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."

Comments

From who?

[TerminaMorte]

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.

Re:From who?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most entertaining part of this whole discussion is we're talking about games made in the 80's and 90's.

Whatever happened to the Public Domain? Or have we all forgotten, since there's basically nobody alive who's really experienced works in the public domain, that THE ENTIRE POINT OF COPYRIGHT IS TO ENRICH the public domain?

There are those who argue the age-old publishers cry "we need to protect scientific and cultural advancement" I say, without the public domain, there's no incentive not to reproduce the same things that were in the past, or not to sit on your hides renting technology. Such hypocrisy; to build off the technology of the past in order to monopolize the present. Publishers will never stop arguing "longer longer" and the people, well, they're the only reasonable one in the discussion.

Sony doesn't want you buying FF7 for the same reason Best Buy doesn't want a Sony TV on their shelves that is more than a year old. They don't want to dissuade your dollars from buying the new shiney. Although I do have to ask what kind of market it would be, especially for gaming, if the current cookie cutters had to compete with the old cookie cutters.

  I say, if there's works created in my lifetime will never enter into the public domain, then there is no point in participating in copyright.

Re:From who?

[Moryath]

Thanks to Disney and the corrupt shills that have taken over the government, games made in the 1980s won't "expire copyright" and return to the public domain until sometime after 2100. If there isn't yet ANOTHER "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" copyright extension passed in the meantime.

Part of the problem is that copyright doesn't take into account the life of the medium any more. Imagine what happens when most books are only available on e-readers and most e-readers no longer read the format the book was put out in (not so hard to imagine: think of some of the books that only exist on B&N Nook format and imagine that B&N goes under and nobody bothers to code a translator because "well most of it is on Kindle anyways", followed by B&N's servers shutting down and nobody having a remaining copy of the book anywhere).

The longer copyright terms are, the more information we LOSE to bad circumstances and bitrot. For one of the most famous cases, consider the missing episodes of Dr. Who - the BBC now has a comparatively huge bounty out for anyone who has them, even if it's a really crappy telecine.

Virtual Console...

[Windwraith]

That's the whole idea behind them, selling you ROMs and a license to use them.

Re:The entire industry is built on piracy

[somersault]

Yeah. Asking a question and ending with "I refuse to believe the truth!" isn't the best way to go.

If these are ancient games, and there is no other way to get them, then they're "abandonware". Just grow a pair and download them. It might be illegal, but I don't see how it's immoral. If the company that made the game is even still around, you could try contacting them for a license as AC suggested.

Re:The entire industry is built on piracy

[somersault]

By which time you will be dead..

Re:The entire industry is built on piracy

[Samantha Wright]

As will your children. And possibly your grandchildren.

Re:The entire industry is built on piracy

[dgatwood]

No, there should be a registration requirement, without which you cannot claim damages, and you should be required to update that registration in a timely manner. You know, like the way things used to work before we went all Berne-Convention-y in the 1970s.

The burden should be upon the copyright owner to facilitate contact by potential licensees, not on the potential licensee. After all, it is the copyright owner who stands to gain, not the licensee (who could almost invariably just ignore the copyright, and the licensor would never know).