Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

caver01

@benmclean While moving content from my Riven CD-ROMs (that I have had packed away in a box for decades) into SCUMMVM, I noticed a bunch of free and legal titles avaiable for download here. The accompanying detail is as follows:

Game downloads currently include eight freeware games 'Beneath a Steel Sky', 'Dreamweb', 'Flight of the Amazon Queen', 'Lure of the Temptress', 'Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back', 'Soltys', 'Sfinx' and 'Mystery House'.
Also, you can find cutscene packs recommended for use when playing any of the Broken Sword games or Feeble Files under ScummVM.

This would make a good addition to the initial post.

BillyH

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

That's a cool Mega Drive collection, if I don't notice any problems with the emulator on RetroPie then I'll definitely buy that collection when it goes on a sale again.

Well, I got a Steam mail that items on my wish list were on sale.

The Mega Drive collection is on sale now for just under €15 (otherwise known as a 75% discount) and I did manage to try the Mega Drive emulator so I guess I'm buying the collection now and putting it on my RetroPie.

mitu

@billyh Nice catch !

EDIT: Seems the Steam has a sale at the time, the MegaMan Collection is also 60% off (like 6 bucks now).

BillyH

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

SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics on Steam gives you a folder called "Uncompressed ROMs" which contains DRM-free ready-to-play ROM files for many SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis titles including the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

Uhm, just a quick note: I bought this and of the 59 games in the collection, only 6 are ready-to-play, the others are *.68K and *.SGD, which the emulators from RetroPie can't handle.

~~Of course, owning the collection does make it legal for me to download and use *.smd ROMs, which is exactly what I will do now, but~~ I just wanted to let people who want the collection know in advance that it's not just pay and play.

Edit: a search for a way to convert the files made me stumble over a Steam post where someone apparently just renamed the files.

Tried this myself and can confirm: all the *.68K and *.SGD files can be renamed *.smd and they'll work with RetroPie, I now see the whole list at least and the few that I tried worked fine. So there's that.

That leaves Sonic CD out in the cold then, which is the only one that doesn't have an uncompressed ROM (or a ROM at all, for that matter).

mediamogul

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

Of course, owning the collection does make it legal for me to download and use *.smd ROMs

It really only means you'd have a defense to work with if SEGA ever wanted to take you to court. It's not probable that they would go after individual users, but if they ever did, they would likely argue that the original license, or that of the Steam collection only covers expressly intended use as being acceptable.

BenMcLean

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

It really only means you'd have a defense to work with if SEGA ever wanted to take you to court. It's not probable that they would go after individual users, but if they ever did, they would likely argue that the original license, or that of the Steam collection only covers expressly intended use as being acceptable.

The Steam installer creates a folder literally called "Uncompressed ROMs" for your convenience. SEGA is doing the right thing here.

mediamogul

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

SEGA is doing the right thing here.

It certainly does seem so. It's nice to see a game company allowing a little legal breathing room in good faith.

Alturis

I was curious so I tried out Cave in
http://www.atari2600homebrew.com/cave-in.html

But it just gets stuck on the main screen. Hitting select and start doesn't progress past there.

Edit: My bad. Looks like the game was written to just take joystick button press to start the game. No support for select and start.

SgtJimmyRustles

@billyh

Sonic CD; Is it the Taxman remake or is it the original?

BillyH

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

@billyh

Sonic CD; Is it the Taxman remake or is it the original?

Don't know but it doesn't have a ROM built in, it's a separate game from the SEGA collection room.

Can't check for you either as unfortunately I was disappointed with the non-Sonic games in the collection, so I asked for a refund. Having only played Sonic & Knuckles of this collection before, I guess I expected too much.

matchaman

What about [removed]? They host ROMsets via a legal loophole (out of print data preservation). Nintendo tried multiple times to take the files down without success and no-intro sets have been available there since 2008!

I'm not implying that this makes using copyrighted material legal by any means, however, it appears to be legal for [removed] (which is a public library) to contain and distribute them freely for preservation purposes.

rpieguy

@markwkidd Intellivision Yogi's Frustration, Adventures of Tron, and Choplifter are neither modern or freeware and the links are not legal sources. Yogi's Frustration and Adventures of Tron were programmed for Mattel Electronics in the early 1980s. Today they belong to Intellivision Productions. Choplifter was programmed in 1989/90 for INTV Corporation and either belongs to Intellivision Productions or the developer Realtime Associates.

