Confusing about decrypted and encrypted Roms

Hi guys,
I hope somebody can help me. I am a bit confused about all these decrypted and encrypted roms. I know that Citra needs decrypted roms. I thought that this is the only emulator who uses decrypted roms. Now I found a Wii DLC decrypted rom set. I wonder because I use dolphin with encrypted roms (I think so) and it runs fine. Also, I downloaded one of these decrypted Wii DLC roms and check the MD5 value with the Wii DLC DAT from No-Intro which is not decrypted and it matches. I think either the rom set is tagged wrong or the DAT is tagged wrong.

Also I see that there are Nintendo DS roms exist in decrypted and encrypted versions. Why these two versions. Is decrypted for emulators and encrypted for use with real hardware? Can somebody tell me which emulators need decrypted roms? I think thats only an rom thing, Isos are unconcerned, right?

I hope somebody can enlighten me.

First of all, encrypted and decrypted roms has all to do with piracy protection. Until and emulator becomes very very good you will have hard time playing encrypted roms.

Take for example arcade games, I still remember hearing the news about CPS2 protection getting "cracked" and a while later seeing the first emulated games that were not using nasty hacked roms.

The easiest way to explain this is as follows: encrypted games are mostly for real hardware and decrypted for emulators.

In details to your question:

Citra - 3DS = You need decrypted.
Dolphin - Wii/Gamecube = you need Disk Images (isos) of games.
Cemu - Wiiu = You need Disk image dumps (using special software, connecting PC and console you can transfer physical games on PC since DVD drives cannot read WiiU disks) or the digital versions of the game. There is a way to download the digital versions, and decrypt it on PC but I will not get to that here. It is extremely easy to find the info on google.

Thank you Lefteris_D,

but this No-Intro DAT which is not tagged as decrypted is still confusing me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lanzelot

Hi guys,
I hope somebody can help me. I am a bit confused about all these decrypted and encrypted roms. I know that Citra needs decrypted roms. I thought that this is the only emulator who uses decrypted roms. Now I found a Wii DLC decrypted rom set. I wonder because I use dolphin with encrypted roms (I think so) and it runs fine. Also, I downloaded one of these decrypted Wii DLC roms and check the MD5 value with the Wii DLC DAT from No-Intro which is not decrypted and it matches. I think either the rom set is tagged wrong or the DAT is tagged wrong. Ccleaner Happy Wheels VLC

Also I see that there are Nintendo DS roms exist in decrypted and encrypted versions. Why these two versions. Is decrypted for emulators and encrypted for use with real hardware? Can somebody tell me which emulators need decrypted roms? I think thats only an rom thing, Isos are unconcerned, right?

I hope somebody can enlighten me.

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but this No-Intro DAT which is not tagged as decrypted is still confusing me.