
MAME 0.151 ROMs - moepstar
https://archive.org/details/MAME_0.151_ROMs
======
Mindless2112
Why did they put them all in one giant zip file? I would love to participate
in the BitTorrent swarm, but I'm not keeping a useless [1] 42 GB zip file
around.

[1] Apart from using fuse-zip, but as far as I can tell, that doesn't work in
Windows.

~~~
Scaevolus
It's unusual. Typically MAME collections are distributed with deterministic
compression and using automatic managing tools, so people can stay up to date
without re-downloading large amounts of good data. 40GB torrents tend to hash
4MB chunks at a time, while a ROM might be only 8KB-- there's a high
probability of a chunk becoming invalid.

When someone updates to the next MAME version, they can download an "update"
pack with only the ROMs that changed, and a tool will recompress them together
with the old files so a torrent client can start seeding the new version
immediately.

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gabemart
I take it these ROMs are considered abandonware [0], rather than actually
being legally free?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware)

~~~
moepstar
IANAL, but the FAQ on the MAME Wiki says they're not (although i wonder how
they (The Archive) then get away with it...)

[http://www.mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=FAQ:ROMs#Isn....](http://www.mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=FAQ:ROMs#Isn.27t_copying_ROMs_a_legal_gray_area.3F)

~~~
nakkiel
Well, they put themselves in the same situation as other ROM distributors.
They probably mention somewhere that it's illegal to "keep" a ROM unless you
actually own the original game and pretend to provide them for the sake of
"backup".

~~~
joezydeco
I would expect a DMCA takedown on this from at least Namco and Nintendo before
the week is over. So grab it while you can (if you don't have an archive like
this already).

~~~
VonGuard
We've been having a very large discussion about this on the IGDA preservation
SIG discussion list
[http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG](http://wiki.igda.org/Game_Preservation_SIG)

What it comes down to is that Jason Scott, at Archive, is fearless. He saves
EVERYTHING. If you think putting these MAME ROMS on Internet Archive is
ballsy, check out what else he's put on there:
[https://archive.org/details/tosec](https://archive.org/details/tosec)

The standard policy, as he explained it to me, is to put it all up, and if
someone complains enough and gets enough lawyers involved, the individual file
cited is removed, not the whole damn archive.

Why brave the lawsuits? Because about 10 years ago, Aardman Animation(
[http://www.aardman.com/](http://www.aardman.com/) ) makers of Wallace and
Gromit had a catastrophic fire in their archive building. The fire destroyed a
large portion of the stop-motion animation studio's history. A lot of the
stuff destroyed was not preserved anywhere else, and is thus, now, lost to the
world forever.

Since videogame companies are acquired at the same rate as radioactive
particles are emitted from an element with a half-life measured in seconds,
it's very common for a company to go under and for the acquirer to just dump
everything in the trash, save for the very non-physical IP rights. I've seen
what game companies throw away, and even discovered entirely unpublished,
unknown yet finished games (
[http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/cpk/cpk.htm](http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/cpk/cpk.htm)
) because game companies don't care about old assets, only old IP.

The next step in this effort is to preserve the source code behind these
games, but that's a far more difficult proposition, and most of the code
that's out there was deleted long ago.

It's our collective cultural heritage. We have a right to preserve it if the
original creators or owners can't/won't. Rather than pick and choose what to
save, Jason Scott saves everything. That way, nothing is lost in the cracks of
history.

~~~
hnha
The vast majority of credit should go to the rippers, dumpers, maintainers of
the archives! Scott merely downloaded them and put them on archive.org (which
is great but just the tip of the ice berg).

~~~
VonGuard
I agree, but that's sort of an illicit, nameless mob of people who probably
don't want too much attention. TOSEC is kind of like a hive-mind memory
project. I love how utterly comprehensive it is, without any central governing
body other than the standards. TOSEC goes way beyond anything an academic body
would be able to piece together, or anything a museum could muster. It's
basically the Internet put to a task. Where else are you going to find Sega
32X technology demos?

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sneak
In case the site has any issues (it was super slow grabbing the torrent file
for me):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:10601255319a14497812ce76b383a5b9e446ad9c&dn=MAME%5F0.151%5FROMs

~~~
pudquick
I also cached the zip viewer here:
[http://fiddle.jshell.net/pudquick/Vgd4p/show/](http://fiddle.jshell.net/pudquick/Vgd4p/show/)

This allows for direct downloads of any individual file within the main .zip.

Recommend using wget or something that won't timeout when attempting to
download (you'll TCP connect - but it's a while before the server responds).