You can find sources for Intellivision rom downloads here. https://www.reddit.com/r/intellivision/comments/5nlhvg/download_intellivision_homebrews_rom_files/

mediamogul

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

Intellivision Yogi's Frustration, Adventures of Tron, and Choplifter are neither modern or freeware and the links are not legal sources.

They're now removed.

@matchaman

They host ROMsets via a legal loophole (out of print data preservation).

The loophole you're referring to is exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is a United States copyright law. As such, the exemption doesn't extend past the US. Advocating the site's use in an international venue such as this forum could conceivably borrow trouble we don't want.

dankcushions

@matchaman the legal loophole is US law only. plus, like you say i think the legal implications for (US) users of said archived software aren't entirely clear.

my suspicion is that this will be shutdown at some point, as soon as some product that uses those roms becomes widespread, creating enough noise.

markwkidd

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

@markwkidd Intellivision Yogi's Frustration, Adventures of Tron, and Choplifter are neither modern or freeware and the links are not legal sources. Yogi's Frustration and Adventures of Tron were programmed for Mattel Electronics in the early 1980s. Today they belong to Intellivision Productions. Choplifter was programmed in 1989/90 for INTV Corporation and either belongs to Intellivision Productions or the developer Realtime Associates.

You can find sources for Intellivision rom downloads here. https://www.reddit.com/r/intellivision/comments/5nlhvg/download_intellivision_homebrews_rom_files/

I think you are mistaken. Those titles are modern freeware.

Intellivision Production has reissued some titles that were homebrews as well as ones that were either never released or are out of print. Some titles you have to buy from them, but many they give away.

You can download Yogi's Frustration, for example, directly from their site. Look towards the bottom of the page, next to where it reads "Play it on your computer! Download the ROM and use the Nostalgia or jzIntv emulator to enjoy an original 80's game again.": [Removed pending further investigation]

Same with Choplifter: [Removed pending further investigation]

@mediamogul I think you were a bit quick to edit those links out! Of course I may have made a mistake here or there when I made that list, but I was being careful not to include any bootleg links.

If there are are other of my ROM links that people have questions about, please let me know and I'll either demonstrate their provenance or stop sharing them as freeware.

edit: I forgot Adventures of Tron. Here is the official freeware download page -
[Removed pending further investigation]

markwkidd

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

@matchaman the legal loophole is US law only. plus, like you say i think the legal implications for (US) users of said archived software aren't entirely clear.

It's not a loophole -- it's a deliberate and structured part of US copyright law. Per the DMCA the Librarian of Congress has consistently certified the exemption for software relying on obsolete hardware every three years since I believe 2006.

There's quite a bit written about this including its legal implications. Anyway.

herb_fargus

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

Per the DMCA the Librarian of Congress has consistently certified the exemption for software relying on obsolete hardware

The exemption was only ever intended for the organisation, I don't imagine they are too happy with it being used for download and distribution. I don't think it will last.

markwkidd

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

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

Per the DMCA the Librarian of Congress has consistently certified the exemption for software relying on obsolete hardware

The exemption was only ever intended for the organisation, I don't imagine they are too happy with it being used for download and distribution. I don't think it will last.

Where does that information come from? I've read many of the proceedings from that rulemaking and I'm not sure what you mean.

The Internet Archive was deeply involved in getting the original exception and in maintaining it. They filed one of the original briefs, and during the first rulemaking with the Librarian of Congress they answered follow up questions in writing as part of the record of archive.org's intended use.

mediamogul

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

@mediamogul I think you were a bit quick to edit those links out!

I checked them out before I removed them and they both appear to be intended retail releases that also contain trademarked characters owned by notoriously litigious companies. They may indeed be legally clear in some strange way, but it's always best to err on the side of caution for these things.

markwkidd

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

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

@mediamogul I think you were a bit quick to edit those links out!

I checked them out before I removed them and they both appear to be retail releases that also contain trademarked characters owned by notoriously litigious companies. They may indeed be legally clear in some strange way, but it's always best to err on the side of caution for these things.

These guys are the license holders. http://intellivision.us/intvgames/history.php

It's surprising to me how much resistance I feel I'm getting to posting links to freeware. Seriously -- this company is doing exactly what so many people are always saying IP owners should do by giving away ROMs of its back catalog.

FUD about intellectual property is intense here lately.