Guide Retrogaming Through Emulation (Part 1 Organizing) - NER

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GUIDE: RETROGAMINGTHROUGH EMULATION

(PART 1: ORGANIZING)BY NILS 10. AUGUST 2014

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GUIDE: RETROGAMING

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10 AUG, 2014

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PROJECT: UI AND

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As i wrote in my post about the EmulationStation UI, I got interested in

emulating games in 2013 when i tried to bring the games from the good

old times back to the big screen television. RetroPieon the Raspberry Pi

is a good way of doing that. But there are other ways to enjoy classic

video games, not always in front of the TV (although its the most

reasonable way). This guide aims to give you an overview from the

start.

I parted the guide in different topics (will be linked here later):

Organizing your games/ROMs

Emulator software

User interfaces and front ends

Hardware based on emulation

ORGANIZING YOUR

GAMES/ROMS

Before starting with this topic a short excursion to the basics of

emulation is necessary.

GENERAL

REPORTS OF MY DEATH

HAVE BEEN GREATLY

EXAGGERATED

20 JUN, 2014

EMULATION/ FEATURED/ GUIDE

GUIDE: RETROGAMING

THROUGH EMULATION (PART 2:

EMULATOR SOFTWARE)

2 NOV, 2014

EMULATION/ FEATURED/ GUIDE


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THE BASICS

Games from old video game consoles were often stored on cassettes,

cartridges or floppy disks. Unlike cassettes or floppy disks whichare readable and writable by the user, the chips inside cartridges are

read-only. Hence they are called ROM-chips (read-only memory).

Beyond that, cartridges have also chips for saving save games which

are of course writeable. When playing a game you always need to put

the original cartridge in to the physical console like with any other

physical media.

GUIDE: RETROGAMING

THROUGH EMULATION (PART 1:

ORGANIZING)

10 AUG, 2014

FEATURED/ PROJECTS

PROJECT: UI AND DESIGN OF

EMULATIONSTATION V2.0EMULATOR FRONT-END

13 JUL, 2014

GENERAL

REPORTS OF MY DEATH HAVE

BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED


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N64 Game Cartridge with ROM chip inside. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Emulation works different. You dont need the original consolebut you

should own the original cartridges due to copyright reasons.To do

emulation, you need to extract the contents of the original cartridges.

There is hardware to do that, for example the Retrode device which

plugs into your computer using a USB port. The included software reads

the ROM-chip of the cartridge and saves the contents to a file on your

computer. This process is called dumping, and the result is a dump in

form of a ROM file. Over time some common filetypes have emerged for

each video game system, for example ROMs of SNES titles are saved

as .sfc (meaning Super Famicom) or .smc files.

ORGANIZING

ROMs for any system are widely available on the web, but you should

be cautious you always need to own the original cartridge.Lets

assume you have a load of ROMs from whereever. The problem with

them is that there are sometimes dozens of ROMs for the same game.

Some are just faulty (bad dump from the original cartridge), some are

modified or hacked to make your alter ego in the game jump higher or

live longer. Some ROMs even are total conversions of games with a

completely different gameplay, story or new graphics. Its up to you if

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you want those ROM files too, or if you prefer only the unaltered

original games. I personally prefer only the most accurate ROM dumps,

just because I dont need hacked games.

But, who tells you if the ROMs are accurately ripped or not altered or

hacked in any way? There are three major databases/catalogues for

that. They all work the same way. Its a huge database containing meta

data of all dumps ever made (public). In combination with a ROM

collection browser software you can check your collection of ROMs

against the database to sort out unwanted files and organize the rest

(renaming, sorting).

GOODTOOLS

Windows| Linux | Mac

Rating:

GoodToolsis a windows command line application which audits your

collection of ROMs. It currently supports 35 systems and checks the

contents of a specified folder against its embedded database. Ths

means it deletes unneccessary files, renames them after a special

naming convention and saves a summary in form of a text file. The

summary tells you how many ROMs you have and how many you are

missing in comparison to the database.


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Tools:The command line can sometimes be tricky, so a guy named

solarz made a front end (GUI) for it named GoodGUI. There are

additional tools for GoodTools. GoodMergemerges all ROM files of a a

game into a ZIP or 7Z file. Because some emulators cant read zipped

ROMs, UnGoodMerge reverts this process and unpacks all containing

ROMs.

Conclusion:GoodTools is rather inconvenient to use, because its a

command line tool. GoodGUI is a great help here. GoodTools is not

compatible with ROM collection browsers because the database is

embedded in the respective executable (one for each of the 35 systems).

This means you cant organize and maintain the ROMs with a software.

The databases of GoodTools contain nearly every type of ROM, from

betas over hacks to different language versions. If you only want the

pure original games, this is not for you. In addition to that the database

is outdated. My opinion: Leave it.

TOSEC (THE OLD SCHOOL EMULATION

CENTER)

Rating:

TOSECis a retrocomputing initiative dedicated to the cataloging and

preservation of software, firmware and resources for arcade machines,


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microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles. The main

goal of the project is to catalog and audit various kinds of software and

firmware images for these systems. It maintains the biggest database

of its kind, currently consisting of over 280 platforms! This goes

beyond cataloguing disk images and firmware, it even includes

information about scans of magazines, manuals, box art,

documentaries, videos and more! The database is offline and

distributed as DAT files, one for each system or category. To use the

DAT files, you will need an auditing application.

