ROMs on Namco Museum?

[plokm]

Does Namco Museum have roms on the disc? and if so, how hard would it be extract them and use them in mame?

[Fla Flash]

Seeing as to it's a commercial release, I highly doubt it.....game developers are trying to make it harder to get your hands on the roms, not easier.

[Reaper man]

> Seeing as to it's a commercial release, I highly doubt
> it.....game developers are trying to make it harder to get
> your hands on the roms, not easier.

correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I recall, most games that had some sort of retro game in them were easily extracted from the main image (zelda master quest, I think they did the same for animal crossing). I'm not certain about the namco collections though, but why would you want them anyway when there are genuine images already out there? <img src=smilies/eek13.gif>

[Kitsune Sniper]

> but why would you want
> them anyway when there are genuine images already out there?

Simple: Legally, they're yours. You bought the game disc, so (unless specifically mentioned on the game's EULA) you have the right to use those game files however you please.

A while back I bought a copy of Intellivision Lives for PC; all the games were right there, unencrypted, and you could do whatever you wished with them. Heck, when I sold it on eBay, I encouraged prospective buyers to get a freeware emulator and use it to play the games on the disc. They're legally obtained rom backups. :)

[Reaper man]

> Simple: Legally, they're yours. You bought the game disc, so
> (unless specifically mentioned on the game's EULA) you have
> the right to use those game files however you please.

uh, last I checked even copying roms for personal use was illegal. I could be wrong though. After a bit of research, I found out that dumping ROMs off of arcade boards was legal, but I don't know if the same could be said about extracting arcade images from ISO images.

[Lillymon]

> uh, last I checked even copying roms for personal use was
> illegal. I could be wrong though. After a bit of research, I
> found out that dumping ROMs off of arcade boards was legal,
> but I don't know if the same could be said about extracting
> arcade images from ISO images.

I'm pretty sure it's legal. Even if it's not though, why would the manufacturer care? Doesn't matter if you're emulating the games using the emulator they came with or with MAME, you still bought the product and you didn't give the ROMs to anyone else. What are they losing?

[hcs]

> most games that had some sort of retro game in them were easily
> extracted from the main image (zelda master quest, I think
> they did the same for animal crossing).

You're right on those two counts, but I wouldn't say that that's generally true. Often there will simply be simulations made, in some cases where the sound emulation would take too much time the music is actually recorded ahead of time and just streamed back. Depends on the power of the system, whether an emulator is easy to write, how feasible it is to do a straight port, etc.
I don't know about the specific game this thread is about, in any case.

[Kitsune Sniper]

> uh, last I checked even copying roms for personal use was
> illegal. I could be wrong though. After a bit of research, I
> found out that dumping ROMs off of arcade boards was legal,
> but I don't know if the same could be said about extracting
> arcade images from ISO images.

... the files were on the CD. Uncompressed. Unencrypted. Right. There. The person that (originally) bought this CD PAID for his right to use the programs, game roms, and videos in the disc as they see fit.

It is my opinion that if you buy a retrogaming compilation, you pay for the use of the game files (roms) and the software included to run the games. Unless the EULA forbids you to do so, you can get the files and use them as you see fit. *shrugs*

By the way, dumping is dumping, regardless of what console we're talking about. It may be legal or not, it doesn't matter. It's a gray area. Nintendo will always say it's illegal, no matter what.

[Lillymon]

> Nintendo will always say it's illegal, no matter what.

Nintendo still says emulators are illegal. Because you can do illegal things with them. They must hate VCRs.

But Nintendo doesn't seem too bad with this at the moment. Sony's the one bringing out multiple firmware updates so people can't put crappy demos on their PSPs...

[The 9th Sage]

> But Nintendo doesn't seem too bad with this at the moment.
> Sony's the one bringing out multiple firmware updates so
> people can't put crappy demos on their PSPs...

Eh, welp, there is the new NDS firmware that blocks the original PassMe device (for running homebrew)...but there is already PassMe2 that works on it. At least I can say they aren't going as insane as Sony is. I mean, not releasing new firmware updates in their games and having a hairy fit every time someone figures a newer way to run homebrew on the system.

And users of the modified NDS firmware FlashMe ran into some trouble since Mario Kart writes WiFi settings into the firmware so all games can use them, and eh, that originally blank part of the firmware, FlashMe was using it. But again, that problem was fixed and all is well.

[Kitsune Sniper]

> Nintendo still says emulators are illegal. Because you can
> do illegal things with them. They must hate VCRs.
> But Nintendo doesn't seem too bad with this at the moment.
> Sony's the one bringing out multiple firmware updates so
> people can't put crappy demos on their PSPs...

Sony is doing all they can to prevent the use of the PSP in ways they do not agree with. I may not agree with it, but it is their intellectual property we're talking about here, and they have all the right in the world to make sure nobody messes with their stuff in any way.

Nintendo can't (couldn't, rather) do that, so they simply had to say that emulators and such are illegal. I don't know of any current anti-piracy features used by Nintendo in the DS. Sony keeps updating its firmware, but what does Nintendo do?

[pipes]

Kind of like Chrono Trigger on the playstation. A working rom that has fucked up text. Must be used for something.

[pipes]

I have always thought who cares. If you dump the rom who is going to stop you. Not supose to record the superbowl. But I am shure lots do. As long as you don't give it to the planet I think you are okay.

