Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

[analrapist]

why these never get hosted as torrents, I will never know

This is legit the strat. Separate them by console, upload them to somewhere like IPTorrents, and let the distributed archival technology that is Bittorrent handle the site maintenance.

 

[Never Scored]

The entire NES, Master System, TG-16, Game Boy/GBC, SNES. Genesis, N64 and GBA libraries combined is under 100 gigs. If you're into old games, I legit don't understand why you wouldn't have local copy just in case.

I understand there's a lot more than that on Myrient, but a lot of people just play the same few games every few years.

 

[X Prime]

The reason that it's not just up on torrents is that torrenting is monitored by ISPs and the kind of scum who notify your ISP if they see your IP in a peer list.

Direct download is simply safer for the consumer. The problem is the tragedy of the commons.

 

[analrapist]

The entire NES, Master System, TG-16, Game Boy/GBC, SNES. Genesis, N64 and GBA libraries combined is under 100 gigs.

...and you're cautiously overestimating. lrzip in particular makes mincemeat of repetitions across big corpora. I've kept these around for some years so this might not be quite "complete" by no-intro standards (you can see I tagged my NES pack with nointro-1706, which means June 2017, to give a time approximate) or anything. Maybe it's time for me to tune this up. But these are reasonably complete representations of the full libraries for these consoles.

569M    32x.tar
71M     32x.tar.lrz
111M    gb.tar.lrz
6.9G    gba.tar.lrz
361M    gbc.tar.lrz
631M    genesis.tar.lrz
62M     gg.tar.lrz
149M    nes-nointro-1706.lrz
43M     sms.tar.lrz
1.5G    snes.tar.lrz
60M     tg16.tar.lrz

Efficiency of lrzip in particular drops in late 16-bit into disc-drive consoles as they started containing compressed video which buggers further compression. (As early as Sonic 3D Blast!) But this is how tiny a full download of all the software of these systems can be.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

Literally never heard of this site, and I pirate everything.

I do my fair share of pirating and I also never heard of this site. Reminds me of a ISO site I found 10 years ago that went away soon after.

 

[Two Dollars]

Literally never heard of this site, and I pirate everything.

I’d heard of it, but I took one look a while ago and decided it didn’t really have anything I cared about that I couldn’t also get on Archive or Vimm’s Lair. But I looked again and grabbed the full Nintendo Power collection, so that’s nice.

The entire NES, Master System, TG-16, Game Boy/GBC, SNES. Genesis, N64 and GBA libraries combined is under 100 gigs. If you're into old games, I legit don't understand why you wouldn't have local copy just in case.

I understand there's a lot more than that on Myrient, but a lot of people just play the same few games every few years.

Disc-based systems have always been on a need-to-download basis for me, but there’s no reason not to at least download full sets of every pre-DS cartridge-based system. The only ones that will even put a dent on your SD card are N64 and GBA, and that’s if you include all regions and versions.

 

[Never Scored]

Disc-based systems have always been on a need-to-download basis for me, but there’s no reason not to at least download full sets of every pre-DS cartridge-based system. The only ones that will even put a dent on your SD card are N64 and GBA, and that’s if you include all regions and versions.

For PSX, I usually download something like the PSX roms in Tiny Best Set and then add games I like that weren't included. There's a V's favourite DS games torrent on the Internet Archive that's a good starting point for DS. As you get farther and farther along and you're dealing with multi gigabyte games in the PS2/Gamecube era, it gets harder to manage a decent local collection.

 

[Pluciferous]

why these never get hosted as torrents, I will never know

Um, they do. I’d guess the actual ROMs on this website mostly came from the “Motion Blue” ROM pack torrent.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Myrient kinda proves that wrong when it comes to super large scale rom sites with little means of getting the money to justify staying up like it was trying to do since the guy was blowing $6k a month just to keep the site and servers up. That is a lot of dough for a almost 400TB worth of ROMs and other related stuff like leaks or beta/prototype shit you couldn't get without a lot of searching, and that was before AI priced out RAM and storage made maitenence harder.

