Collection:Game ROM images

Team Captain: David Hedlund

Participants: Jacobk

These free games are occasionally offered on ROM cartridges by the developer, so they can be used on original home video consoles, but also downloaded for emulators.

ROMs are short for read-only memory. In the emulator/rom scene it is a catch-all for cartridge dumps, ISO disc backups, etc. They can be played on the hardware if you have means to flash a cartridge, bypass the verification, or use a "flash cart" which varies on the system. Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to games produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable.

This page is an evaluation. We do not yet know if this page exclusively refers or links to free software. Please read the page for more information.

Atari

Atari 2600

Nintendo

Home consoles

Nintendo Entertainment System

• Super Tilt Bro
  • https://github.com/sgadrat/super-tilt-bro
• Thwaite
  • https://github.com/pinobatch/thwaite-nes
• Falling
  • https://github.com/xram64/falling-nes
• Big City Sliding Blaster
  • https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/SlidingBlaster
• NESert Golfing
  • https://github.com/bbbradsmith/NESertGolfing

Super NES

• Doom/FX
  • https://github.com/RandalLinden/DOOM-FX
• The Last Super
  • Web page: https://drludos.itch.io/the-last-super
• Keeping SNES alive
  • Web page: https://drludos.itch.io/keeping-snes-alive

Nintendo 64

• A note about N64 ROM images: currently any ROM that works on a real N64 depends on some nonfree Nintendo bootloader code, known as IPL3. This software was included on every N64 cartridge release. See https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Libdragon#Licensing and https://n64brew.dev/wiki/Pseultra#A_Note_About_Bootloaders for more details. It may be the case that some N64 emulators do not actually read that part of the ROM, in which case modified ROM images that only work on emulators may be easier to get as fully free software.

GameCube/Wii

• SuperTux

Wii U

• SuperTux

Handhelds

Game Boy

Game Boy Advance

• Inheritors of the Oubliette
  • Repository: https://github.com/DrLancer-X/inheritors-of-the-oubliette
  • Download: https://github.com/DrLancer-X/inheritors-of-the-oubliette/releases/
  • Very good reception: https://itch.io/jam/gbajam21/rate/1120414
  • Demo: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=txmvpEtFxZU&t=6083
  • Depends on devkitPro
    • "devkitPro is the organisation that provides the tools. We are not a software package, we don't have version numbers and the only way to have us compile your code is to pay us (or maybe if you ask nicely when you need help figuring out an issue)" - https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started
    • Dependencies: "have devkitpro installed with all the GBA dev stuff" - https://github.com/DrLancer-X/inheritors-of-the-oubliette. But where is the source?
    • https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Trademarks - "I don't think the devkitpro's trademark policy would make it unsuitable for the FSD." -- Craig
    • "devkitPro provided tools and libraries are managed by the rather wonderful Arch Linux pacman" - https://devkitpro.org/wiki/devkitPro_pacman

Nintendo DS

• Diamond Trust of London

Nintendo DSi

• Passage

Nintendo 3DS

• 2048
• SuperTux

Hybrid

Nintendo Switch

• A Dark Room
• SuperTuxKart

Sega

Home consoles

Sega Dreamcast

• Biniax

Sega Genesis

Handhelds

Game Gear

SNK

Neo Geo CD

Sony

PlayStation

• Warzone 2100
• https://github.com/ChenThread/fromage
• https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/doukutsupsx

Homebrew: "Making games on the PlayStation is possible with any model of the system through the use of a modchip or the double 'Swap Trick'. There is also a softmod/save game exploit called "tonyhax" Requirements consist of a PC, SDK, and a 'Comms Link' device to upload and download files to and from the console." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(video_games)#PlayStation

• https://archive.org/details/psx-homebrew-library
• https://github.com/Lameguy64/PSn00bSDK: "PSn00bSDK is a 100% free and open source SDK project for the original Sony PlayStation for developing homebrew applications and games for the console."

PlayStation 2

• SuperTux
• Game managers
  • Lutris

PlayStation 3

PlayStation Portable

• Chromium B.S.U.
• GNU FreeDink
• No Gravity

PlayStation 4

Uzebox

• Arkanoid_(Uzebox)
• DrMario_(Uzebox)
• The Uzebox Games and Demos Uzebox wiki page also list potential fully-free games. Note that beside the license we also need to make sure they don't have any nonfree build dependencies (like windows tools to convert graphic files for instance, dependencies on avr-studio, etc). We probably need a way to review that as well somewhere. For Arkanoid I reviewed it in the DistroExecutionEnvironments#Other_execution_environment Libreplanet wiki page. The same info is also on the Parabola Emulator_licensing_issues wiki page.

Todo

• Create pages for each game
• Add to the games: https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Category/Runs-on/SNES