Question about old games (emulation) and MAME...

[Pipewrench]

I did a search here and found that quite a few people have used emulation software to play old games. I have a few questions.


I have never played with MAME on a computer and I wondered how to go about it. I downloaded it and it appears that I have to have "ROMS". I am not requesting ROMS ad I read in another thread that it's not right or something.

I have done a search on ROMS on Google and come up with a lot. Do you typically pay for ROMS or what?

I would love to get some old ones like for Atari 2600 and N64 etc.

Pitfall
Pac-Man
Donky Kong
Dig Dug
Zaxon
Mario Cart

Can I get the above games as ROMS? Do I have to pay for them? I don't know a lot on emulation. I just wondered if that stuff is out there?

Anyone have any good links, tutorials or whatnot for MAME and/or emulation stuff?

Thanks in advance

-Pipewrench

[wrathchild_67]

There are two torrents posted that contain the entire MAME romset (1972-2002). The filesize for all ROMs is around 29GB. With a decent connection it would take about 3 days to get all the files. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything...

[Pipewrench]

Wow.

That's cool. Thanks for the info wrathchild_67.

I'll look around some more because I really don't want to download 30 gigs worth of stuff that I'll never use

Later,
Pipewrench

[Tuttle]

MAME is actually for emulating the old arcade machines themselves. If you just want Atari 2600 games, you can get an A2600 emulator and games, which will come in substantially smaller.

[Bink]

Hardware Central Acceptable Use Policy:

• You will not use these forums to violate any laws nor to discuss illegal activities.

Just because something is old, it doesn't make it legal download. In the US, copyright is effective for at least 70 years after the death of the author.

(For those interested, in Australia it's 50 years after the death of the author).


If you're in luck, you may find some legal remakes of those classic old games at SourceForge.