ROM greediness
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There will always be completists who want every ROM, alt and hack. That's just the nature of people. I just think it is total overkill. No-one has the time to play all these games and managing and searching them must be a nightmare.Each to their own I suppose. I try to stick to a manageable number per system. Even on MAME I only have about 160 or so and I think that's too many.
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I started building my pi out with every possible game for every system that was well emulated. The roms were all so small, it was no problem putting 4,000 games on a 16GB card (with room to spare, mind you). I thought, "no matter what game I might hear about or be interested in playing, it will just be right there, ready to go at my fingertips.
But then, yeah, every other gamelist was over 600 titles long, and a pain to find anything worth playing. Then I had to question why I had every Madden when I only like '93 (answer: because they fit and why not?). And over time, just "because I could" no longer sounded like a good enough reason.
Now I have about 1,200 games (console and arcade roms) total. I have no more than 250 games from any one system, and most have 100 or less. The menus load fast, are easy to navigate, and are chock full of only quality playable games.
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@Arcuza said in ROM greediness:
When I got my first broad band (768 Kbps) I decided to download every MP3 I could get hold on, major regret when 95% of my 20 GB HDD had music I never listened to.
When I got upgraded to 10 Mbps I decided to download every DivX I could get hold on, major regret when 95% of my 1 TB HDD had movies I never watched.
When I got my first RPI I decided to download every ROM I could get hold on, major regret when 95% of my 32 GB SD-card had games I never played. And it took forever to scrape and scroll through game lists.
Nowadays, I have grown up, and I do only play the games I owned, and still owns. Roughly 20 per system, for 7 systems.
Isn't it funny how history repeats itself?
Glad to hear that I'm not the only one lol. Couple years ago I leeched an entire MP3 FTP of a friend of mine who ran a 0day warez box. The entire collection was like 2TB. It took me a while to get everything. The funny part is my DL speed was 600kb per seconds. One day when I was on my leeching mission, I was checking on how fast it was and the speed was 1.5mb per seconds. My ISP upgraded all the inet speeds for all their subs. Now my dl speed is 15mb per seconds the upload is only 1.5mb per sec. I needed all the music for my pirate station lol.
For MAME I have downloaded the entire romset as well as for the NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA and Genesis. To me it's not about having them but it's about finding good games, sometimes I will just start a random game and see how it is. Beside those romsets are not that big except for the MAME one. I have the USA N64 romset on my PC but I only have a few N64 games on the Pi. Same story for the PSX.
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Cheaper storage has a lot to answer for. It is truly amazing that 65,000 (or whatever) games can fit on something that's half the size of a postage stamp.
I'm in the process of tidying my games selection to the stuff I had as a kid (if I can remember) and the so-called "must haves" and classics for the main emulators, adding others as and when. I've built (almost finished) a bartop and it's just a pain for others having so many to scroll through (some are unsuitable and/or won't work anyway).
In reality I'm sure the non-hoarders on here will have them all stashed somewhere.
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I went through the emulators I'd like to use, and looked up a few "top games for console X" type articles that covered those systems. I combined that with my memory of what I used to play, and what I thought my kids might like, and got a pretty manageable set of ROMS from that (about 6GB I think, including some larger PSX games, otherwise it would be a whole lot smaller). Took some research and thought time, but it was worth it.
After learning and playing with various tweaks in my first install, I started over from scratch with the new v4.2 last night. Added a small list of tweaks from the tidy list I kept, then added my ROMS. Didn't take long at all.
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i'm actually just about to build a pi3 setup for my brother, who isn't so tech-savy or a huge gamer, so i think for him i might limit the roms to either games we had as children, so the 32gb card might be pretty empty. but i think there's something to be said for the 'personal touch' :)
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I downloaded every ps1 game rated 7/10 or better on IGN, now I am at 600+ games, so I guess I am a hoarder? Lol
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This time around I've needed to get whole MAME sets simply because the ROMS worked with a minimum of fuss. I've also collected complete sets for other consoles. My intention is to spend a few evenings working through the lists to see what I want to keep and what to put aside.
That said, I've a 128gb USB stick to play with...
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@dankcushions The personal touch is definitely a winner. I did the same for my brother for his birthday last year. I added 50 or so Spectrum games from childhood to a Pi Zero and bought the cheapest wireless keyboard i could find ( I am generous). He was pleased as punch.
He hadn't played any game for 30+ years....My sides were splitting after watching his (lack of) gaming skills.
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On my vids I'll show 1000s of games...mainly because that is what a lot of people want to see. On my personal PI....I HAD a bazillion games...eventually got tired of hunting down my favorites though and only have a handful now. Everything I have on the system I game on only takes up 20gb on a 32gb sd card. Wouldn't even be that big if it weren't for those big ole cd based systems.
