Complete Rom and ISO for every system for collecting and history

[EmulateLife]

I am an obsessive gamer, but even for me having every rom is beyond excessive. But each to his/her own.

 

[Kwyjor]

I am going to have to filter some games out. ( some are not good for kids )

We are talking about tens of thousands of games here, most of which are going to be completely uninteresting to the middle school kids of today even if they are somehow "appropriate". You're going to have to filter most of them out. And that's going to take time that you apparently do not have?

I am doing a project for some middle school kids

Crazy idea: instead of looking for a complete collection of ROMs, why don't you look for someone who has done a similar project before, and see what games they've come up with? That will save you time.

 

[PityOnU]

Good point. The games are not for me, I am doing a project for some middle school kids, I am having them "build" their own PC in a class I am teaching. We got a bunch of Raspberry pies donated and that is were the Lakka OS comes in. I am going to have to filter some games out. ( some are not good for kids ) hence why I am just look for the download of games.

It is awesome that you are doing this for the kids, and they will definitely love it! That being said, I would caution you on just providing them a ton of ROM files. That is 100% undeniably illegal here in the United States. If you are distributing them in any sort of official capacity here, you can also stand to lose your job if any parents want to get fussy.

If I were you, I would only set them up with a small handful of titles that you can verify are abandonware at this point. You could also just give them some homebrew titles. That would also make for a teaching opportunity where you could tell them about how anyone can create games for these machines, even if they are old.

 

[Mythical]

There are many rompacks (google that specifically) that contain the majority of favorite titles you can find. GBA one for instance is 156 compared to the full 5000+ or something like that I believe. Most of the good ones were in there except for yu yu hakusho tournament tactics iirc

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Questionable posting about any of this stuff here - definitely dancing on the line w.r.t. da rules.

For anyone who is curious, though, these 40GB figures you keep seeing are for all ROM's from the mid-90's and below. Once you move into the PS1, you start looking at >1TB for each region uncompressed. Gamecube is 1-2TB uncompressed for everything. I think PSP is similar. Encrypted 3DS dumps end up being about 1TB, I think.

Formats start to get weird from the Wii on up. On the Wii specifically, discs are filled with algorithmically (sp?) generated garbage data, so they are difficult to compress without trimming. Archiving nerds will need to make tough choices, there. WiiU uses some weird file formats for eShop games I haven't looked into too much... good luck finding disk dumps.

Haven't messed around with Xbox 360/PS3 ISO's but they are out there. No Datfiles for consistent naming, though. You will need to make one yourself. 3DS datfiles are also missing the vast majority of updates and DLC.

You will be needing some pretty serious storage tech if you actually want to keep all of these locally, reliably.

Random brain dump for you there.

He could have the kids bring in their games to show them how to dump and preserve them for their pis, the kids could probably figure out to copy and paste eachothers files to spread the games

 

[Captain_N]

I ---Snip-- Things are different this time, I am sure I will not repeat the same mistake again, I mean, burning DVDs is not a good idea in these times, probably I will end up collecting a stack of 2TB USB HDDs.

Good optical media is more durable the hdd. DVDs dont hold enough for things like nds roms. Buring blu rays are much better for rom archives.

Yall are also forgetting mame. thats like 500 gigs. He can burn all the rom sets in that list thats posted on 2 blu ray -r or one dual layer bllu ray.
I have my large stuff like all wii U e-shop games on hdds. ill archive them eventually. He might as well do nds/gba and 3ds roms as well as gamecube

 

[Kwyjor]

Yall are also forgetting mame. thats like 500 gigs. He can burn all the rom sets in that list thats posted on 2 blu ray -r or one dual layer bllu ray.

Blu-Ray discs are 25 GB, not 250.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Good optical media is more durable the hdd. DVDs dont hold enough for things like nds roms. Buring blu rays are much better for rom archives.

Yall are also forgetting mame. thats like 500 gigs. He can burn all the rom sets in that list thats posted on 2 blu ray -r or one dual layer bllu ray.
I have my large stuff like all wii U e-shop games on hdds. ill archive them eventually. He might as well do nds/gba and 3ds roms as well as gamecube

You are right about that except for one thing; disc rot. Don't have to worry about that with HDDs.
Flash memory is the most durable, in the sense that it's not affected by the passage of time, and that it's shock resistant.

 

[sarkwalvein]

You are right about that except for one thing; disc rot. Don't have to worry about that with HDDs.
Flash memory is the most durable, in the sense that it's not affected by the passage of time, and that it's shock resistant.

Maybe technology changed and I am old, but AFAIK data stored in flash memory degrades if not refreshed with an expected life of around 16 years.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Maybe technology changed and I am old, but AFAIK data stored in flash memory degrades if not refreshed with an expected life of around 16 years.

Looks like you are right. Keeping the drive online (connected) seems to be the way to go then, but that comes with its own drawbacks.
Is there any form of storage that can survive basically indefinitely other than the Bluray M-Discs? They aren't cheap, but at least they promise a 1000 year lifetime.

