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Buying LEGAL retro games on CD
epetti:
I found this to be a very frustrating experience. I am 100% willing and wanting to buy all games legally and have an arcade cabinet that plays them all. But the wonderful thing about MAME is that all games use the same keyboard controls, a front end you can set up for them, save states and high score saves, etc. Namco actually sells a PC compilation -- I have it. The Namco 50th Anniversary Museum. You can find it used on Amazon and elsewhere. But many of the old compilations including that one have stupid copy protection that require the disc to be in, some of them don't let you customize controls. Often they have their own front end that you have to use to launch the games and it's very difficult or impossible to run the games standalone so you can pipe them through a front end.
Basically, the target audience for most of these classics are people who would want to build their own arcade, but the games seem to be sold in a way that makes them as difficult as possible to use in an arcade cabinet.
darkSSide:
Correct me if I'm wrong but if you own a pc version like those compilations can't you say you legally own that game? So if you have that rom in MAME its ok?
Sent from my Atari 2600
epetti:
From an ethical point of view I completely agree. From a legal point of view, I'm no lawyer, but I believe it's an undefined gray area. I believe companies fall on the side of saying that should be illegal, but no case has actually been heard on the subject. I know Nintendo's point of view is that emulators in general should be illegal, even with no roms, or with roms that you directly created from a cartridge or disc.
JDFan:
--- Quote from: darkSSide on May 30, 2013, 08:42:52 pm ---Correct me if I'm wrong but if you own a pc version like those compilations can't you say you legally own that game? So if you have that rom in MAME its ok?
Sent from my Atari 2600
--- End quote ---
Think it depends on where you live and the laws in your country -- Here in the US. nope even if you have the PC version of those games you can not "legally" obtain and use the ROM for MAME - just like if you buy a console version of a game you still have to buy the PC version in order to play it on your PC.
Generic Eric:
I remember thinking when that hotrod came out that those discs would be handy later on. Should have bought a stack of those and sold them years later.
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