TopRoms Massive Update (Black Friday Edition)

TopRoms has received a massive expansion with a huge selection of new systems. I spent a good chunk of the past few weeks working on the upgrade of the collection. Over 20 new systems have been added into the collection. There has been more addition to existing systems, including forgotten ROMs for Pokémon games on GBA.

At this point, the collection has compilations for 45 systems. Most of the new systems have smaller sets because their obscurity and small selection of quality games.

Again, as a reminder, TopRoms attempts to go from the most ancient video game systems all the way to PlayStation 1. There’s some more systems I’d like to add but this will take more time and further research. As usual, if you find missing games or suggestions, send them to toproms@cdahmedeh.net

Again, you can find the torrent on the TopRoms page. The older torrents will stay active as long as seeds are available, but I won’t be hosting them myself. Please remember, for the first 24 hours since posting this, the torrent might download slowly and hang a few times.

I originally had a target size for the collection at 128 GB and then 256 GB. However, it is now at 329 GB, so you’ll need external storage, probably a 512 GB SD Card. Unless your cellphone has massive eMMC storage. Remember to use your torrent client to download only the systems you want.

In addition, many CD-based systems have been converted from ISO to CHD for better compatibility with emulators and slightly smaller file size.

Finally, a BIOS file collection was included for running the games through RetroArch for BIOS-based systems. All you need to do is put the files in the ‘systems’ folder.

One thing I’m considering is adding a set for Japan exclusive games and translations.

Starting with TopRoms which is for cartridge-based systems, the following systems have been added:

  • Atari Jaguar

  • Atari Lynx

  • Bandai WonderSwan

  • Bandai WonderSwan Color

  • Coleco ColecoVision

  • Game Park GP32

  • Maganvox Odyssey 2

  • Mattel Intellivision

  • NEC SuperGrafx

  • Nintendo DS

  • Nintendo Famicom Disk System

  • Nintendo Virtual Boy

  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color

  • Vectrex

For TopArcade, a new “Legacy” collection was added that includes ROMs for MAME 0.37b5 (or MAME 2000 in RetroArch). That older version of MAME uses much less resources and runs better on low-powered devices such as some lower-end Raspberry Pi

  • Arcade - MAME Legacy

TopIsos has also gotten some love with new systems. These collections take considerable space:

  • 3DO

  • Atari Jaguar CD

  • Sony PlayStation Portable

TopHacks has been expanded slightly for SNES. I’m trying to avoid ‘quality of life’ improvements that only provide minor differences.

  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System Hacks

TopPc is a new collection for PC-based systems or desktop computers. These have been tested the least, still contain a subpar collection of games and need the most configuration for emulators.

  • Commodore Amiga

  • Commodore 64

  • Microsoft MS-DOS

  • Microsoft MSX

  • Microsoft MSX2

TopBios is a new set that contains the BIOS needed to run all the systems above through RetroArch. Simply put them in the ‘systems’ folder.

  • BIOS RetroArch

TopRoms now includes TurboGrafx-CD (November 2022 Edition)

A new torrent file was added to the TopRoms page.

You may point your client to the directory of your existing download. Files that you already have will be skipped.

The collection now includes a curated set of TurboGrafx-CD games. This was a very time consuming endeavour due to the large amount of high-quality games for the system. Unlike the Sega-CD, the TurboGrafx-CD didn’t fall into the same path of mediocrity as the Sega addon. Too bad it wasn’t very popular and sold poorly because many are missing out.

Please subscribe via email if you want to get updates on TopRoms

The torrent may take some time to be fully uploaded to the seedbox. Sorry I’m making you wait! The older torrent file will still be available but I cannot make any guarantees about availability of seeds.

TopRoms now available as a torrent! (Fixed)

I just uploaded a torrent to download the entire TopRoms Collection including TopRoms, TopIsos, TopArcade and TopHacks. Everything is consolidated into a single torrent. Use your torrent client to pick what systems you would like to download.

Checkout the TopRoms page for the torrent file. It is served by a SeedBox so you don’t have to worry about having enough seeders or peers, your connection will be fully saturated.

More improvements are coming as I promised in a previous post.

Issues

I’ve gotten several emails that the torrent is stalling when downloading, I’ve been able to reproduce the issue and currently investigating the problem.

Fixed

A new torrent file has been uploaded in the TopRoms page and should fix the issue. To avoid redownloading, simply point your torrent client to the original folder where you downloaded before.

The issue was due to the tracker URLs not properly formatted in the .torrent file.

Healing the wounds from Sonic Origins

Sonic Origins was shaping up to become the definitive way to play our favourite classics from the Genesis era. The official trailer demoed tantalizing animated cutscenes amidst footage of the remasters running in beautiful widescreen at 60 fps. We fell for it.

We obsessive Sonic fans waited until midnight of Sonic’s 31st anniversary (the release date) to grab a downloadable copy of this new compilation. However, what was supposed to be a sleepless night of a fan’s wet dream slowly became a bad trip of a nightmare.

Most reviewers and YouTubers were left with mixed feelings unimpressed with the game’s lack of polish. Veteran Sonic players saw much more subtle flaws that brought the game further away from what was supposed to be a compilation holy grail.

I don’t need to go into details, but most of us were left with sour taste from Sonic Origins feeling like we wasted 60$. The bugs, missing details, inaccurate physics and of course the butchered prototype tracks. It made us so angry and hurt our feelings. We were left with many painful cuts and bruises.

Sonic and Amy inflicted with wounds and bleeding. From Tumbler Blogger *chinchilla*

Many have tried to patch the holes in Sonic Origins but eventually realizing that it’s not moddable enough to fix the papercuts. Sega got the sale figures they wanted so they have no motivation to correct the many bugs in the game. Stealth from Headcannon revealed that Sega sent them into development hell.

Fortunately, fan gamers have already built remasters which fill in the gap quite nicely. You can still enjoy these games in a more polished and modern format without all the oddities found in Sega’s rush job. These are the treatments to your wounds and the definitive way play to these games in widescreen, at 60 fps and with drop dash.

If you really liked the animated cutscenes, you can still watch these fantastic animations online from beginning to end. And don’t worry, you can find much more concepts, drawings, manuals, interviews and music than the tiny sample of bonuses that Origins included over at Sonic Retro.

Of course, if you can’t get enough of these platformers than you should take a look at the matchless spiritual successor made by Christian Whitehead et al. Sonic Mania

We've heard you, some improvements to TopRoms are coming!

Thanks everyone for sending me emails about TopRoms with suggestions and issues. I’ll be addressing them when I have some free time, probably near the end of this month.

Some of the issues you brought up:

  • TopArcade is missing some BIOS roms and some games can’t start.

  • Expanding the TopArcade game collection. (Thanks to one of my readers for providing a list)

  • The large collection TopIsos cannot be downloaded because Mega is requiring payment due to its file size.

  • Consider converting ISO to CHD format as it is smaller in size and more universally supported by emulators. I know this is possible with PS1 but not sure about Sega CD.

  • Some multiple disc PlayStation 1 games are missing the second disc.

  • The collections will move to a privately hosted VPS for direct download.

  • The collections will also be available via torrent. I’ll keep a seedbox running so you don’t have to wait for multiple seeds. One advantage of torrents is you can pick and choose what gets downloaded or not.

  • Curate TurboGrafx-CD ISOs. This system actually has a sizeable amount of high quality games

  • Finish curating the ROM hacks set. There is still SNES, GB, GBC and GBA that are missing.

Please keep these emails coming, I’m glad that you are enjoying the collection!