Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie

Auster

Slow Mole for the Dreamcast free to claim for the next 3 days, 6 hours and 40 minutes:
https://itch.io/s/63411/slow-mole-says-merry-christmas

themazingness

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, a ScummVM game, is free on GoG.

themazingness

Anguna for NES is looking pretty awesome. It looks a lot like Crystalis to me, but better. The first Zelda is probably what most think of though. https://the6502collective.itch.io/anguna-scourge-of-the-goblin-king

I've noticed a lot of NES and Genesis homebrews are showing up on Piepacker and the games Piko Interactive sells are showing up on Antstream and Piepacker. So if anyone wanted to either try before you buy or play them for free instead of buying, f2p cloud computing has made that possible. I've been learning about a lot of homebrew and classic games this way.

Auster

@themazingness About the stream systems you mentioned, is there a way to back the files up there? If not, it's not ideal due to preservation, portability and ownership of the contents there.

themazingness

@auster You don't own the games. It's basically Netflix for video games. Everything is server-side.

I agree, they aren't going to help you preserve or backup games. What they are good for is try before you buy (buy as in buy elsewhere, the platforms don't sell games,) and learning about games you may not be aware of. They're especially helpful for the latter if you aren't European since Piepacker is based in France and Antstream is based in the UK. Piepacker features a few French homebrew games. Antstream features loads of games that many American gamers may not have experienced growing up since Amiga and others were much more popular in Europe than the USA.

Auster

I don't think this has been posted yet...

Project EGG is a Japanese "Good Old Games"-like store mostly for retro computers, such as MSX, MSX2, PC-98, etc.

Home page: https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg

How to extract the ROMs, adapted from the 7th comment in this page:

Download the game you want with their launcher
Go to where the game was downloaded (it's in a folder in the launcher's installation directory)
Make a copy of the whole folder of the downloaded game somewhere else
Launch the game through Project EGG's launcher and, before you close the game, copy the new exe file that was generated in the original folder of the game and paste in the copy folder you made before
Get quickbms
Download this quickbms script
Use the script with quickbms to extract the exe you copied last
Now you need to figure out which files are the BIOS and the ROM, since they don't always match database information; the only part I noticed that seems to be constant is that, when you end up with a bunch of files named EGGFDIMG[something].dat, those files are your ROM, and you need to join them with a script
Download this Python script to join the EGGFDIMG[something].dat into a working ROM
Put the script in the same folder as the EGGFDIMG[something].dat files
Run python egg_disk.py [disk format], and change python for the command your system uses, like py for Windows 10 and python3 for Linux; disk format can be either d88, dsk or fdi, and since I'm not sure how to find out which format each game uses in advance, I'd suggest trying all 3 options
The output file will be disk_[disk number].[format you chose]

Auster

Kajko i Kokosz, a Polish-only MS-DOS game, will be delisted from GOG tomorrow. I don't think it's available anywhere else digitally, so this may be the last chance to get it.

Store page:
https://www.gog.com/game/kajko_i_kokosz

Delisting announcement:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/kajko_i_kokosz_delisting

themazingness

Böbl just got a big update with multiple game modes (https://morphcatgames.itch.io/bobl

themazingness

Some homebrew stuff I discovered recently. Sorry if it repeats anything above.

NES multicarts: https://action53.itch.io/

Bite the Chili (I've heard good things about his latest Anguna game for NES, and I'm playing his GBA one right now): https://www.bitethechili.com

I've played this one all the way through on Piepacker. I highly recommend it (Twin Dragons
for NES): https://www.brokestudio.fr/product-category/digital/

John Vanderhoef who has made some homebrew games also has made some invaluable lists of homebrew games and resources on itch.io. I can't remember if I posted the NES one or not. I recommend following him here to see whenever they are updated: https://johnvanderhoef.itch.io/

Here is his NES list. It's quite extensive: https://itch.io/c/632436/nes-games

And his Gameboy list, including GB Studio stuff (a free Gameboy development suite): https://itch.io/c/1313741/gameboy-homebrew

