Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

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.

themazingness

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

@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.

Yeah, it really does make me wonder. Atari Vault is another interesting case. On the one hand, whether or not you buy the expansion the roms for those games are on your computer if you have the base game. On the other hand, you didn't purchase them so are you entitled to play them? You didn't put them on your computer after all. I would think the answer is no. Jackal's situation though, to me that seems more of an odd Easter egg that never got the green light. I think I agree with you, but I don't know really.

Clyde

@thelostsoul Actually in the case of software, you only acquire the license to use it. What you can download doesn't matter if the license coming with it doesn't cover its use (unless of course it covers "everything in this package" or something like that).

That said, is the license for that bundle accessible somewhere?

themazingness

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

@thelostsoul Actually in the case of software, you only acquire the license to use it. What you can download doesn't matter if the license coming with it doesn't cover its use (unless of course it covers "everything in this package" or something like that).

That said, is the license for that bundle accessible somewhere?

It's an old collection from 2002 that was on CD ROM. I'm not sure about the license agreement. It is DRM free being on GoG, but that doesn't tell us the other legal terms. I may buy at some point but the collections on Steam have the same games and more aside from Jackal.

themazingness

Second Dimension RetroPak Vol. 1 on Steam has NES roms, no extraction necessary. Simply rename the .dat files to .nes.

Edit: Also, it looks like they sell their games individually on the developer's website, ROMs and carts. This includes games not on the collection, some of which are Sega Genesis games.

BenMcLean

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

Actually in the case of software, you only acquire the license to use it. What you can download doesn't matter if the license coming with it doesn't cover its use.

It is my understanding that this ridiculous claim made by the evil mega-corporations in their bogus "end user license agreements" has yet to be tested in court. EULAs could just as easily say, "By clicking OK, you agree to surrender your first born child to be devoured by Satan" or any other arbitrary text and it would have the same untested legal status.