Tools:As said before, you will need an auditing application to check

your ROMs and disk images against the TOSEC database. Down in this

atricle is a list of the best tools available for auditing with DAT files.

Conclusion: Its the biggest database for retrogaming and

retrocomputing. It stands out for its huge count of cataloged

Commodore and Amiga software. Plus it also includes printed media as

mentioned above. As with GoodTools, the databases of TOSEC also

includes modified, hacked or cracked disk images, beta versions,

bootlegs and different language versions. So if you dont need the

whole hacked stuff, this is also not for you.

NO-INTRO (DAT-O-MATIC)

Rating:


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No-Intromaintains a database of over 60 computer and video game

systems called DAT-o-MATIC. The databases only contain the best

available disk images/ROMs. This means that modified or hacked, beta

versions, bootlegs or any other altered or faulty disk images/ROMs are

NOT included in the databases.

Tools:Like for TOSEC, you will need an auditing application to use the

DAT files from No-Intro. You can find an overview of the best tools

available below the conclusion.

Conclusion:The No-Intro databases have the huge advantage of

discarding and deleting all altered disk images/ROMs in your collection

when checking it against the databases. This means your collection is

reduced to only the original unaltered games, just like they are stored

on the original floppy disks or cartridges. This saves much space on

your hard drive and makes your collection much more clear to browse.

TOOLS

CLRMAMEPRO



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clrmamepro menu window

clrmameprohas many features to scan, reorganize and fix your

collection. It consists of the profiler as the center of your collection

from where you can open, add and delete systems. The main modules

are the scanner which checks your collection against a database, fixes

and reorganizes it. Header files for ROMs are supported. The rebuilder

module builds a collection from a unorganized pile of disk image

files/ROMs with the help of a database. The merger module compressessimilar disk images/ROMs into one zipped file, just like GoodMerge

from the GoodTools does. Unfortunately you cant browse your

collection in a database style.

ROMCENTER



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RomCenter main window

RomCenteris an auditing application for Windows which scans, repairs

and organizes your collection of disk images/ROMs. Its in active

development and uses a Windows Explorer styled interface with a treestructure. It acts more like a catalog than clrmamepro because you can

scroll through the system and see the status of a individual disk

image/ROM. You can scan only ZIP packs or uncompressed disk

images/ROMs. You can also launch games directly from RomCenter if


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you have defined a suitable emulator before. A big disadvantage is also

that you can organize only one system at a time. If you want to

organize your whole collection, this would be a bit inconvenient,

because you would have to open and close different RomCenter

database files. It also lacks the feature of defining headers for ROMs, for

instance NES ROMs.

ROMULUS


Romulus Main window


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Romulusis very easy to use. It allows you to add all your systems to

one single Romulus database. You can open multiple systems at a time

in tabs. Its feature packed besides the usual features like reports,

scanner and builder it has an online DAT updater, a statistics module

and an embedded web browser. You can scan you collection, no matter

if its based on ZIP, 7ZIP, RAR compressed packs or just uncompressed

files. It even supports defining headers before scanning your collection.

Like clrmamepro does, it also can rebuild your complete collection to

match the used database. Its also possible to launch games directly

from the application if you have defined a suitable emulator before.

ROMVAULT



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RomVault main window

RomVaultis another auditing application and similar to RomCenter. Its

a bit confusing and has some disadvantages. The configuration of ROM

paths is confusing. There are five functions reachable from big buttons

on the left side of the main window. Your systems are arranged in a

tree view. You basically add DAT files to the DatRoot folder ofRomVault manually, set the directory where the disk images/ROMs are

and start scanning. You can also add missing files to the collection

with the Find Fixes and Fix ROMs functions. It does not support ROM

headers for scanning.


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OTHER AUDITING TOOLS

ROMINATOR

Only for Nintendo DS. Development has stopped. If you wand to

organize only DS games, give it a try.

Windows | Linux | Mac

LESMINNI

A very basic tool to organize ROMs. It does not accept DATs. Last

version 2007 so it looks like development has stopped.

Windows | Linux | Mac

GELIDE

A ROM collection browser for various Linux distributions running on

Gnome desktop environment.

Windows | Linux| Mac


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Tags: auditing emulation emulator gaming guide organizing retro

retrogaming rom rom browser rom manager

If you know other tools for auditing ROM collections, please contact me

using the contact form or comment this article. Thanks!

COMING SOON: PART 2 EMULATOR

SOFTWARE

This first part of my guide retrogaming through emulation showed you

the basics and how to organize your collection. I hope you liked it. Feel

free to give feedback and comments! In the next part I will introduce

the best emulators to use with your disk images/ROMs. Stay tuned!

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GUIDE:

RETROGAMING

THROUGH

EMULATION

(PART 2:

EMULATOR

SOFTWARE)

1

13 JUL, 2014

PROJECT: UI AND

DESIGN OF

EMULATIONSTATI

ON V2.0

EMULATOR

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Guide Retrogaming Through Emulation (Part 1 Organizing) - NER