[Reaper man]

> I have always thought who cares. If you dump the rom who is
> going to stop you. Not supose to record the superbowl. But
> I am shure lots do. As long as you don't give it to the
> planet I think you are okay.

ok this is quicly turning into a "are roms legal??" thread which has been discussed many times. What we need to know now is if the rom images are left on there unaltered and how to extract them. Also you need to figure out how to split the rom images to single chip romsets and name them appropriately (because that's how MAME recognises arcade roms)

that would take someone who knew what they were doing (unless the roms were already in "mame" format, which I doubt)

[pipes]

I wouldn't really trust me as beeing correct but I say if I was going to start something like this I would find docs about the arcade you wana rip and try to find what the header info is. Then go through the files on the CD and find this header then I think you should have like a point to where the rom is and what you need to do to split it up back to where it was before. That is guessing if it even has the rom and its not some clone of their own shit. Like Sonic CD for the PC. A total rewrite from the Sega CD one. (I think a very good one too!)

[Reaper man]

I wouldn't really trust me as beeing correct but I say if I
was going to start something like this I would find docs
about the arcade you wana rip and try to find what the
header info is. Then go through the files on the CD and
find this header then I think you should have like a point
to where the rom is and what you need to do to split it up
back to where it was before.

wouldn't you also need to name the files to their corrisponding mame rom names, or is that in the rom header as well?

btw, is anyone else annoyed by the "too many quoted lines" error? It's annoying as shit <img src=smilies/banghead.gif>

[Fla Flash]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

I'm not certain about the namco collections though, but why would you want them anyway when there are genuine images already out there?

<hr></blockquote>


You get the cookie. That's the whole damn point, period.

[Reaper man]

> You get the cookie. That's the whole damn point, period.

*munch munch*

anywho, as someone else pointed out maybe he just want to obtain the images legally, if it is legal at all (not saying it is or isn't, I think we can all agree now that it's a very grey area, but I'm pretty certain that it's more legal than downloading it from a ROM site)

but he wouold save himself a lot of time and effort if he put his morals away for just a second to just get the respective images online (like the people at namco really care much, and besides if they did, all they would do is shut down the sites that host them, and I wouldn't be surprized if they did since they are generating revenue for their "collection")

[pipes]

> wouldn't you also need to name the files to their
> corrisponding mame rom names, or is that in the rom header
> as well?

Once you rip them. Unless mame needs files in some name to run them, I wouldn't think it matters. Names are more of an OS thing. So its good to name them something you know, to tell what it is.<img src=smilies/magbiggrin.gif>

[MooglyGuy]

> Sony's the one bringing out multiple firmware updates so
> people can't put crappy demos on their PSPs...

The reason why Sony are coming up with the firmware updates is because you can play pirated games on a cracked PSP, and they don't want piracy. The fact that you can't play demos and homebrew games on your PSP because of the updated firmware is simply incidental. God, why do you people keep saying it's because Sony hates homebrew? Sony were the people who came out with Yaroze for the PS1, Linux for the PS2, and have announced some openness for the PS3, it's not like they have some evil intention to prevent people from coming up with original stuff, they just like to rest assured that people aren't pirating their games. God, you people are thick. <img src=smilies/banghead.gif>

[Kitsune Sniper]

> Once you rip them. Unless mame needs files in some name to
> run them, I wouldn't think it matters. Names are more of an
> OS thing. So its good to name them something you know, to
> tell what it is.

Difference being that in a compilation they could probably be in one whole file, whereas MAME uses one separate file per datachip. So one romset can go from 1 file to god knows how many. I think the biggest one I've seen has 20 different files, but I'm sure there's romsets with more files than those.

Another example: SNES/NES roms in MAME. The usual romdumps for use in console emulators are all squished in one file, whereas MAME has them split up in different files per chip.

[The 9th Sage]

> Nintendo can't (couldn't, rather) do that, so they simply
> had to say that emulators and such are illegal. I don't know
> of any current anti-piracy features used by Nintendo in the
> DS. Sony keeps updating its firmware, but what does Nintendo
> do?

They block whatever way homebrew is being run (and pirated games..yes, Moogle, I know that's likely what they are worried about) in future manufacturing runs of the DS by way of updated firmware, although they've only done this once so far (not the first firmware change they have done, apparently this is something like version 4 now, but the first to block homebrew and piracy).

I suppose that they COULD overwrite the firmware with new games, but I'm not sure if a stock DS keeps anything vital in the write protected area of the firmware...I'd guess SOMETHING must be there, which means they couldn't get people to flash it without teaching them how to defeat the write protection, and Nintendo wouldn't do that, besides the fact that as simple as it is, a whole lot of people would probably be complaining about it and bricking their DS in the process. That's not really Nintendo's style anyway, they like to make things simple for people it seems like.

It's too bad that homebrew led to eventual piracy, but it was that way with the GBA (less so than with the DS however), that way with the PSP IIRC, and probably will be with any system in the future....the homebrew folk figure it out, the pirates take what they figure out and use it to pirate crap. That's not to say their aren't some legitimate uses of devices that run (for example) DS and GBA games..l have one and it's fantastic because I can put a whole bunch of my DS and GBA games (dumped by myself) on one compact flash card and have a whole game library with me wherever I go.

Hm, it's all a double edged sword I guess.

[plokm]

> Kind of like Chrono Trigger on the playstation. A working
> rom that has fucked up text. Must be used for something.
>

I read somewhere FF Chonicles and FF Anthology extract the graphics from rom images on the disc, rather than store them seperatly. don't know why the text would be messed up though.

[The 9th Sage]

> I read somewhere FF Chonicles and FF Anthology extract the
> graphics from rom images on the disc, rather than store them
> seperatly. don't know why the text would be messed up
> though

I would suspect they used a seperate font that wasn't a part of the ROM...does anyone know if the font used is the same as used in the SNES version?

*edit*
Either that or the script is located on the disk elsewhere...I suppose that'd be quicker when it came time to make the US or European version than recompiling this SNES ROM every time.<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by The 9th Sage on 11/16/05 11:21 PM.</FONT></P>