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Archive.org Hosts Massive Collection of MAME ROMs

Posted by timothy on from the tie-a-yellow-onion-on-that-old-oak-tree dept.

An anonymous reader writes to point out a giant gift to the world from the Internet Archive: a massive collection of MAME ROMs, playable in your browser using Javascript Mess. From the blog post announcing this extension of the already mind-blowing Internet Archive: "Like the Historical Software collection, the Console Living Room is in beta – the ability to interact with software in near-instantaneous real-time comes with the occasional bumps and bruises. An army of volunteer elves are updating information about each of the hundreds of game cartridges now available, and will be improving them across the next few days. Sound is still not enabled, but is coming soon. Faster, more modern machines and up-to-date browsers work best with the JSMESS emulator."

4 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. 42.8GB ZIP by qubezz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately, the only format they released the ROMs in is one huge ZIP file. Even the torrent, where torrent software might have allowed picking-and-choosing individual ROM files, is only the ridiculous 42.8GB ZIP.

    I'm still looking for a list of files, but for that size, it might be EVERY MAME ROM in the MAME database of over 7000 ROMS.

    1. Re:42.8GB ZIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Seem you can download indivual zips from the big zip file from https://archive.org/download/MAME_0.151_ROMs/MAME_0.151_ROMs.zip/ and then clicking on an individual file. Seems they forgot to include a link in the description.

  2. Re:ROMs have always been a gray area... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://archive.org/about/dmca.php

    They seem to have an exemption.

  3. Re:ROMs have always been a gray area... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Informative

    I can vouch for this as me and a programmer friend looked into recreating the days of shareware for the current gen. What we found was a minefield where even if the company closed its doors you had pieces of the company going here and there and nobody knew who the fuck, what the fuck, or where the fuck some 20+ year old game went. The few we did find wanted more money for the rights to distribute the SHAREWARE version of their game than a triple A title from the period could ever hope to make, we are talking about $100K+ for just the limited locked shareware even though we were doing it non profit. That is of course if they would even speak to you, we got many that were like "Oh we have zero plans for it but we might do something someday" so they refused to allow anybody to sell or distribute the shareware version.

    The saddest part? We were told flat footed if we would just make it in China all our problems would go away. this is why i think China will be the next hotbed of innovation, as unlike the USA you can actually make things without having to spend the majority of your capital on lawyers.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.