Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

TomCat

OK, so: I am building a retro pie machine and I need ROM's! So, I bought Sega Genesis / Mega Drive, Mega Man Legacy Collection and Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection off of Steam. I have read through many guides how to extract the ROM's from these games, but python wasn't really working, and also I'm pretty new to this stuff, so I don't understand a lot of the terminology. Now, is there anyone else that knows a good, simple, and straight-forward video or thread to figure out how to do this? Thanks!

VictimRLSH

Another thing to keep in mind is the gigantic number of programs for Apple, C64, VIC20, Amiga, and DOS that are shareware or public domain. While these might take more effort to get working, you will have an impressive game library that is completely legal. Redistribution rights would be another matter though...

TomCat

@victimrlsh Are you answering my question? I dont understand.

VictimRLSH

@tomcat It was a general addition to the thread for anyone looking to expand their legal game collection.

Clyde

@tomcat I can't suggest a(nother) guide, but you could open a separate thread about your specific problems to see if someone can help you with them.

Alban

World of Spectrum ORG for ZX Spectrum of Course :) add it to the main post :)

VictimRLSH

Don't forget classicdosgames.com where all the downloads are free, and while most of the games are partial demos, a full third of the hundreds of games are freeware or registered released into freeware. Most will also run on DosBox without much fuss. Unlike Cnet or Tucows, this site has ZERO ad popups and other annoyances to interfere with your downloading sprees.

Clyde

@VictimRLSH While I personally thank you for classicdosgames.com that I didn't know of, the TO @BenMcLean has set strict rules for his list:

@benmclean said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

to prevent the thread from becoming too ridiculously long for anyone to read, I am categorically excluding DOS games because the library of games which DOSBOX supports and which will run just fine through RetroPie is so staggeringly huge that we have no chance to even start on it. So when it comes to DOS games, I am only including DOS games which have modern source ports that run on RetroPie. Also, I am excluding anything for which the full experience is already accessible through the RetroPie setup script, so no Prince of Persia or Tyrian.

I'm mentioning this to remember anyone here of it, since it isn't mentioned in the opening post itself.

VictimRLSH

Well, phoo. You're no fun. :P

DougA

For those of you interested in Elite, the original space travel/trading game first published on the BBC Micro and then on many other computers in the 1980’s, it can be downloaded free, and presumably legally, from the original author, Ian Bell’s website for a number of computer systems.

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/

Clyde

@victimrlsh The messenger always gets the blame. 😢😉

VictimRLSH

Completely forgot about the Aminet!!! It is still alive and kicking with TENS OF THOUSANDS of Amiga programs, with over 7000 games. It has been a legal download site since the heyday of the Amiga.

http://aminet.net/tree

Download this and run it from Amiberry so you can unpack .lzh/.lha archives. http://aminet.net/util/arc/LhArcAmiga102.run

RetroBrews

Hi all,

I'm a big retro fan and trying to create a small project with games that can run on RetroPie with Raspberry Pi.
Main reason for creating the project is that the ROMs are all around the internet and I would like to create one place with a shell script to automate the installation of the games.

All the games/ROMs should be 100% legal! (if you find some which is not, please let me know immi!)
Check it out here:
Project site --> https://github.com/retrobrews
Project wiki --> https://github.com/retrobrews/installers/wiki

If you would like to contribute to this project and you will find some nice retro game, please let me know!
Thanks!

Retro Fan

RetroBrews

@tomcat check this --> https://github.com/retrobrews/installers

VictimRLSH

Is it too late to mention [censored] here? What is nice about that site is that THEY will emulate and stream roms they don't have permission to make downloadable.

dankcushions

@victimrlsh yes. that website has a special legal exemption for USA residents, but not international.

links to that, and all sites that host copyrighted software, are forbidden.

markwkidd

@retrobrews I love your project. However there is one major issue: in order to be ethical downloading content like this there has to be the creative commons, open source, or other permissive license with it. If there is no license saying otherwise, it's under copyright in my country (and most countries) and cannot be downloaded or shared.

Edit: Partly my motivation is to see if some of these can be added to the RetroArch built-in content downloader, but there is no way to add anything without appropriate licenses.

RetroBrews

@victimrlsh trying to get the approval from all owners/developers. Please read the wiki, I mentioned it there. Thanks.
Edit: I've probably answered for some other page in thread? ;)

RetroBrews

@markwkidd Thanks! These games were created by individuals some time ago... Some of them having lincences in txt file attached... but not all... Also tried to get all the approvals to be downloadable via page/ script.. Need to think now... ;)

markwkidd

@retrobrews Believe me I know from experience that a lot of great homebrew was never released with licenses. Homebrew developers are often not thinking of the long term.

Would you consider some means to make it clear which games have a license? Possible ways to do that would include

making a separate text file for the license games which is stored along with th existing files, something like "Gamename - License.txt". this way it would be easy to tell which games have a license and to sort them out.
putting the games with licenses into a folder together separate from the unlicensed homebrews

Please just take this as a friendly suggestion -- although it would be much easier to submit the licensed titles to the RA downloader with licenses included :)