I call the folks that have to have everything "completionists" They just want as complete a system as they can build. That said the advantage in at least poking around in all those games is you may find something you really like....that was unobtainable in the day, or today.Ideally I think I will load my home system up with everything I have (1.5 tb) for poking around and finding new stuff. Then finishing my gamegear project for a mobile solution...and only keeping my must haves on it.....could prolly even setup an rsync script to keep my save games/states the same between the home system and mobile system. Could make a little progress on final fantasy 7 on the bus ride home....and start right back to it on my tv after supper....if I ever stop writing scripts and getting involved in other projects that is ;-)
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In defence of "greediness", I don't have the 1000+ mame ROMS in my memory card since there are many revisions and some are just crap (still have some 300 though), but I do have (and think it's valid to) complete romsets of many home consoles. Several reasons:
-I like to discover "new" games by picking at random, specially when im too tired (or too drunk) to engane full on experiences on my PS4.
-When I read about a game, or someone mentions one I don't happen to know, I can just switch my Raspi on and check it out straight away. It's convenient.
-My fav/childhood games might not be my friend's, so bigger chances to make people excited about Retropie. Many don't even understand the concept of emulation and how it's possible to have so many games in a little box. It's just nice to have friends over and look at their faces when they're browsing through so many games. "Ah, you have that too!!!" If I'm not gonna play a ROM, someone eventually will.
-Many of these friends who are seeing it for the first time, obviously want one too. I tell them what they need to buy and clone my image for them. Done it 4 times already, don't need to bother loading more games.
-How can I know which games I like on systems I've never owned? For example, find the thick of what's on PC Engine to be fairly good, some actually great. In doubt, they're all there :)
-I also see my Retropie as a retogaming encyclopedia. It's just nice to browse through all games, learning about releases, years, box arts, etc. It's just useless, geeky knowledge made convenient.
-Finally, I have a 128GB card, but older systems take almost no space. In contrast, I only have the best PSX titles (it would be senseless to have everything for it given the size of the library and files themselves), and as for PSP, N64 and Dreamcast, the ones that work. -
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
As for my own opinion, I look at my collection like an interactive museum. Being able to fully explore the birth and evolution of an entire creative medium in such a hands on way never gets old to me. Even playing an evolutionary dead end like the wholly unique NES pinball/role playing game, 'Pinball Quest', adds to the overall context of how all this insanity became a multi-billion dollar industry and I find that to be endlessly fascinating. Also, I like the funny noises.
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@mediamogul wonderfully put!
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Yeah, he's good in 'Romancing the Stone' too.
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@mediamogul I understand your point.
For me, I just can't stand the games I don't have a historic relationship with...
I think I have tried to get into Chronotrigger at least 20 times last 10 years, but never endured more than 20 minutes into the game.
I think it's a combination of lack of young age memories forgiving the game (I still love Blitz for Vic 20), and the fact that I haven't spent $50 on the game forcing me to play through it even though it sucks. (I still like Chip 'n Dale for NES)
Or just the fact that today's games are fast paced quick rewarding, which makes games of the 90s much more time consuming relatively.
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@Arcuza said in ROM greediness:
Or just the fact that today's games are fast paced quick rewarding, which makes games of the 90s much more time consuming relatively.
I'd say the opposite is true. Older games are harder and require more dedication, yes, but largely they are dip in and out experiences. Newer games are very time consuming (around 20 hours becoming a standard, with RPGs and open worlds clocking at 40 or 60) and since most now are also story driven, they require you to be emotionally invested somehow.
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I'm a big SNES fan. Something about the games are just so amazing and pleasing!
Unfortunately, I was never alive during the time of the SNES. So I got some ROMs that allowed me to play these games.
Hopefully in the future I might buy an SNES and purchase those carts.
The thing is though; I have 50 games.
Maybe a little overkill here, so I was thinking or reducing it to 30 soon. -
@fabio78 You're right, I was referring to smart phone games like Candy Crush Saga and alikes.
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@itsnitro That's my biggest concern. Manufacturers will never sell a lifetime license to a game regardless of platform. They want to resell the same game in the retro shop of newer consoles. Which of course will never allow anyone to consolidate all their owned games into a single solution.
If I could have bought a lifetime do-whatever-yo-want license for my 30 NES-games, 40 SNES-games, 20 GB-games and so on cartridges I would do it right away.
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The only thing im guilty of hoarding would probly be PSX games i have about 150 though in my defense ive played and completed every one infact my collection on my pi is only sizable due to romhacks currently it stands at
PSX 150 (played all of them)
GBA 100 (im weeding out some games from this though should end up around 60 70 when im done)
SNES 80(about 30 or so are romhacks/translations) Terranigma is probly my all time favorite game
Megadrive 140(got a lot of romhacks and a lot of love for this system)
MAME 120(made sure i only have 1 game revision multiple entries for the same game in emulationstaton piss me off)
MSX 2(i like the original metal gears)
NGP/C 5thats pretty much it barring a few ports aswell i love older games in general and even today i still find myself playing more than recent games not that i dislike them mind you but i find if i need to relax or enjoy myself for a little bit its easier to do so with my retro collection than my modern ones
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