Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

themazingness

All this information is about purchasable games:

farmerbb (Steam user) has a method to extract console roms from the Contra and Castlevania collections on Steam. The arcade roms can't be extracted afaik.

Atari Vault now has a DLC expansion that has added new Atari 2600 and 5200 games.

GoG has a lot of DOS games. Steam has several too, particularly from Piko Interactive LLC. They are already cheap but even cheaper when on sale. Not all of them are DOS games though. I know Water Margin is Sega Genesis, but I don't see a ROM for it and I'm not sure it is extractable.

Namco Museum Archives Vol 1 and 2 were released recently on Steam. Older Namco Museum titles had arcade versions, but these are the NES versions of the games. Steam user Paratech2008 claims the roms can be extracted.

VictimRLSH

@themazingness I keep an eye on GoG and Steam, often old games come up on 'sale' for free.

Clyde

As for DOS games, the TO @BenMcLean said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

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.

That said, I don't remember him forbidding anyone to mention them here; he just won't include them in the opening post.

VictimRLSH

Just played the Halo2600 thinking it was going to be a pathetic joke. OMG that game is GREAT!

You get weapon upgrades, unlockable areas, defense buffs, terrain effects, different types of enemies, an actual boss, and REAL CHALLENGE. The best use of 4k of code I have seen. Highly recommended!

themazingness

I found the instructions for extracting the Castlevania and Contra roms (excluding the arcade roms, sadly) from the Konami collections:

[https://steamcommunity.com/app/1018020/discussions/0/1629665087674849653/](link url)

themazingness

I found this thread on GoG: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/rom_based_gog_games_compatible_with_third_party_emulators_thread/post14. Most of it is about the SNK games, but it includes some Amiga, ScummVM, and additional MAME games available on GoG. There is a script there for extracting the Raiden from Raiden Legacy and Double Dragon 1 and 2 from Double Dragon Trilogy.

themazingness

I asked farmerbb if he has any more extraction guides. Apparently he has a whole project on github. You may want to check it out because there are even more ROM resources and he has more planned: https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/wiki

BenMcLean

@ts-x said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

@BenMcLean, here are some other games that are worth adding to the list...

-Free-
Atari 2600: EMR II, Halo 2600, Juno First, Oystron, Skeleton+, Spies in the Night, Stay Frosty 2, Toyshop Trouble

DOS: Ancient Domains of Mystery (I know this list doesn't normally include DOS games, but this is a well loved ASCII freeware game that's worth a look)

Intellivision: 2048, Flapee Bird, Freewheeling Games Free ROM Downloads, Intellivision Game Vault (numerous games in a single location, this can replace the existing Hotel Bunny and Ultimate Pong links), FYI- the DK Arcade link is no longer working and Ms. Pac Man is no longer free

NES: Alter Ego, Block Dude, Chicken of the Farm, Lan Master, Nova the Squirrel

Genesis: Old Towers, Yazzie

GBA: AGB Hack, AGB Rogue, AGB Trek, POWDER

-Paid-
Intellivision: D2K Arcade, Ms. Pac-Man, Intellivision.us (various game for sale and a few freebies- Ms. Night Stalker, Mystic Castle and Super Chef BT are must buys for any Intellivision fan. Samegame & Robots is really good as well). Note that the majority of the original Intellivision releases can be legally acquired by purchasing the PC version of Intellivision Greatest Hits (10 or 25 game version), Intellivision Lives, and/or Intellivision Rocks. They all show up periodically on popular auction sites, etc. and the game ROMS can be extracted from the CD using a few simple DOS commands.

Whoah ... I think we may need to replace this post with an actual wiki somewhere. Anyone interested in helping with that?

Also, is there any way to set this forum to have proper web accessibility? It is very limited in the font sizes that work right

VictimRLSH

@BenMcLean Maybe we need install scripts to add legally downloadable content collections to Retropie. Just like installing all the Ports currently automatically adds the demo content.

EDIT: This of course would need careful curating so as to only include material that the original publishers officially release into public domain and also provide an official download link to. "Abandonware" wouldn't cut it, as there would have been no official release and to obtain the game, scripts would have to download from sites of questionable legitimacy.

themazingness

I discovered another great resource for extracting roms: https://gitlab.com/vaiski/romextract/-/tree/master

SgtJimmyRustles

I have a fix for this. My Sbcgaming.net site has a wiki that has game source lists. Both free and paid.

https://wiki.sbcgaming.net/index.php?title=Game_Sources

thelostsoul

@SgtJimmyRustles The Wiki is a great resource!

SgtJimmyRustles

@thelostsoul Thank you, me and the other members of my discord/subreddit really worked hard with gathering up that data. I had to port it over from the old wiki provider.

A Former User

This post is deleted!

themazingness

Edit: The only 2 games that can be extracted from this list (as far as I can tell) are Shock Troopers and Metal Slug 3. Use the dotemu2mame.js tool to do so.

These games were just made available to claim for Amazon Prime subscribers.

Gaurou: Mark of the Wolves
The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match Final Edition
Shock Troopers
The King of Fighters 97 Global Match
The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
Samurai Shodown V Special
Metal Slug 3
The Last Blade 2

simpleethat

@themazingness do you know if those are permanent? Like will I be able to download them whenever or is it more like Prime Video where you can access them during a certain period and then you can't get them anymore?

Thorr69

@simpleethat If you claim the game on Twitch, they are forever part of your Twitch library. I imagine it's true for other formats as well.

simpleethat

@Thorr69 I figured that, thanks for the clarification.

themazingness

Konami recently released their old Konami Collector's Series: Castlevania & Contra over on GoG. According to this discussion, games can be extracted from it using a hex editor: https://www.gog.com/forum/konami_collectors_series_castlevania_contra/rom_files

For some reason Jackal is in the executable but isn't accessible from the application so that may not fall under "(legally) acquire." It's unclear if they all work at this time, but two of the games included (aside from Jackal) are working and the others should but seem to be having trouble at least with the one user who has attempted it.

thelostsoul

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

For some reason Jackal is in the executable but isn't accessible from the application so that may not fall under "(legally) acquire."

I would argue the opposite. You paid for a product and got it, unless it was a mistake and should not be there. But I am really curious now, about such cases in general, on other product types.