Here is the link to GB Studio since I mentioned it. It recently released version 3.0:
https://chrismaltby.itch.io/gb-studio

The Genesis version of Eyra the Crow Maiden released on itch.io recently. You can play the NES version on Antstream. https://seconddimensionllc.itch.io/eyra-the-crow-maiden-sega-genesis-rom

Clyde

Hello @BenMcLean,

I just noticed that my original link to GOG's Neo Geo games isn't workig anymore. Could you please be so kind to change it to this one in your opening post? If so, thanks!

https://www.gog.com/games?developers=snk-corporation

edit: Maybe with a remark like "(only those for around 5-6€ are guaranteed to have RetroPie-compatible roms in them, not the more expensive modern versions)", since the link lists all SNK games there. Feel free to use better English than mine. ;)

themazingness

@auster Jim Power has the NES and Genesis/Mega Drive versions now.

Auster

@themazingness Thanks for reminding me.

GOG page, NES and Genesis versions available since its release:
https://www.gog.com/game/jim_power_the_lost_dimension

Steam page, NES and Genesis versions available after today's update:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/370270/Jim_Power_The_Lost_Dimension/

Auster

Looks like Tanglewood for the Mega Drive/Genesis went F2P on Itchio:
https://bigevilcorporation.itch.io/tanglewood

Clyde

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

Looks like Tanglewood for the Mega Drive/Genesis went F2P on Itchio:
https://bigevilcorporation.itch.io/tanglewood

Thanks, I already bought it for my Evercade, but its nice to have an official free ROM for my emulator machines. :)

Auster

About Tanglewood, if someone likes the game, he/she should still drop a few bucks for it. I played it from beginning to end, and I thoroughly recommend the game.

On Itchio, it's set as "pay what you want", meaning the game accepts any payment values starting at its base price, or in cases it's below 1 USD/Euro/etc., it starts at 1 USD/Euro/etc. due to processing fees.

And it's still paid on GOG and Steam.

Clyde

@auster Absolutely, although I myself see my "debt" already paid via the Evercade cartridge. 😇

themazingness

This is a fun, short NES game that just released: https://pb-games.itch.io/biocats

Auster

Friendly reminder that multiple games from this list are on sale now:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/rom_based_gog_games_compatible_with_third_party_emulators_thread/post1

Auster

A few days ago, Gwen Gourevich, one of the devs at the team 2.21 (yes, that's the name of the dev team), released a devlog about their plans regarding the Little Big Adventure franchise (not to be confused with Sony's franchise of Sackboy).

The devlog:
https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/new-beginnings/

In it, they talk about upgrades to the game.
I'm not entirely sure if I'm misinterpreting something, but it sounds like there's a chance the current MS-DOS version gets replaced with a version ported to newer systems.
If they do, I suggest getting the games and backing them up before they release said upgrades.
Worth noting you get a discount on both games in the GOG version when you place both in your cart. And Steam has a bundle with the two already.
I also asked about this situation in the devs' official Discord group, just in case, and now I'm waiting for a reply.

GOG version:
https://www.gog.com/game/little_big_adventure
https://www.gog.com/en/game/little_big_adventure_2

Steam version:
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/80342/

And slightly off-topic, but the DOS version of the games had their engines made open source some time ago:
https://github.com/2point21/lba1-classic
https://github.com/2point21/lba2-classic

themazingness

https://itch.io/b/1316/bundle-for-ukraine

Itch.io's bundle for Ukraine has several roms in it. Nebs 'n Debs, Batlizard Bonanza, and Leggite Lutre Livre are NES games. There is Hunter's Moon for Commodore 64 and Vampire Night Shift for Gameboy.

If anybody is aware of others in the collection I'd like to know. There are hundreds of games in it and it was a lot of work to sift these out.

The collection also has several Pico-8 games which may be of interest to some here, but I didn't keep track of them.