Query about deleting "bad" ROMS

I've been an emulator user for many years, so please forgive this possibly noob-sounding question.

I've always obtained the "full" pack of ROMS for a particular game, for completion's sake. But lately I've been wondering...

Do I really need to keep all the various versions and files?


For example, within Super Mario Kart I have the following ROMS;


Is there actually any point in keeping anything other than the "(E) [!]" & "(U) [!]" ROMS (so I have the complete PAL and NTSC versions)?

I'm not interested in the various Hacked versions.

What does everybody else do? Do you keep only the two (or one?) file you need to launch for the emulator?

Keeping every broken file just seems pointless.


Thanks

I just keep the (E) [!], (U) [!] and in some cases where the game has only been released in Japan, (J) [!]. Just for the fun I keep some hacked versions, but I tend to download ROMs individually.

If they are in 7z files, its not going to do you much good. The 7z is designed to pack similar files in to one archive. If you have 20 files, but small differences, then the over all file size of the 7z is the same as the largest files in that archive. But no you dont need any of them other then what Jale said.


example Mario Golf.7z..

its file size is 16 meg yet all 20 files in there are 25 meg. If you take ten files out you dont save a thing. Most people dont know why 7z is useful. Its compression is that of winrar yet it can compress similar files very well. Thus perfect for roms.


I think the tosec collection only keeps good files. Goodmerge keeps all.

Hi, thanks for your replies.

They are all 7z files (I was blown away with the difference over zipping!) and this was more of an 'ease of use' query than a 'space saving' one.

I use QuickPlay a lot when there are a few of us together and sometimes someone will accidentally open the wrong file for a game (since they're GoodMerged) which gets annoying pretty quickly.

Nice to know that I can just keep the one single flat file for which ever version I want to keep. I'll look into splitting them into PAL/NTSC and region now. Shame there's no decent/complete QuickPlay Custom ROM info files out there.

One more thing - What is the point of having all the 'bad' ROMS in the collections if they're no use to anyone?


Thanks again folks, much appreciated

Some are hacks that add things or change certain elements of a game, some are alternate language versions, some are simply old or bad dumps. I generally only keep the (!) versions for each region and various fan translations of what were previously exclusively foreign language versions of a game (lots of Jap games weren't given an official western release and are unplayable in their original form if you don't read Japanese).

For collecting purposes, if you are interested in everything there is, then obviously you can keep them all. However if you are more interested in maintaining a "pure" / accurate set, then you need to do heavy pruning.
However you have to be very careful about what you choose to delete, if you are letting a sorting tool do most of the deleting (by file tag for instance).

Some games tagged as unlicensed, or pirate, etc might actually be legitimate games who had CARTS manufactured and sold. This happened with Tengen games for NES for example. They are unlicensed (I believe) because they found a way to circumvent Nintendo's lockout chip and make the game playable on the console.. It saves a lot of Money having to go through the quality certification process, pay licensing royalties, pay for the lockout chips to be used in the CARTS, etc.. So some companies got inventive.

Ooh, I didn't know that (every day's a school day).

It's a shame there isn't a dat (conf? ini?) file that details just the "pure" roms, to use with a rom manager. Or is there? - a haven't read too much into the GoodMerge alternatives.


Thanks again for all your advice - Looks like I'll set some time aside to 'prune' my collection.

Never be afraid to try other emulators or even keep 2

7z?

You mean 7 Zip?

7z is the file extension 7 zip is the full name. That be the same thing as saying zip? You mean Zippy ?