpose for making this arcade machine? Home personal use or comercial?
2: Would you feel guilty getting unauthorised roms if you had no other choise.
If its for home use only and there is no way to get autoriseation to use the rom and you don't feel guilty doing it go ahead.
Other wise find something else to do. Its as simple as that.
It is built on piracy.
And honestly who cares?
Yes mame cabinets are built on piracy as much as you want to disbelieve it even if you did own the actual games like an atari cart or what ever to put a rom on the computer is still technically piracy the one backup part of the dcma is a grey area loop hole...
If you truly wish to build a piracy free arcade cabinet you are going to have to put a game console in there i suggest a current console psp or ps3 or wii or xbox 360 you can mod a wired controller to hookup to the buttons on the cabinet and you can download and play all the legal roms they put in the on line stores...
Of the consoles i would say your better off doing the wii or psp though the psp would require more modification than the wii version... but with enough ventilation a ps3 or 360 would make a fine choice too oh hey why not all 3 ps3 wii 360 in one cabinet using
"I refuse to believe that this entire industry is built on piracy" Then you, sir, are naïve.
Move sig!
Ask someone you know who visits yard sales to keep an eye out. You can easily acquire a few hundred legit cartridges this way.
license agreements != piracy
license agreements != law
license agreements != copyright infringement
buying != agreeing to licensing agreement.
there is no license agreement required to purchase the chips.
you are legally allowed to use the software on them on another medium as covered by fair use.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You can buy original printed circuit boards, no cabinets necessary. Then you identify the particular set on them. Then you can download that particular ROM set, or dump them yourself. And only for yourself.
And that's a gray area. Nobody in the industry has bothered to bring suit against such a person because they're afraid they might lose, and therefore set a precedent. You have an electronic copy of what's on a PCB you lawfully own, and nobody's likely to do anything about it.
In such a situation, you may be "called" a pirate for such actions, but there is no final determination, and you are unlikely to go to court.
Welcome to the nation of laws. We're more like a nation of legal avoidance.
I'll sell you some of the back of my truck...
It won't kill you to download the roms you want. I am annoyed though that the only place to get MAME roms seem to be torrents. I wish something as awesome as mame.dk was still around
People need to realize that ripping ROMs off Arcade hardware is notoriously difficult. More often then not, it involves decapping chips, photographing their silicon, then reading the bits out by hand on a microscope. Sounds fun, right?
If you thought the protection on your modern day Secu-rom enforced PC game was bad, then you haven't seen anything yet. Arcade hardware contains some of the most obscure and nearly impossible protection to comprehend... Built straight into the hardware itself.
The reason why the "ROM industry" exists is because even if you own the actual arcade hardware that holds the ROMs you want- **YOU** are not going to be able to dump those ROMs without some serious hardware and time on your hands. This isn't just something where you pop the EEPROMs off the board and chuck them in a reader (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't). So even if **YOU** own the arcade PCB and you want to play the game on your laptop, you're still going to have to go out and grab a ripped ROM set anyways.
The piracy that this enables is merely a side effect of this process.
If you want to go "legal", you need to buy the PCBs that the ROMs were originally installed on. For certain games (like CAVE's Ketsui), this will set you back nearly $1500. Yes, $1.5K for a single game. So most people don't bother, because a fully stocked MAME collection is "worth" 6 or 7 digits.
-AC
The original machines these ROMs were installed on absorbed approximately 100% of my disposable income between the ages of 5 and 14.
I would bet a testicle that not a single developer who worked on any of the games I have since downloaded would begrudge me the indulgence of a nostalgic trip back to revisit their wares.
The only possible argument that I can see for the games industry to be opposed to the availability of the ROMS is that whilst someone is spending hours and hours playing ROMS via MAME, they aren't necessarily going out buying new games to play. The fact of the matter is that most people don't spend a lot of time with MAME. They get all excited about building the cabinet and buying the parts for the controls and interface boards and downloading these huge ROM collections. Once their project is up and running they quickly come to the conclusion that almost all of these old games suck.
To me it's a nostalgic trip, mostly. Robotron is still as additive as ever though. The exception to the rule is that one.
Both Williams and Atari released PC collections with emulators and the ROM's of the original games. I am not sure they can be extracted for MAME use, nor if it is legal, but it does provide another option. Many other old games have been released in some fashion with the ROM's included.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Between the ages of 5 and 14, 100% of my disposable income was spent playing these ROMs when housed in their original machines. I'd bet a testicle that not a single developer of any of the ROMs I have downloaded would begrudge my nostalgic trip, and I think that's exactly what it's about to most people. Just a little bit of nostalgia. I don't think there's much of a moral issue here. The only argument I can see for the games industry not being keen of having these old ROMs available for free, is that whilst people are spending hours and hours playing old games via MAME, they may not necessarily be going out and buying new games. I choose to ignore that argument though as I don't really play games much anymore. I don't really play old games any more either. The fact of the matter is when I boot these old ROMs I no longer see the magic. It's gone. Mostly. Robotron is still friggin' awesome though!
