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Where to get ROMs?

A word about copyright.

Nobody said you should pirate, and just because someone does say, "It is not stealing when it is a backup/preservation" does not mean you got the copyright somehow. But we have a service problem and there are no regulations that tell us how we can keep our favorite games alive to get new life out of them.

A overview of some practices

  • Buying or re-buying a game in a bundle/store or with a product. Sometimes the games can be extracted and also be used for modding. Some products ship with pirated dumps. Buying from 3th party only supports the last "owner" and probably not the creators.

  • Making your own backup. This can be quiet a project and some web searches should give some methods how it can be done. There are devices that can transfer save data in case you are nostalgic about them or need to replace a battery. Backups can be played on emulators/FPGA devices or ROM-Flash-Cartriges on original hardware.

  • There are some archives that host the dumps. Without them some of video-game history would be lost to time. A lot of effort went into preserving and documenting as much as possible and this is all fan labor. I wish I could say the companies of the product would care as much as we do about this games. So we can celebrate them the way we like. Sure we care about new creations, hardware and everything the companies need. We try to give all the respect they deserve. In a perfect world there should be no issue for both to exist in harmony.

  • If you can't find them I am sure someone can tell you some sources but it is very unfriendly to ask a stranger for a ROM! (It is up to you to decide the route you choose to go!)

Comments (5)

A word about copyright.

Nobody said you should pirate, and just because someone does say, "It is not stealing when it is a backup/preservation" does not mean you got the copyright somehow. But we have a service problem and there are no regulations that tell us how we can keep our favorite games alive to get new life out of them.

A overview of some practices

  • Buying or re-buying a game in a bundle/store or with a product. Sometimes the games can be extracted and also be used for modding. Some products ship with pirated dumps. Buying from 3th party only supports the last "owner" and probably not the creators.

  • Making your own backup. This can be quiet a project and some web searches should give some methods how it can be done. There are devices that can transfer save data in case you are nostalgic about them or need to replace a battery. Backups can be played on emulators/FPGA devices or ROM-Flash-Cartriges on original hardware.

  • There are some archives that host the dumps. Without them some of video-game history would be lost to time. A lot of effort went into preserving and documenting as much as possible and this is all fan labor. I wish I could say the companies of the product would care as much as we do about this games. So we can celebrate them the way we like. Sure we care about new creations, hardware and everything the companies need. We try to give all the respect they deserve. In a perfect world there should be no issue for both to exist in harmony.

  • If you can't find them I am sure someone can tell you some sources but it is very unfriendly to ask a stranger for a ROM! (It is up to you to decide the route you choose to go!)

A sanni cart reader is a great way to not only back up your collection to roms but it also lets you back up your save files. I like the sanni cart reader because I’ll make a back up of my saves then replace the battery and after the battery is replaced I’ll transfer the save back to the game. I mostly use it for snes games but it does support a lot of different game cartridges. Here is a link to the sanni cart reader: https://github.com/sanni/cartreader

Thanks a lot, yeha I did see that device once. Really awsome that stuff like this gets made and shared. Love me some projects. I was thinking to add some links into the text so people can click and see what it is. In the other hand I would not expect anyone to read this on a romhacking side.

People usually come here once they have roms. Still I been surprised how many people still ask on youtube or other places.

I was able to put my own sanni cart reader together by buying all of the parts. It’s a great device. I also use the super nt to dump my snes games but I don’t think it lets you put the sram back on the cart like the sanni cart reader.

    slidelljohn
    Are you running Analogue-Super-Nt-JB? It will let you use the SDcard reader for games. It might have more features but I do not own the hardware. So I am not familiar with the interface. Chances are when you can dump the content of SRAM there might be some workaround to flash it with some tinkering. But could also be that such a feature was not a priority. Congrats on your build. Do you make your own reproduction cards? Do you like to show screenshots?

      I could make my own carts but I don’t. I am considering making a prototype cart for the cx4 that supports hirom, sram, and 32mb rom size. The cx4 does support these three features but no game used them. Only a prototype cx4 board had foot prints for sram but no pcb used it from what I could find. One reason why I converted gradius 3 to hirom was to see how hard it would be so I could possibly convert mmx1-3 to hirom. Probably be some time before I decide to do this but I think I will. I really want to use a same game cart for this so I can use it like a pass through cart for individual games. I think I can pull it off and it would be really cool if I did. I would even consider converting mmx1 to use cx4 if I pull this off.

      Yes, I like to show screenshots but most of the time I’m posting from my phone so it’s harder for me to do screenshots unless I’m on my pc.