Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

Teh_Lurv

For people who live in the USA, computer store chain Microcenter sells a pre-built Retropie SD card with 100+ Atari games included. I believe it's the same collection of games as the Atari Vault, except (unlike the vault) the arcade games are stored in zip format.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/627545/atari-32gb-micro-sd

themazingness

@Teh_Lurv Nice! Looks like it's on Amazon too. It's not as cheap as the Micro Center sale but when it isn't on sale Amazon is cheaper. Amazon is cheaper even during the sale if you are getting it shipped and have their free shipping through Prime.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T83828X/?coliid=IGVQJ4Y4VJAWI&colid=97XRANJH2ULA&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Auster

Piko Interactive released a few emulated games through GOG yesterday:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/check_out_the_new_batch_of_classics_from_piko_interactive_980c3/page1

What they released, from what I was able to gather:
Shadow Madness - PS1 version according to an user in the GOG forum
Iron Commando - Probably SNES version based in the information I got from the Steam release
Legend - Probably SNES version based in the information I got from the Steam release
Nightshade - Probably NES version based in the information I got from the Steam release
Zero Tolerance - Probably Genesis/Mega Drive version based in the information I got from the Steam release
Water Margin - Genesis/Mega Drive version according to an user in the GOG forum

Folly

In the first post contains a broken link :
http://www.colecovision.ca/roms_homebrew_0-9.php
It's visible with wayback machine :
http://web.archive.org/web/20200130163128/http://www.colecovision.ca/roms_homebrew_0-9.php

Getting individual roms works ;-)
Though , getting the whole pack doesn't work anymore.

The files can also be found here :
https://github.com/retrobrews/colecovision-games

HipsterElephant

So for the five people here that remember Homestar Runner, the sites creators made a little game for the GameBoy celebrating the 19th Anniversary of Trogdor.

Here's the link.

Interestingly this is like the fourth Homestar Runner related game I found that was Homebrew, although its the first made by the creators themselves (the others being Population: Tire for Nintendo DS, Secret Collect also for Nintendo DS and Awexome Cross '98 for Game Boy Advance)

Edit: they did another game, Marzipan's Beef Reverser

Auster

Looks like we can still get ROMs out of the Capcom Arcade Stadium games, but a few extra steps have been added since the game got updated.

You need to open the Steam in console mode (not "gaming console", but "command console") and run a command to download a previous update of each DLC you want. Worth noting that you CAN'T do this process if you don't have the games in your account.

To open the Steam console, at least on Linux, you need to run this command from the terminal:

steam steam://nav/console

Not entirely sure on Windows, but I imagine the command is the same.

Then run a command to download specific updates, and whose syntax is as follows:

download_depot [app ID] [depot of the DLC you want] [DLC's manifest]

The app ID is 1515950.

The depots can be found here: https://steamdb.info/app/1515950/depots/

To get the correct manifest, click in the ID of depot you want in the link above, go to the manifests tab in the new page and look for the oldest entry in the list. What you want is the code at the right column.

So for example, the command for Ghosts 'n Goblins would be:

download_depot 1515950 1556690 5034024650887104340

Paste/Type the command in the console screen of the launcher and press enter. After it finishes downloading, it'll tell you where it downloaded, and you can go there do the original process you'd to to the collection's pak files.

One last thing:
Some romsets have their files merged, so they need to be split into files emulators can read, then put back together as .zip files.
And according to an user in the libretro group:

https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/blob/master/src/burn/burn.cpp#L879 => this is the function you'd need to reverse-engine to remove the sound data byteswapping
and this is the part where we handle interleaving for gfx data : https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo/blob/master/src/burn/drv/capcom/cps.cpp#L1892

Sadly I don't know how to work with this, so I can't help much more.

themazingness

@Auster Awesome info!