Instead of building a cabinet with a computer you are going to have to build one with a wii, ps3 or 360 in it with enough ventilation perhaps all 3 and if you really want to go the full mile and rip them out of their cases you can mount the optical drives so you can still use them with out opening the side of the cabinet... Then you can play what ever roms Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft port over. It would not be too hard to make a switch to allow you to use the arcade pad on all 3 consoles...
In Australia, you can legally download for free roms of games you already own. Im not 100% sure on other parts of the world.
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if you cannot reasonably obtain the games from an authoritative source, it is legal. that is the law. that is why Nintendo came out with the Wii Virtual Console games and why NES roms disappeared (almost) from the net at the same time.
I commend the author of the article for his adherence to the law. MAME, as an example is not intended to preserve the ROMs for these games, but the hardware they were designed to run on. It is a historical preservation project and NOT an excuse to bootleg old games.
The author, like myself, only wants to play these titles as they were originally delivered.
I suggest he find and play the original ROMs through eBay or give in to the dark side and bootleg quietly. You aren't likely to find them all any other way, but if you do, please share the knowledge.
My homemade cabinet craves legal titles.
For now, I play what I can for "historical" purposes.
http://constructacade.blogspot.com
For a large company, obviously. I wasn't on the legal team, but I heard some of the better stories about acquiring ROMs.
Firstly, they're all owned by someone. Doesn't matter what happened to the original company, or the original developers, somebody, somewhere, owns the rights. The laws have all been carefully crafted to make sure nothing ever expires. There's no such thing as abandonware, just companies that don't advertise what they own.
Some of the big arcade machine comapnies are still around, and have libraries of most or all of their ROMs. For a commercial project like ours, our lawyers called theirs, worked out a price, and we got official copies. They won't talk to you, you're too small to be worth their time.
Some of the other companies were bought up by other companies that didn't keep track of their old products, our lawyers called theirs, and got an agreement that we could buy boards where ever we could (mostly eBay) and rip those for our project. Again, you can't afford the legal fees involved in setting up a contract like that. And do note that we had to have a working copy of the original hardware for each ROM we used.
Then you get the interesting cases. A company got liquidated, all their IP was bought by someone who wanted some of their hardware trade secrets, and didn't care about the games. A few company splits, takeovers, etc. later, and we were trying to convince a stock brokerage firm that they really did own a couple of video games. Or the cases where the graphics were only licensed for use in that game by the original developers. First we had to buy the rights from the owners of the IP that once belonged to the original devs, then we had to relicense the rights to use the graphics. In one case, a key part of the split rights turned out to be owned by someone who's since been outspoken about the evils of video games. They got rather hostile when they found out they owned one, and we wanted to licence it.
So, basically, every post above this that tells you there's a legal way to download ROMs is wrong. In some countries you can buy a board, rip the ROMs, and use those personally. That's the best you're going to get as an individual. If you were a corporation, you could negotiate a license with other corporations, but somehow we've created a world where a legal fiction has more rights than the people who created it.
Also not a lawyer, but as I've had it explained to me by a lawyer, obtaining digital copies of music you bought off a physical medium is illegal via the DMCA because it provides the "indirect commercial benefit" of not having to replace the media if it wears out and being able to listen to it on players that don't support that medium.
The British penny (used since we're talking about the BBC here) weighs 3.56 grams.
2000 pounds is 907,184.74 grams
907,184.74 / 3.56 = 254,827.174 (2548 pounds sterling and 27 pence)
Banknotes tend to weigh about a gram, so that's 45,359,200 pounds sterling in fifty-pound notes
$3628.73 in US one cent coins or $90,718,400 in US $100 bills
I'd guess that the BBC would actually pay something inbetween those two.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Was originally for 2 years. The ridiculous 100+ year extension of copyright has had measurably negative effects on the industry, and the laziness of copyright holders has made it impossible to use information that is a vital part of our culture. Piracy is the Patriotic, Moral, and only choice for things such as this.
Yes it is still there, and have sense moved to a better place sense the last time I was there. They got a few prototype games in there. http://www.pinballmuseum.org/
1.Sometimes they dont want to sell the roms because they are selling sequels on modern platforms (why would you buy Street Fighter on 360 or PS3 or iPhone or whatever when you could buy the original arcade ROMs for a cheaper price and play them with MAME)
2.Selling the ROMs means they are endorsing the idea that emulators written without the companies permission are illegal
3.Lack of control over what ROMs are sold and what emulators are used to play those ROMs (in some cases the manufacturer may be able to provide a set of ROMs from an archive but what about if those dont match the ROMs the emulator wants)
4.Pushing people to play on the platform of their choice (i.e. Nintendo pushing people to buy a Wii or DS if they want to play the old Nintendo titles)
5.licensing and rights issues such as content licensed from a 3rd party (e.g. Atari Star Wars licensing from Lucas), content produced by someone else (e.g. graphics developed by company A, game developed by company B), issues with music issues with home computer vs arcade vs console rights (Tetris being one well known example) and other issues where the company owning the copyright on the arcade ROMs may not own all the rights they need to distribute those ROMs for home use. A release of the ROMs may also infringe on rights held by someone else to produce a remake or sequel.