 

[Captain_N]

Blu-Ray discs are 25 GB, not 250.

lol no kidding you will need more then one. files spread across multiple discs are better then on 1 single disc.

@The Real Jdbye Flash media does degrade. There is a static charge that keeps the data bit active. Over time that charge degrades. Manufacturers of nand flash give it 10 years. it may be longer. a blu ray is about 30 years. Most cd/dvd/blu ray writable media is low quality. You want to archive on class 1 media.
Hard drives also have a similar problem. The magnetism will degrade over time. its probably more then 20 years. Thankfully the ECC makes it readable up to a point until even that cant correct the errors. Never archive on flash media.

 

[Mythical]

the NDS no intro pack i got, has 166GB, compressed in 7z

Questionable posting about any of this stuff here - definitely dancing on the line w.r.t. da rules.

For anyone who is curious, though, these 40GB figures you keep seeing are for all ROM's from the mid-90's and below. Once you move into the PS1, you start looking at >1TB for each region uncompressed. Gamecube is 1-2TB uncompressed for everything. I think PSP is similar. Encrypted 3DS dumps end up being about 1TB, I think.

Formats start to get weird from the Wii on up. On the Wii specifically, discs are filled with algorithmically (sp?) generated garbage data, so they are difficult to compress without trimming. Archiving nerds will need to make tough choices, there. WiiU uses some weird file formats for eShop games I haven't looked into too much... good luck finding disk dumps.

Haven't messed around with Xbox 360/PS3 ISO's but they are out there. No Datfiles for consistent naming, though. You will need to make one yourself. 3DS datfiles are also missing the vast majority of updates and DLC.

You will be needing some pretty serious storage tech if you actually want to keep all of these locally, reliably.

Random brain dump for you there.

Anybody who knows where these are should slide into my discord dms
My discord is
mythicaldata
#4914

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

also something like this hits atleast 50 years with some downsides https://www.amazon.com/1-5TB-OPTICAL-ARCHIVE-CARTRIDGE-WRITE/dp/B00KR8NHZU

 

[Ryccardo]

I am an obsessive gamer, but even for me having every rom is beyond excessive. But each to his/her own.

Remember, your download is someone else's upload... someone has to do it

 

[EmulateLife]

Yeah I mean if they are acquiring them to share thats one thing but the topic of the thread says "for collecting and history" no mention of sharing.

 

[Kwyjor]

someone has to do it

I would say, it's been done – the pre-Playstation era is increasingly distant and by now everything has probably been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and stored away on innumerable hard drives and DVDs that no one is ever going to bother looking at ever again.

I think the best thing to do as far as preservation goes is to actually play these things – keep the memory alive rather than letting them languish in obscurity. But nobody's got time for that.

 

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

I once had a GC and Wii disc drive for PC (to digitalize disks). Does this exist for other systems as well? Like for Wii U.

 

[cvskid]

1 system that's pretty hard to find iso games for is the original xbox. You can find xbox 360 games easier than the original xbox. Feels like no one cares about the system enough to peserve it's games.

 

[Vorde]

Blu-Ray discs are 25 GB, not 250.

Sorry nothing too meaningful to add to this post, I just saw this and the number seemed wrong so I'm quoting the Wikipedia page for Blu-ray discs
"Conventional or pre-BD-XL Blu-ray discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual-layer discs (50 GB) being the industry standard for feature-length video discs. Triple-layer discs (100 GB) and quadruple-layer discs (128 GB) are available for BD-XL re-writer drives"

 

[Captain_N]

Sorry nothing too meaningful to add to this post, I just saw this and the number seemed wrong so I'm quoting the Wikipedia page for Blu-ray discs
"Conventional or pre-BD-XL Blu-ray discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual-layer discs (50 GB) being the industry standard for feature-length video discs. Triple-layer discs (100 GB) and quadruple-layer discs (128 GB) are available for BD-XL re-writer drives"

Its a shame well never get them so called holographic versitial discs. the max capacity is at 4tb per disc. thats 4tb on a disc the same size as a blu ray.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

1 system that's pretty hard to find iso games for is the original xbox. You can find xbox 360 games easier than the original xbox. Feels like no one cares about the system enough to peserve it's games.

Not really, there are plenty of places that have original Xbox games around if you know where to look. Just cuz they might not be on XYZ popular ROM site or thepiratebay doesn't mean they aren't being preserved. I mean, just look at the Alvro public mirror, basically every Xbox game can be found with gdrive links.

Don't forgot the original Xbox had a massive Homebrew scene, probably just as popular as the Wii was, and with that naturally comes piracy.

 

[Mythical]

Not really, there are plenty of places that have original Xbox games around if you know where to look. Just cuz they might not be on XYZ popular ROM site or thepiratebay doesn't mean they aren't being preserved. I mean, just look at the Alvro public mirror, basically every Xbox game can be found with gdrive links.

Don't forgot the original Xbox had a massive Homebrew scene, probably just as popular as the Wii was, and with that naturally comes piracy.

I've had the hardest time finding SMT Nine around. Thought I found it but I couldn't get it working with an emulator so either bad dump or incompatible