I'm not able to actually look at the files (not at a pc), but for checking the files that should be in a MAME romset I always have used http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/. They don't have any you can download. It's just a database that tells you all the information about them like the typical file name, romset files in the .zip file and what they are, and other useful things. It's a great resource for projects like this (I needed it for working on the roms in Taito Legends 1 and 2 as well).

themazingness

I found this developer that makes ZX Spectrum games. Several of the games can be downloaded free. https://www.zosya.net/product-category/zx-games/

themazingness

I just found out about this extensive list of NES homebrew games: https://retrostack.substack.com/p/the-top-500-nes-homebrews-vol-4?s=w

HipsterElephant

@HipsterElephant

They added another one: Marzipans Beef Reverser!

BenMcLean

Guys uhh ... wasn't there a decision a while back to make this into a wiki? Just submit new games to the wiki. Can this thread be locked?

themazingness

@BenMcLean Honestly, that was more work than I really cared for. I just wish this was on a forum you could do a decent search in. If they want to lock it I respect that (kinda have to anyway when that occurs). But until then this thread is stickied and open. Might as well use it.

If you look at the wiki, it doesn't remotely have the content we've discussed here. I think what we need is a place we can do a simple post to that can be searched. Wikis are great if you have a community of contributors with spare time. But they aren't great for a handful of enthusiasts sharing news about legal rom sources. Wikis are WAY too much work to be sustainable, and they aren't conducive to sharing the latest information. They're better for topics that don't require constant updates.

themazingness

Maybe we need to discuss something simpler? A Google spreadsheet maybe?

I also wonder if there isn't a better place for this. Here was great because you have the right mix of keeping things legal and still being enthusiastic about emulation. I really wish there was a larger, more active community interested in legal emulation. It feels like Retropie is getting less active. Wikia doesn't feel like the right community even if its tools were better suited.

themazingness

The original The Curse of Monkey Island is one of the games given to members of Amazon Prime this month. It is setup to run in ScummVM.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why a wiki page isn't great. This is only true for this month. I've got an idea I'm mulling over for a searchable, updateable replacement for this thread.

elco2

@Auster Could I get a little guidance on 1943? Best I can tell it unpacks to 600+ unhelpfully named files.

elco2

@elco2 well I tried Ghost and Goblins, The data is more obvious, but still unclear how it relates to mame format. Here are the files that came out (with many more 0's on the front but I cut that off:
00.dat 155.95kb
01.mam 118b
02.mam 142b
03.pfb 331b
04.3ds 26b
05.dat 161.11kb
06.3ds 26b
07.scn 665b

Folly

@elco2

You can use mame standalone (latest version) to check which files it uses from a romset.
There are a few Ghost and Goblin versions :
gng (Ghosts'n Goblins (World? set 1)
gnga (Ghosts'n Goblins (World? set 2)
gngbl (Ghosts'n Goblins (bootleg with Cross)
gngblita (Ghosts'n Goblins (Italian bootleg, harder)
gngc (Ghosts'n Goblins (World? set 3)
gngprot (Ghosts'n Goblins (prototype)
gngt (Ghosts'n Goblins (US)

You can check the romsets of each version with this command (if you installed mame from the exp packages) (use gng or something else) :

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame/mame -listroms gng

It will display the filenames,sizes and sha1sums.
So if you have a sha1sum that matches, but your filename is different, then you can just rename your file to that specific name, listed by mame.
When you have gathered all the files then you can repack these files to a working zip.

Your files don't come close to the files in the mame romset.

Sometimes romfiles are joined and then you have to split them.
But seeing your files the sizes are not duplicated of 16k or something like that.

So I think you just have wrong files.

elco2

@Folly Thanks for the help. These files came out of re_dlc_stm_1556690.pak , which I think is the correct one for G&G. Perhaps the unpaker is not unpaking correctly anymore?

Folly

@elco2

Indeed that could be the problem.
Can't help you with that.

Perhaps someone else knows.

mochimochi

@Crush [ROM extracted from Capcom Belt Action Collection (Steam version).]removed.
The site is in Japanese, extraction is possible.
However, you need to create your own CPS2key.
Some ROMs have problems with CRCs and sound ROMs.