Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie
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It is mentioned that no ROMS are included with Retropie, but that isn't COMPLETELY true. If you opt to install Ports, the shareware/demo files of those ports are automatically installed and are immediately playable.
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With the release of Box86 its possible to run games like Another Metroid 2 Remake on Raspberry Pi 4, including some Steam Games. I do wonder how to get something like this integrated into Retropie (or even if its possible).
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Added SynthCart for the Atari 2600
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Epic Games Store is giving away Samurai Shodown Neogeo Collection for free until the 18th of this month:
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/samurai-shodown-neogeo-collection/home
I'll check if there's a way to extract the ROMs from the .mbundle files. -
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@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 TroubleDOS: 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. -
@ts-x I played the 2600 Juno First and was thouroughly impressed. One of the better ports, and the control sluggishness that was a "feature" of the arcade game has been toned down to below the frustration level while still being a factor in play. I actually like it more than the arcade version.
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Amazon Prime subscribers are getting free (well, with subscription so not really free) SNK games throughout the year. They can be claimed on twitch.tv, the Twitch app, or the Amazon Games app. Many of them come with a zipped copy of the rom and the necessary Neo Geo files to get the emulator to run it. Unfortunately, it looks like several do not include the files, and since it isn't GoG you won't get the installer to run innoextract on.
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Also, I posted about this a while ago but I have now verified this. The Taito Legends collections on PC have playable roms in their Roms folder. It does require zipping the contents of each folder. I have only tested this on a handful of games from Taito Legends 2 (I don't have the first or third collection yet), but every one I tried worked.
Mind you, these collections are out of print, so it requires buying them from Ebay or Amazon. The third collection isn't even on Amazon, at least in the USA.
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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.
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@themazingness I keep an eye on GoG and Steam, often old games come up on 'sale' for free.
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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.
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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!
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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)
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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.
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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
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@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 TroubleDOS: 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
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@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.
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I discovered another great resource for extracting roms: https://gitlab.com/vaiski/romextract/-/tree/master
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I have a fix for this. My Sbcgaming.net site has a wiki that has game source lists. Both free and paid.
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