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GUIDE: RETROGAMING
THROUGH EMULATION
(PART 1: ORGANIZING)
BY NILS 10. AUGUST 2014

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EMULATION / FEATURED /
GUIDE

GUIDE: RETROGAMING

THROUGH EMULATION
(PART 2: EMULATOR
SOFTWARE)
2 NOV, 2014

EMULATION / FEATURED /
GUIDE

GUIDE: RETROGAMING

THROUGH EMULATION
(PART 1: ORGANIZING)
10 AUG, 2014

FEATURED / PROJECTS

PROJECT: UI AND
DESIGN OF

EMULATIONSTATION
V2.0 EMULATOR
FRONT-END
13 JUL, 2014

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

GENERAL

old times back to the big screen television. RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi

HAVE BEEN GREATLY

REPORTS OF MY DEATH

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

EXAGGERATED

is a good way of doing that. But there are other waystoenjoy classic
video games, not always in front of the TV (although its the most

20 JUN, 2014

reasonableway). 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

EMULATION / FEATURED / GUIDE

GUIDE: RETROGAMING
THROUGH EMULATION (PART 2:
EMULATOR SOFTWARE)
2 NOV, 2014

ORGANIZING YOUR
GAMES/ROMS
Before starting with this topic a short excursion to the basics of
emulation is necessary.

EMULATION / FEATURED / GUIDE

THE BASICS

Games from old video game consoles were often stored on cassettes,
cartridges or floppy disks. Unlike cassettes orfloppy disks which

GUIDE: RETROGAMING
THROUGH EMULATION (PART 1:
ORGANIZING)
10 AUG, 2014

arereadable andwritable by the user, the chips inside cartridges are

read-only. Hence they are calledROM-chips(read-only memory).

Beyond that,cartridges have alsochips for saving save games which

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

the originalcartridge in tothe physical console like with any other
physical media.

FEATURED / PROJECTS

PROJECT: UI AND DESIGN OF

EMULATIONSTATION V2.0
EMULATOR FRONT-END
13 JUL, 2014

GENERAL

REPORTS OF MY DEATH HAVE

BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED

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

20 JUN, 2014

Emulation works different. You dont need the original console but you
should ownthe original cartridges due to copyright reasons. To do

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

There is hardwareto do that, for example the Retrode device which

CATEGORIES

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

Emulation (2)

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

Featured (3)

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

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.

General (1)
Guide (2)
Projects (1)

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

ARCHIVES

November 2014

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

August 2014

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

July 2014

Some are just faulty (bad dump from the original cartridge), some are
live longer. Some ROMs even are total conversions of games with a

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

June 2014

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 sortout unwanted files and organize the rest
(renaming, sorting).

GOODTOOLS
Windows |

Rating:

Linux |

Mac

GoodTools is 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 ROMsyou have and how many you are
missing in comparison to the database.

Tools: The command line can sometimes be tricky, soa 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 isnot
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:
TOSEC is a retrocomputing initiative dedicated to the cataloging and

preservation of software, firmware and resources for arcade machines,

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 ofover 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
atricleis 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:

No-Intro maintains 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 databaseshave the huge advantage of

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

when checkingit against the databases. This means yourcollection 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
Windows |

Linux |

Mac

clrmamepro menuwindow

clrmameprohas many features to scan, reorganize and fix your

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

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

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 compresses

similar 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
Windows |

Linux |

Mac

RomCenter main window

RomCenter is 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 tree

structure. 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 launchgames directly from RomCenter if

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

that you can organizeonly 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
Windows |

Linux |

Mac

Romulus Main window

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, italso can rebuild your complete collection to
match the used database. Its also possible to launch games directly

from the applicationif you have defined a suitable emulator before.

ROMVAULT
Windows |

Linux |

Mac

RomVault main window

RomVault is another auditing application and similar to RomCenter. Its

a bit confusing and has some disadvantages.The configuration of ROM
paths is confusing.There are fivefunctions 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 of

RomVaultmanually, 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.

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

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 retrogamingthrough 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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YOU MAY ALSO LIKE...

1

GUIDE:
RETROGAMING
THROUGH
EMULATION
(PART 2:
EMULATOR
SOFTWARE)
2 NOV, 2014

21

PROJECT: UI AND
DESIGN OF
EMULATIONSTATI
ON V2.0
EMULATOR
FRONT-END
13 JUL, 2014

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