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​Game hunting – principles and methods!

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When it comes to emulation, downloading and setting up emulators is the easy part – how do you find the games and is it legal?

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The answers to these questions are: quite easily, and probably not!  There is a moral maze issue here, emulating games preserves them for future generations and costs little to the original owners.  In fact, in some cases it has allowed the original Intellectual Property Rights holders to recover and re-issue some titles – Nintendo have used dumped Roms for games they lost to include in their recent mini consoles.  In most cases distribution, and in particular looking to profit from distribution, is the main area where you are likely to be straying close to the line. 

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As a rule, I stay away from emulating titles that are still available for sale, such as PC Games and current generation console releases, but that is a personal position – I don’t judge!  But where these games are old and cannot be purchased or obtained through normal routes, I think it’s fair game – for personal use only…

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In terms of availability a Google search will generally give you many options for downloading Roms – but as we know download links are always a bit risky from un-trusted sites – you would be taking risks.  But I have done this in the past (although a lot of the great Rom sharing websites have been closed due to cease and desist letters – primarily from Nintendo!) and lived to tell the tale.

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If you’re looking to start your Rom collection today, or looking for a specific console, games or Bios, where should you start?

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1.  Internet Archive (https://archive.org/)

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These wonderful, wonderful people have been archiving digital content - well, forever.  Although not absolutely exhaustive they do hold a large number of system roms in their archive.  These can be downloaded as a set or in some cases individual Roms (if you have storage issues...), depending on the system.

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In future, where I have found a link to Roms for my emulation guides on the Archive.org site, I will leave a link in the companion web page to the video - these are listed under the Retro gaming page (top left....).

 

2.  Azvarel Retro Gamer (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOu56sNffE5cmwpd2ylExGQ)

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Provides many game packs and helpfully posts a video showing the content of each pack and providing a download link.  There is a large back catalogue of games and machines here – although primarily created for use with Batocera (a Linux based frontend for emulation, much like RetroPie) Roms are Roms and they are all pretty much here.  The packs usually include necessary Bios files for emulation.  This is great if you are after specific game Roms or consoles.

 

If you’re looking for a complete package then my next two recommendations provide a full setup for emulation, including frontend and images, videos and other stuff.  Even if you’re not looking for the full setup both provide add on games packs that are a great resource for the emulation.  Given the size of downloads both utilise torrent downloads via a member only website.

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3.  The CoinOps Project

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Originally started for Xbox this now provides a frontend utilising RetroFE and will give you an absolutely first-class frontend with all the emulators and game Roms set up and ready to play – just plug in a controller and your away!  You’ll need to join the Discord channel and then request access to the Back-Ups.me website in order to access download torrents (you will also need to have a torrent client - I have historically used QBittorrent, but other clients are available).  These packs can also be found on the ArcadePunks website – but as they advise these are generally missing bits and not the quickest and easiest source of this material.

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This is an active community providing packs for all consoles and arcade systems and iterative improvements to the frontend.

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The Back-ups.me website also hosts a number of other sources of Roms, including full MAME Romsets and other emulation resources - it's well worth joining the discord and getting access if your looking to expand your library.

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4.  Colpipes 1978/CP78 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0rCEx0wj9Nxzg4SXasbQA)

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Has been around the emulation scene for a number for years, originally providing packs for Launchbox/Big Box (an excellent Emulation Front End and the one I favour for my Arcade Cabinet builds and PC Desktop).  Recently has provided complete emulation system setups (CP78, CP78 Launchbox and now Complete Play) utilising different front ends but underpinned by Rocket Launcher for a lot of the grunt work.

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These are fantastic, especially if you want all the hard yards won for you, alternatively you can extract the Roms you want/need and put in your own setup.  Again, these are hosted on Back-ups.me and there is a comprehensive guide and support group on the Discord

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These people are doing this for love and the community, if you choose to utilise these channels then respect the community and their rules, don’t grab and run (ensure you play your part by contributing to the torrent download for others) and give credit and thanks where it is due.

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I do hope this is useful, feel free to leave questions and comments under any of my emulation guide videos and I will try and provide as much advice as I can.

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Until the next time - Go Well!

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