Retro Gaming Hacks

Buy Legal MAME ROMs

Put some money into the pockets of classic game publishers.

Let’s face it—as fun as Gridlee [Hack #24] may be, what you really want to do with MAME is play the arcade games you remember from your misspent youth (or, depending on your age, satisfy your curiosity about what us geezers used to think was high-tech). You want the real thing, but if possible you’d prefer to do it without running afoul of copyright law. In that case you’ll want to visit StarROMs, Inc. (http://www.starroms.com), which at the time of this writing lets you legally download twenty-seven different Atari arcade titles.

Warning

There are a few different web sites and online auction sellers who sell CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs containing every ROM known to work in MAME. Bear in mind that these are not in any way official products.

The web site claims that the games cost “as low as $2 each,” but there is a catch. You don’t purchase the games directly—instead, you buy packages of “download credits” which are then redeemed for games. The current price structure is 40 credits for $9.95, 100 credits for $19.95, 200 credits for $34. 95, 400 credits for $59.95, and 800 credits for $99.00, the latter representing a 50% savings over the base price.

Games cost between 8 and 24 credits each. Do the math and you’ll find that an 8-credit game purchased from the pack of 800 credits does indeed effectively cost $2. (Of course, you should bear in mind that if you purchased every ROM on the site as of this writing, it ...