mirror
Click the tabs on the top of the webpage and look for your console to find your ROMs.
Inspired by that thread from the other day. I hope this thread inspires anyone who wanted to get into retro games to consider emulation instead of 5000$ scalped disks and consoles. This site maybe doesn't have the fastest downloads but it makes emulation sooo easy for anyone hesitating!
Edit: thanks eveyone for the links!
More ROMs!
https://www.myabandonware.com/
https://vimm.net/
For PC games!
https://gog-games.com/
For Flash games!
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/downloads/
Want to shout out https://vimm.net/ and archive.org too for anyone's piracy needs for console, there's also https://gog-games.com/ for PC as well.
Vimm is so goated. I've literally been downloading roms there since windows 98 dial up days.
Vimm is also an excellent source for ROMs! And I've never seen that GoG website, I thought you just linked the original website lol! It's pretty convenient, thanks!
It's a great site, GoG has a great library, ofc I naturally want people to buy games off GoG to support them, they do a great job bringing old games to modern operating systems, but piracy is also good too.
Been playing Advance Wars 1 and 2 emulated on the bus for the past week. Played through Earthbound on my phone too. Roms are pog :kitsupogi:
:matt: We all carry portable computers that are more than capable of emulating a bunch of old systems and have very well developed emulators available on them
:monke-rage: TOUCH SCREEN CONTROLS
I have a GPD XD plus handheld that's kind of like a DS. Really good clicky buttons and even analog sticks. It even closes. I got it on ebay for $120.
I've fooled around with a Steam Deck too and they're pretty great for emulating. Hoping to get one soon.
A Steam Deck would be total overkill for my purposes
I'd want something sleek that can play games from before the PS2 generation
PS2 and above I'd rather just play on my PC on a big screen anyway
Your best bet there is one of those Chinese handhelds made in Shenzhen, like the ones made by ANBERNIC or GPD. There's actually a kind of renaissance right now of handheld emulation machines running Android or some derivative and it's awesome. A coworker of mine has a RG351MP and it's cool as heck, runs everything up to PS1 games, but kind of lags on big files. Does 2D stuff SNES, GBA, etc perfectly.
China is contributing to the future of retro gaming :china:
How far back? A used PS Vita will run you about $100 and only starts to choke on emulation well into the N64/Dreamcast era.
Well, there's a reason why my phone emulated games are all turn based or just reading like in Ace Attorney, no chance in hell I'd be able to play supah Mario worl with touch screen :monke-beepboop:
I tried just that. Sure you can connect a DS4 to your phone but that's not really portable anymore now is it
Could you connect a single Switch joycon? Those could do anything that doesn't require two joysticks.
Don't have one of those. You'd still essentially have a very small portable combined television and console instead of a handheld
Emulator-focused portable consoles based on SBCs are becoming a thing and have real buttons and probably soon touch screens. Folks are combining the world's of raspberry pis and vast production capacity in China. It's pretty neat.
I don't have one yet but they look cool.
Chinese emulator devices have been a thing for a while now but it is my understanding that they have only recently become actually decent.
Here's one I linked above
https://www.goretroid.com/products/retroid-pocket-3-handheld-retro-gaming-system
Some of them even run Linux instead of Android
Oh nice that looks fun. I'm holding out for something that can replace a DS. Doesn't need 2 screens necessarily but being able to place the two views into one screen while still having controls would be perf.
Not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that's a feature in every DS emulator. The relatively big screen for the price class with this one would probably help in that respect
That's true though the stacking will probably leave a lot of blank space with a horizontal 16:9 screen. To properly fit side by side you'd want an 8:9 ratio, but DS screens were 4:3. Stacked horizontally they'll add up to 8:3, so 24:9, leaving about 1/3 of the screen space blank. Stacking vertically would use the screen better but then you'd need to hold the thing on its side.
It's honestly probably fine though I dunno.
From personal experience, the RasPi 4 is capable of emulating N64 games smoothly with a modest overclock (i.e. you just need to put it in a case with a fan). Raspberry Pis are hard to get right now (at MSRP) so I'm fucking around with an Orange Pi 4 instead. It seems to have more severe overheating problems though. Currently, I'm trying to design a custom case for it, but I will also need to figure out how to build LibreELEC with some proprietary blob drivers for the WiFi/Bluetooth.
Nice! I got a Quartz64 to screw around with for similar reasons (can't find raspberry pi 4s anywhere) but it's in the early stages of Linux kernel support.
I still use my jailbroken gen 1 PSP, it's a high quality emulation device.
I kind of want one of these Chinese contraptions
https://www.goretroid.com/products/retroid-pocket-3-handheld-retro-gaming-system
Earthbound! Boing!
weeeelllcome to mooooooonside
My favorite line though in the whole game is when that old lady in the hospital asks you if you have grandkids. If you say yes she says, "At your age? Oh, the youth of today shocks me." Lady why did you ask a 13 year old boy if he has grandkids.
One of my favourite lines is from the librarian in Onett explaining the map "all the information is there, except the information that isn't there." simple and good.
Also, "Whose bones are on display here? Your bones, my bones, bones' bones, bones bones bones bones"
GOOD post.