Also, a slightly better magnet URL here (includes the archive.org trackers):

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:10601255319a14497812ce76b383a5b9e446ad9c&dn=MAME%5F0.151%5FROMs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt2.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce

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danso
Anyone else surprised that the size of the ZIP is 42+ GB? I'm thinking these
are pre-1990 games (i.e. Street Fighter 2 does not seem like abandonware just
yet). Assuming a very generous average of 5MB per zipped ROM, that's 8,400
vintage arcade games in there.

~~~
elstevo
There are 28,740 roms in the zip file (all individually zipped, too). There's
a large number of roms that are just regional versions of the same game -- US,
Japanese, etc...

They're not all functional in MAME yet, and a lot of the (relatively) newer
games require separate data files for sprites/videos/sounds. But yes, this is
still a huge collection of classic games.

~~~
mrgriscom
You'll find that over half those ROMs are not arcade games at all, but rather
slot machines and video poker... and almost none of them are emulated. This
huge explosion in the romset happened a few years ago, and personally, I feel
shows the project might be getting off-course. I'd rather have playable
emulation of the 3D games that came out 15 years ago!

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orionblastar
Credit where credit is due, Jason Scott does tend to save a lot of stuff.

He even did a BBS Documentary. Me and a bunch of 314 St. Louis BBSers had some
issues with it, and he got mad and went on our Facebook group and told us to
make our own. I tried to raise money via a Kickstarter and Indiegogo, got
nothing. Apparently I don't know how to connect to people and get donations to
save stuff.

The issues we had were that the BBS history documentary was not technical
enough and focused more on people and had whitewashed the history and
downplayed the negative side of BBSing. The 314 BBSers got scattered all over
the world, but none of them besides a few wanted to help with a documentary.

I had saved MAME ROM files about a decade ago. I worked with friends who ran
an arcade business and we dumped a lot of ROMs. Bought some broken systems
just to take out the ROM chips and use an EEPROM reader to dump it. Donated
the files to some people on the Internet who burned CD-Rs of the MAME and MESS
ROMS for a small donation. I think it was 0.33 or something. Our mission was
to save as many ROMs as possible for historic reasons. Then get them into the
hands of collectors who wanted to play the emulators to avoid using their
arcade machines that would wear out. My brother built one of the first MAME
arcade machine mods in our area, but it is broken now. He bought an old Donkey
Kong machine from the guys who ran the arcade company, and then modded it with
PC parts and ran this thing called TinyXP that was a pirated version of XP
with just the core OS files. It had DirectX and other stuff so it ran the 32
bit Windows MAME.

Good luck hosting that 40+Gig file, there is a web site in the UK called
'Pleasuredome' and if you Google Search 'Pleasuredome Torrent' Google will
show it without a description. They got free no ratio torrents and I think
they got a new MAME ROMset for 0.152 now and then MESS 0.152 as well as the
CHDs for MAME and MESS.

Everyone knows MAME, but people forget MESS that does personal computer and
video game console emulation.

I remember one friend of mine had modded a PC clone's floppy cable to read
Atari 2600 cartridges. It was the socket connector instead of the pin
connector for those old 5.25" 360K floppy drives, the 2600 carts if you opened
them up, would fit on the socket and then you could read the ROM with a hack
and dump it to a hard drive. He dumped every 2600 cart he could find for this
Stella emulator.

People always remember those who host the files, not the people who dumped
them and made the files in the first place.

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pcloadletter
Question: I would love to have the following setup: a chromecast-style dongle
running some emulator with a bunch of roms, plugged into the HDMI port of a
tv; a couple of wifi controllers to play. Is it possible?

~~~
Tepix
It's called Raspberry Pi. Check out PiMAME or RetroPie. The Raspberry Pi can
emulate a _lot_ of the stuff out there. Most of the things it can't emulate
are too recent anyway.

~~~
kyriakos
you beat me to it. I just logged in to post about raspberry pi. any idea what
wireless controllers are supported?

additionally most chinese android tv dongles can run mame games.

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brutuscat
Instructions and patch to compile MAME 0.151 in OSX using Homebrew
[https://gist.github.com/brutuscat/8163526](https://gist.github.com/brutuscat/8163526)

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neoyagami
Pleasurrdome anyone?

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notastartup

         I was wondering if the copyright of this ROM expired since they are now stored on Archive.org. 
    

Anyone have an answer to this? Can we rip the sprites from MAME roms and use
them in our own commercial games?

~~~
aw3c2
You can not. They are protected by copyright. I am fairly sure you cannot
legally download them either.

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wdr1
I wish they shared this a torrent. Their server is clearing getting hammered
as I'm getting 10k down, which will take 9+ days to complete...

~~~
boomlinde
They are sharing a torrent

~~~
wdr1
D'oh, you're right. There's the torrent link over on the left.

