Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

BenMcLean

We want to list stuff that's tested as working on RetroPie. I think I'll try some of the Amiga and Vectrex stuff, but the rest, who can test it?

BenMcLean

Added Myst: Masterpiece Edition

BenMcLean

For The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime, the files I extracted from my genuine Mac CDs work on RetroPie but the GOG version doesn't work. What gives!?

BenMcLean

From discussing this with people on the scummvm irc channel, I found out that Pegasus Prime on GOG has a bunch of ugly hacks to make it work which haven't been merged into ScummVM. People can play with data extracted from the Mac CDs but not from the GOG re-release. That's too bad. :(

BenMcLean

Quake Rally is here and here and Quake Matrix is here. Apparently, these mods were based on modifying the Quake 1 source code. Running them isn't out of the question, but would require getting the modified source and applying the modifications to the ports of Quake currently running on the Raspberry PI. I'd be interested in recruiting any interested parties for a collaborative project along these lines so that these awesome mods (and maybe Quake 2 as well) can shine again. It may also be worth looking into the possibility of porting SUPERQOT to the Raspberry PI, as it's just a modified version of the Darkplaces Quake engine, which I understand already works on Raspberry PI.

BenMcLean

Updated with the locations of ROMs on your Windows storage drive if you bought "SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" or "Atari Vault" on Steam.

backstander

This might be kind of along the sames lines as MOON8 for the NES...

Have you heard of the NES 8 BIT XMAS?
These are Christmas/Holidays themed homebrew NES games and they release a new cartridges every year. You can download a demo ROM for most of the years. I believe I first heard about these from @mediamogul.

Omnija

This post is deleted!

BenMcLean

Gotta add STREEMERZ
https://www.fauxgame.com/

caver01

@benmclean I noticed that there is not an ARCADE section to this post. Since running MAME is a very common goal of RetroPie users, I would suggest adding Gridlee, a game that was created with emulation and distribution in mind from the get-go. It is a great one for setup and testing of MAME.

BenMcLean

@caver01 said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

@benmclean I noticed that there is not an ARCADE section to this post. Since running MAME is a very common goal of RetroPie users, I would suggest adding Gridlee, a game that was created with emulation and distribution in mind from the get-go. It is a great one for setup and testing of MAME.

Added! :)

jonnykesh

@BenMcLean Here is a link to a set of homebrew ColecoVision ROMs. Some fantastic clones and great original games. http://www.colecovision.ca/roms_homebrew_0-9.php

Clyde

All of the Neo Geo games at GOG seem to work flawlessly on RetroPie 4.3 (I only checked their attract mode and some minutes into actual gameplay). So, I think they would fit nicely into this topic's list.

You'll need the neogeo.zip and [romname].zip (e.g. pulstar.zip) from the GOG installer file. The Linux .sh installers are just zip files you should be able to extract with any zip tool. On Linux/Retropie, this could be unzip:

unzip pulstar_en_gog_1_15377.sh -d .

Mind the "." at the end, it means "current directory" in Linux. The option -d determines the directory to extract to. You could also use another extraction path after the -d option. The neogeo.zip and [romname].zip are located in the subdirectory data/noarch/game/ .

Alternatively, you could extract the Windows .exe installers with the tool innoextract that's available for Windows and Linux. For Pulstar, the command on Linux/Retropie would be:

innoextract "setup_pulstar_gog-1_(14775).exe"

Here, the neogeo.zip and [romname].zip are located in the subdirectory app/ .

Important: You have to put the filename into quotationmarks if it contains special characters like "(" or ")" that are used as operators by the Linux shell itself. Otherwise, you'd have to put a backslash "\" before every single special character, e.g. "\(" and "\)" in the example above.

edit: According to @Eckaji, some Windows versions of the GOG Neo Geo games are modified and won't work in Retropie. So, you should prefer the Linux installers.

edit 2: Some of them are only listed for Windows, but all of those have (not officially supported) Mac & Linux versions in their "Goodies" download section. Thanks to @Eckaji for making me aware of this.

BenMcLean

ColecoVision NORTH: Added.

Neo Geo games on GOG: Added.

Thanks

Clyde

@benmclean Thank you, the same to you! What do you think about a link to my post above for instructions about extracting the roms?

BenMcLean

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

@benmclean Thank you, the same to you! What do you think about a link to my post above for instructions about extracting the roms?

Sure OK.

Clyde

@benmclean Thanks again. :)

bense2k

Mega Man Legacy Collection and how to extract the NES roms here

BenMcLean

@bense2k said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:

Mega Man Legacy Collection and how to extract the NES roms here

Great find! See also the creator's awesome GDC talk where he tells companies to be sensible about emulation for a change.

People are perfectly happy to pay for ROMs if you give them a way to do it. But make no mistake: we will in fact get the ROMs one way or another, so game companies choices are to 1. Profit from this or 2. Not profit from this. There's no such thing as a third option in which people don't get the ROMs and anyone who thinks there should be can go to hell.

I added the Mega Man Legacy Collection.

Clyde

@benmclean I agree with you in so far that I buy any roms legally I can get my hands on. But to justify using illegal roms by saying "we will get the ROMs one way or the other" is a lame excuse for ignoring other's rights, in this case those of the copyright holders. But if you ignore other's rights that easily, why should anyone respect yours?