Video Games ROMs

What are your opinion on ROMs? For those of you who don't know what a ROM is, it's a complete copy of a game from a console/handheld that you play on your PC, and pay no money, unlike buying the game in stores. I like ROMs, its pretty much my only hope of playing games like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, and some new games like Shining Force.

 

I really don't know about you guys, but I think that games should be 100% software. No cheap-o plastic that gets junked after a while. No flopped disks that get bad sectors (after 5 years in the dust) even if they're the originals you bought...

Just the PURE information.

And if you have the software, you could get an emulator later and run the ROM there! yay!

I really like ROMS because of this. I could play one of my favorite abandoned software for the good-ol'-trusty C64 on my PC, and enjoy!

Now look at today's consoles.
A proprietary formatted CD rom or cartridge that expires a couple of years later. So, not only you have to buy a new game, you have to buy the console for that game.

In my opinion it's a leeching industry. So I'd say YES for ROMS.

Ah, fantasy world. "Buy once, play anywhere." Hmmm. BOPA. Nice acronym

The only problem about emulators today is (as I've been told...) when you're about to get to the final stage and beat the big bad boss when... wham! Your emulator crashes, taking the info with it.
That's EVIL.

 

I've actually gotten to the final boss of hundreds of roms, and none have ever crashed on me. So, if I have gotten to the final boss of hundreds of roms, you know what side I am on.

Yay roms!

 

Normally, I'd be against this sort of thing, the creation of copies to leech off the wealth of others. But ROM makers do not make money from it, (as far as I know) it allows people to play games from before their time, or beloved games from younger days. It provides people with a service not normally available to them. I can think of only one store in Edmonton with games dating back to the beginning: Nexwave. Other than them, I can't think of anyone who would suffer from ROMs of older games. Certainly, Squaresoft, Namco, or other such companies can't expect to make money off of them now. Besides that, I have 80+ ROMs on my hard drive, so if I argued against them, I'd be a hypocrite. I only object to ROMs of games the maker can still make money off of. Old classics like Tales of Phantasia, Warsong 2, Shining Force, etc, are fine.

 

I believe threads on ROMs are against the rules...at least, they used to be.


Not to say I don't use them.....(how else will I get Seiken Densetsu III in American?)

 

Not threads on ROMs themselves, but threads with links to download ROMs from and such. It's like saying you can't discuss anime because downloading licensed anime is illegal

I'm with Shinryu on this one. I have quite a few ROMs myself, so it would be hypocritic for me to argue against them.

 

I have a ton of ROMs, the fact of the matter is that some games just aren't available where I am. Hellfires, do you really think I could find half of these old SNES games?

Well, in any case, some of the ROMs I have have been re-released on other platforms, and I've got those, so I don't feel bad at all about having ROMs.

I enjoy them because it means I have a wider variety of games at my disposaln and not just the new shiny stuff that companies put out- not that new shiny stuff isn't really awesome.

I'm with Arcueid on the whole illegal thing. Everything has something illegal that can be done with it, so if we didn't talk about the things that we could do illegal things to, we wouldn't talk about anything.

--MT

 

ROMs are great. They are necessary for preserving old games. In 30 years, how many old arcade machines will still be running? How many Game Gears? How many Vectrex's? My Vectrex barely runs.

ROMs allow people to play games on hardware other than that which they were designed for, long after the original hardware has died.

With newer ROMs like Super Mario Kart 64 for example, I would hesitate before downloading it. Nonetheless, someday Nintendo 64's will all be long gone and we will be glad such a ROM exists.

 

WARNING hipocrisy alert

yeah i have some roms, the only rom i've played to completion though is a game that i cant get in this country and even if i could i don't have a GBA so there we go

like roms because i dont have to pay for games - yes that's right i'm leechy scum

However i disagree with those units you can get for the GBA which allows you to get any GB GBC or GBA rom from the net and play them on your GBA. That's outright piracy

by the way i own none of the original software to which i have roms (yar be a pirate's way and right, yar!)