7.Also they may not want to release ROMs for old games simply because if people are playing those, they arent playing unrelated newer (and more profitable) titles from the same company.
I too would LOVE to see a site like StarRoms only better and with a bigger library.
then pirate the ROM
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
My view is that if you buy the original, there's no crime in using a ROM. Having the cartridges may or may not do anything for the legality of your situation, but if it ever got to the courtroom ,and you had an entire back-catalogue of the originals for all of your 'infringements', I'm sure it would help a lot. Also the box art is mad!
... Get them and forget about the legality. The law has been bought and paid for by fat cats and is enforced by corrupted public officials. An unjust law is no law.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I need a machine! Hawkwind - Silver Machine
The arcade industry is actually based in *GASP* real arcade hardware and dedicated PCB's! That's what all those sticks and cabs were made for! :D
But seriously a big portion of the arcade industry (except Japan where everything was apparently kept legit) is actually based in real piracy, cloned PCB's, rom hacks, multigame MVS carts, etc.
However emulation and all the related rom-dumping was a big step IMO in preservating tons of games, and even helped as a way to restore dead boards due to bit-rot and suicide boards/batteries.
Morally the best thing you can do is to try and hunt down the original PCB's of the games you want, you wiil only be able to find used PCB's and the original developer/publisher wont get a cent, but at least when you startup the ROM in MAME you read that disclaimer and say to yourself "F**K YEAH, I DO HAVE THE ORIGINAL ROM" and press OK and start playing guilt-free!
Personally I prefer to play on original hardware rather than emulation (it's a bit like the old CD vs vinyl debate!) That's not to say emulation isn't great in a lot of circumstances, but I tend to prefer the real hardware. Timing is one thing I often notice is inaccurate or erratic in emulated games, my favourite example being Samus' wall kick in Super Metroid, which I often use as a quick acid test of a SNES emulator.
I've put together a collection of various JAMMA games that are favourites of mine and use a Supergun to play them. While it's a bit of a pain swapping delicate boards (the encased boards of the CPS1 Q-sound era onwards are a godsend), it's great to be able to play the original hardware. Obviously certain early non-JAMMA games need extra wiring to work, but it can be worth the effort if you're into this sort of hobby. :)
Try to find out the current owner of the rights of "Game X". If after some time looking for you can not find who owns it, then just download the ROM from anywhere.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Ok, so you want to build something to sell. Thats great, except you cant find a company to sell you the roms? Are you kidding. It doesnt matter how you get the damn roms, its what you do with them after you obtain them. You can download a pirated game, pay for it, and wha-la it`s no longer pirated. So, download what you need, contact the companies with a plan on what you want to do with them, and enter into a commercial license agreement with them so you can sell them promising to give them what they are entitled in royalties.
Outside of their offices and courts, a lawyer confronted with harsh, physical violence will cave in way faster than your average Joe will confronted with a lawsuit.
No, that'll attract the physical violence of the government. And the only reason why the government is the government is because it has the monopoly on the legitimate use of lethal force.
Back in the day when I repaired pinball machines and coin-op arcade games for a living (using that word loosely here!) if you had a game with one or more bad ROMs/EPROMs, you didn't go to the manufacturer for the part; you copied it from another of the same game. I used to have a HUGE library of ripped ROMs from arcade games (sorry, don't have them anymore!). Especially if it's an old game from a company that no longer exists, just bite the bullet and either download a copy from someone else, or get a physical set of boards for the game, a chip programmer, and read them yourself. Seriously: you're not selling them, or building clones of the old game to operate for profit, right? You just want to play the damned game. Unless it's Pac Man or any of it's variants, in which case Namco will have your balls if you get caught, nobody really cares all that much.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If you buy the game used or second hand, you might as well buy it pirated - the nobility of purchasing it is gone - none of that money is going to the original distributors. Unless you can purchase the game *directly* from the copyright holders you might as well pirate the game.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Find out who the original author(s) is(are), and send them a postcard that shows how you are grateful and happy.
Don't bother about a bunch of dollars, that won't change anything.
Every largish city has somewhere that arcade machines get repaired. Where I live there (~350,000 population) there used to be a few but now there is just one dude that runs a repair/distribution company for arcade machines. He does a lot of private trade these days.
If you go along to any repair shop, if it's anything like my local one, there will be a room with a thousands of mainboards for a variety of arcade machines.
As time has passed a lot of games have gone in and out of favour. By removing their mainboards and replacing with a newer mainboard from a more popular game one could save money by keeping the original cabinet. A lot of mainboards were stored in back rooms, cupboards, or just piled up in the corner.
If you feel so guilty that you couldn't build a MAME cabinet without legally owning the roms I would tell you to go and buy the mainboard. You will find they run at no more than $5 each - at least for the games made in the 1980's and early 1990. As you move into the late 1990's you will start coming across games that also require a hard drive for storing game assets (tilesets, audio and video samples etc). It might be a little harder to get all the physical assets to justify to your needs (I think Killer Instinct used a hard drive).
Cheers,
Jaso
Jaso