I have to remind you, Myrient had a ton of what would be rare finds on the website that can become lost if not mirrored to other ROM sites. This isn't just a middle finger to the man when the goal has been as extensive a game preservation project could get.

so basically we're witnessing the library of alexandria burn down right now
GG

I think the cheapest hard drives ever got to was around $10/TB for refurbished enterprise drives. So about $8,000 to store two copies of a 400 TB archive. It's a lot but not impossible for rich nerds to back up these collections. Making the content available to the world, with remote hosting, servers, etc. is what gets really expensive. And now storage prices are up because of AI.

The Library of Alexandria situation could be worse, but it could be a lot better. I want to see 100 TB - 1 PB holodiscs that cost $10 each, and a retvrn to 5.25" drive bays. Nuclear war is more likely at this point.

 

[Pluciferous]

I think the cheapest hard drives ever got to was around $10/TB for refurbished enterprise drives. So about $8,000 to store two copies of a 400 TB archive. It's a lot but not impossible for rich nerds to back up these collections. Making the content available to the world, with remote hosting, servers, etc. is what gets really expensive. And now storage prices are up because of AI.

The Library of Alexandria situation could be worse, but it could be a lot better. I want to see 100 TB - 1 PB holodiscs that cost $10 each, and a retvrn to 5.25" drive bays. Nuclear war is more likely at this point.

You’re forgetting the existence of tape drives,

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

You’re forgetting the existence of tape drives,

They're annoying to use, not significantly cheaper than HDDs (maybe $5/TB?), and have similar/worse longevity AFAIK (should be replaced every 10 years).

https://www.mediaduplicationsystems.com/blog/understanding-the-lifespan-of-magnetic-tape-and-when-to-migrate-data/

While manufacturers of data tapes often claim lifespans of up to 30 years for magnetic tape drive media, real-world conditions usually limit this period to between 10 and 20 years. The actual lifespan depends heavily on storage environment management, the longevity of the magnetic media used, and the frequency of access. By focusing on these aspects, you can extend the viability of your magnetic tapes and prevent premature data recovery needs.

I want the 5D Superman memory crystal technology lasting thousands/billions of years, storing petabytes per dollar, and operating like a 12cm optical disc if possible.

 

[The Cheese Aisle]

Well, shit, my weekend plans are sorted.

 

[i440BX]

This is legit the strat. Separate them by console, upload them to somewhere like IPTorrents, and let the distributed archival technology that is Bittorrent handle the site maintenance.

Isnt IPTorrents frowned upon though?

Another question though, is there a ftp link to make it easier scraping?

 

[YouDoNotHaveTheRight]

I am going to sorely miss Myrient sharing my buddy Myrient's games with them reminded me of simpler times when I shared my buddy emuparadise's games.

 

[innocent jogger]

Well fuck this sucks.

 

[Calandrino]

but a lot of people just play the same few games every few years

I'm always looking for new games but I'm only caught up to like 1994 or so

 

[False Emprah]

Instead of pointing Emulation Station to your real rom directories point it somewhere else and set up symlinks.

I'm doing that right now...painful (but less so with some copilot cli help). Not wasting SSD space on roms when they're sitting on a perfectly good server attached via 10Gb.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I've only found Myrient useful for 360 and PS3 game isos. Usually I don't bother pirating those platforms because I bought up nearly everything I want for extremely cheap, but when I do want something they're weirdly hard to find elsewhere.

Back in the day I used to pirate nearly every 360 game I wanted from torrents but those torrents are very not active anymore.

 

[metroid_fetish_ii]

Myrient has one major thing going for it. They don't care about the hurt feelings of the homebrew/aftermarket scene. They'll host a brand new Kickstarter release just the same as a 35 year old SMB3 file.

 

[Two Dollars]

I'm doing that right now...painful (but less so with some copilot cli help). Not wasting SSD space on roms when they're sitting on a perfectly good server attached via 10Gb.

I use Link Shell Extension. Just right click what you want to make a link to, then drop it into the new location.