ROMs (Sets)

[Anonymous No.10299021]

I've downloaded some full ROM sets recently, as every few months or so I panic a little whenever Nintendo's the main topic on people's minds for going after emulation websites, I know that the odds of it all getting taken down, or at least the websites becoming harder to find and/or get an useful set of ROMs from, but there's always that fear that it might, even if the odds are low, so I make sure to have everything I could want... at least with the storage I have, so mostly a bunch of cartridge based systems, as CDs have huge file sizes in comparison... anyways, now I have a load of ROM sets and I don't know what to do with it since it's quite new to me.

I mean, just loading up something like RetroArch or any frontend, which is meant to make things a little more organized, more snappy too, doesn't flow the same way as before, since now I have a bunch of huge lists of ROMs to go through, I use the search function a lot more now, for sure, but even then navigating the XMB, which has always been an UI I loved, feels a bit more like a chore at the moment, and it doesn't help that there are a ton of repeated ROMs due to different regions, or even some beta releases... for example, my favorite console, the Genesis, had about 1000 releases for it, and yet a full ROM set has over the double of that...

One more thing I've realized is that, well, having so many options makes it really hard to pick a single thing to play and commit to, even if it's good, and something I would've commited to as a kid if I had the cartridge... what I'm doing to get past this, which has been working, is to focus on franchises I already know I'm quite into, and just playing those titles I've missed out on, but still, I feel like I over did it with all of these ROMs, so I was wondering how other people here do it, do you only download ROMs individually like I used to? How do you handle large sets like these? Is there a way to trim them? What's the best way to go about a frontend for this?

[Anonymous No.10299047]

i just import to launchbox whatever i assume looks cool
loading up full romsets right into the launcher just makes it bloated as fuck to me

[Anonymous No.10299052]

>>10299021
Delete those and use Retro Game Champion rom sets instead, has US regions of every game and only the English-friendly JP titles. For CD games always go for CHD rom sets (or RVZ in the case of GameCube). SEGA CD and TurboGrafx-CD shouldn't be too huge but PS1 is going to be massive no matter what.

I switched to full rom sets about a year or two ago, way better than downloading games individually and also makes more sense considering cartridge sets are so tiny.

[Anonymous No.10299102]

I went with full romsets years ago. It's not about hoarding, preservation or any of that crap. I like the convenience of having everything available whenever I feel to play something. Found an interesting review of a game I never knew about? Oh hey, I already have it, just a click and try it myself.

For organization, I tried pretty much every frontend under the sun and found launchbox to be the better one (though not perfect in the slightest). Nothing fancy, most of the time I scroll through the systems until I find a game that catches my eye.

[Anonymous No.10299158]

>>10299021
I only use original copies, but i have my games organized by usually publisher, devs or serial number(usually per publisher). I like to usually play through a systems library from earliest release to latest. That can be either per company, per genre or just an entire library.

For example, im currently playing through the shmups for the Famicom/NES i have from oldest to newest and doing super fami earliest releases before the snes came out. Its fun seeing the stuff a company put out/developed, how a console library grew and genres advanced.

[Anonymous No.10300076]

>>10299047
I recall hearing that LaunchBox has a way to filter repeated ROMs from full sets... never used it, but it sounds quite interesting and useful, I might get it, does it work well with GNU/Linux though?

>>10299052
Oh... this is exactly what I was looking for! What a fantastic collection of ROM sets, and all sorted in folders by alphabetical order too. I appreciate it a lot, downloading some right now, thanks, anon!

>>10299102
I see, I'll try getting LaunchBox to work later, I'll probably have to use something like Wine, but I don't mind much, just hope it works well, and I agree with the appeal of having it all ready to go.

>>10299158
It's definitely an interesting way of experiencing these libraries, I usually just play what I'm more familiar with, and in the order I'm in the mood for at the present time, which can vary quite a lot.

[Anonymous No.10300108]

>>10299021
The problem is games were never organized by genre. You have to already know what a game is to find it.
Try games and start deleting shit you don't actually want. There really aren't that many worth playing.

[Anonymous No.10301813]

>>10299052
>Retro Game Champion romsets
is there something like this but for jp games instead? I don't play the US versions and they're kinda annoying to scroll through.

[Anonymous No.10301892]

>>10300076
>I recall hearing that LaunchBox has a way to filter repeated ROMs from full sets
It's pretty handy so you don't have individual entries for different versions of the same game. It can do it automatically or you can manually "merge" games together. Same thing applies for games with multiple discs, just one entry with all the discs inside.

Having a built in metadata system, games are tagged when imported. So for example, you're looking at the Mame games and you type "fighting", it will filter all the fighting games. Or say you want to find all the Taito games, you just type taito and it will bring them all up.

I know I sound like a fucking shill but whatever, it probably has the most robust backend of them all.

[Anonymous No.10301915]

>>10299021
I kinda feel like just downloading everything, but the GBs it'd take hold me back. the bandwith. maybe an old console won't take too much space

[Anonymous No.10301951]

>>10299021
Have you ever heard of these functions for your PC

>right click
>new folder
>copy
>paste

[Anonymous No.10303908]

There is a rom set thread on /t rn if any one is interested

[Anonymous No.10304732]

I try to keep my MAME arcade sets updated, but have given up on complete console collections past Sega Dreamcast. Thanks to homebrew, I imaged my GameCube and Wii games. Thank you Nintendo for making it so easy!

[Anonymous No.10305607]

>>10303908
there's also myrient