I also want to shout out Fightcade which is an emulator that was built to play classic fighting games online - it has expanded over the years to include lots of classic systems and games. I played NES Contra with some guy in Brazil a few days ago for free. Get your friends on Fightcade and there are literally thousands of classic games you can play online for free.
edit: If anyone downloads fightcade follow this tutorial which will install a script that automatically downloads the proper rom for you when you join a lobby.
Fightcade sounds pretty cool, it always impresses me when people add online functionality to old, emulated games, I can't imagine the work it takes to accomplish such a task.
Only thing Fightcade needs is a way to emulate that hype crowd that watches you fight, to really emulate that amusement arcade feel!
It allows you to spectate games live - sometimes I'll go on there and watch Japanese players play Street Figther 3rd strike or Darkstalkers for funsies. It also supports replays of your sessions. But you're not wrong though, crowds are really what make fighting game events and such.
OH SHIT!!! Then never mind, it's got everything! Gosh that's so cool, those people really went out of their way to revive the spirit of arcades. Really inspiring how far people will go to work on something that inspires them without a capitalist motivation.
Fightcade is so cool, I often put on match videos on youtube of people playing fighting games and eat dinner while watching.
Somewhat relatedly, there's apparently even a whole achievement system for old games that's integrated into modern emulators
NOOOOO YOU WILL BUY THE PLASTIC NOSTALGIA BOX THAT HAS LIKE 15 GAMES AND CHARGES ROUGHLY 10 DOLLARS A GAME AND YOU WILL ACCEPT ICE CLIMBERS INTO YOUR HEART :wojak-nooo:
Heh heh modded Legend of Zelda with 1080p, 32x32 textures, remixed music and difficulty mods goes brrr :garf-troll:
For older consoles, there are several torrents floating around with "every" game in them. I got nearly complete collections of NES, SNES, GB, and GBA this way. Also found one with something like 240 N64 ROMs. Newer consoles are trickier, since the games are considerably larger. These I need to hunt down one by one. I've found about a dozen games for GameCube/Wii, half a dozen for PS3, and a handful of Switch games. Also found a collection of 700 DOS games, 20 or so Genesis games, and maybe 6 Sega Saturn.
If you're looking for full rom sets for older consoles look for the redump or no-intro sets, those are clean dumps that'll work with any emulator. Vimm and archive.org carry them.
I've got those same collections! The entirety of SNES games in a zip file comes up to 3Gb. Old games are insanely well optimized compared to the bloat we ended up with today.
I wish I could remember where I got them though. All files are available individually in the link above, but it's so convenient when you want to play a game and you just have to locate it from a single Zip!
Since I haven't seen them mentioned in this thread, yet, I'd like to add https://www.myabandonware.com/ to the list. They host old-school PC games, from Football Manager to LOTR RTS, which are currently not being sold anywhere, so if you want to download them, you're technically in a legal grey zone, hence the name abandonware.
Thee's also Flashpoint Infinity https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/downloads/ , which let's you play all those old flash games from 10-15 years ago on your PC. It's completely free, runs like a charm, and comes with a huge library.
Download your emulators directly from the emulator developers (or though curated channels, like RetroArch, or your Linux distribution). Don't use the emulators packaged in torrents and whatnot.
Luckily, perfect rom copies have documented hash checksums. You can verify that your roms are legit by matching them with the hash checksum. Also, modern console game discs are signed by the manufacturer with pgp. Some modern roms you can verify with the manufacturer signature.
Nintendo Execs: You took my only food. Now I’m gonna starve.
anyone know how much of a risk it is to do ddls of stuff like this from archive? i assumed that it was mainly torrents but idk how that shit works. in america
also damn i would like a better processor so i could properly emulate ps2 games and ideally switch games
I think it's pretty safe. The risk was always in distributing piracy, not downloading it. You can always use a VPN in case, but I've downloaded without and never got in any trouble.
And yeah, emulation is always CPU intensive, especially Switch since your CPU doubles as a GPU. But it's worth trying the older consoles, there are some games that have stood the test of time!
It does. Emulators for most more modern consoles (PS2 onwards and some before) do use your GPU instead of strictly only using the CPU.
Thanks for the correction, I wasn't sure if I was pulling shit out of my ass.
I'll be surprised if I'm smart enough to get demon's souls working but here goes nothin
Newer consoles can be a little finicky but the better emulators usually aren't more complicated than opening the game rom from the file menu.
isn't PS3 like the hardest thing to emulate because of the weird CPU design?
If you've got a beefy enough PC, you can currently emulate plenty of PS3 games. It's actually more advanced than 360 emulation right now
cdromance also hosts a bunch of fan translations, romhacks, game remixes and undubs already patched and ready if you're too lazy to fire up a patcher yourself.
Some things to check out:
Star Fox Command and the DS Zelda games patched to use D-Pad controls
English patches for DS games that never got a western release like Blood of Bahamut, Ace Attorney: Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2, Jump Ultimate Stars
and Love PlusThanks! Romhacks are probably the best features of emulation, playing The Legend of Zelda and Metroid for the NES with updated textures was a great way to experience them in 2022!
