Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?

[Alturis]

I know there have been other threads about where one might acquire legal copies of games and usually the answer is links to home brew games or in some cases collections of old console games like atari that can be pulled from a legal copy from steam etc.

But what I was wondering is if anyone has ever looked into or found a way to actually purchase a copy of the original arcade roms for games that just cant be found any other way these days?

Like what if a company wanted to have a legal arcade machine its in break room with games like joust, galaga, pac-man, defender, etc, etc...

Is there NO legal way to purchase such a thing?

[herb_fargus]

@alturis outside of Sega and Homebrew I don't know of many if any services that allow to just purchase the ROM itself. Generally they package their emulators and roms up in a binary and sell that instead often as standalone ports of each game.

[matchaman]

To this day, I still don't understand why no companies legally sell ROMs from properties they own. One may answer "because they're already online illegally and none would pay" but that doesn't make any sense because... pretty much everything is.

[herb_fargus]

@matchaman to be fair it's a maze of licensing and distribution but even then it's much more profitable for Nintendo to sell you the same game in various forms of "remastering" in multiple throwaway consoles so it isn't transferrable to their next throwaway console. It's really actually quite brilliant- getting people to pay for the same game multiple times.

[zerojay]

@herb_fargus said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:

@matchaman to be fair it's a maze of licensing and distribution but even then it's much more profitable for Nintendo to sell you the same game in various forms of "remastering" in multiple throwaway consoles so it isn't transferrable to their next throwaway console. It's really actually quite brilliant- getting people to pay for the same game multiple times.

That's not at all how it works and "remastering" is far far more expensive than you realize.

The real answer is it opens them up to legal liabilities.

[herb_fargus]

@zerojay said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:

That's not at all how it works

So Nintendo doesn't charge you for the same game multiple times?

[zerojay]

@herb_fargus said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:

@zerojay said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:

That's not at all how it works

So Nintendo doesn't charge you for the same game multiple times?

That's not a remaster.

[PiBoy]

There is a way to purchase "legal ROMs". The NES and SNES Classic Editions are examples of that. As are those Plug n' Play consoles with Pac-Man or Centipede on them.

Those products are licensed and tested accordingly. One reason for not having [your favorite SNES game] on the SNES Classic Edition is licensing. Chrono Trigger isn't available on that console because SquareEnix owns it. They would have to license its use on the SNES CE. They won't, because they believe they will make more money selling it again on the PS4/Xbone/PC/Cellphone, etc.

Part of the problem too, is that those emulators, no matter how simple, must be tested. You don't just wrap Dark Forces in a PS1 emulator container and sell it on the PS4's storefront. Same with the classic edition consoles, or the Plug n Play devices. It actually costs money to emulate old software correctly. Companies don't want to sell you a ROM without an effective way of running it. They don't want to support it's use on RetroPie, Snes9x for Windows, Android, or whatever. It's not profitable.

That's part of the SNES/NES Classic Edition's success. Damn good emulation with little to no issues. Just plug, and play!

[Eldrethor]

@piboy That and the Nintendo name alone guarantees you that it's going to be a reliable, user-friendly product. They can make some very disagreeable business choices, but I've seldom ever had a problem with their first-party products.

[herb_fargus]

@zerojay semantics

[mediamogul]

@eldrethor said in Avenues to acquire legal copies of old roms?:

They can make some very disagreeable business choices, but I've seldom ever had a problem with their first-party products.

Even the VirtualBoy (arguably their worst product ever) was very well made. It was just ill-conceived.