Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by bogwog on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @11:47AM (#44248867)

I had an idea once but not the time nor motivation to build it: a database of game design with links to gameplay snippets.

So for example an article on "2D platforming" that discusses the implementation in Super Mario, and includes a "demo" button which launches a web emulator with a save state that demonstrates a specific jumping section of the game.

Legally perilous maybe, although my non-lawyer brain sees that as fair use, especially if the emulator doesn't let you play the full game. Idk, but it'd be a unique thing on the internet.

Edit: this is awesome btw, im definitely setting up a personal instance soon

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by gassi on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @12:12PM (#44249102)

Cool idea, would be a fun POC or weekend project. The team behind EmulatorJS (https://emulatorjs.org/) has made it stupid easy to inject the player into a static website (or multiple players with iframes), with a preloaded game and custom settings.

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by Arelius on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @05:14PM (#44251876)

> Legally perilous maybe, although my non-lawyer brain sees that as fair use, especially if the emulator doesn't let you play the full game. Idk, but it'd be a unique thing on the internet.

IANAL, but I think what a lot of people don't understand is that "fair-use" is a defense. Which basically means you have to be prepared to argue in in court. A lot of potential fair-use is quashed before it gets to that point.

It's also a balancing test, which means that it's very fact/context dependent, and subjective, which results in for a lot of cases, you really won't know until you actually get to court.

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by gassi on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @05:58PM (#44252277)

This is incredibly relevant to projects in this space, and we continue to hold discussions about what is and isn't tolerated in our community, and what features we should avoid building, in order to protect ourselves from legal attacks. One thing you'll never see integrated into the RomM is a way to pull/download ROMs from cloud services or website; you'll always need to provide the games to RomM directly, after sourcing them legally of course.

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by anthk on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @05:39PM (#44252106)

MAME/MESS just used GIF files for that.

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by TomatoCo on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @05:56PM (#44252265)

I think you could make your fair-use defense a lot stronger by stripping the ROM. Shouldn't even be that hard! Only let it run for a few seconds, record all the memory accesses, zero everything that wasn't hit.

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by kaunta on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @10:02PM (#44253657)

This idea was explored by Joël Franušić and Adam Smith:

"Playable Quotes for Game Boy Games" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9JYOZWLMlo

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Re:Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager a... by MyPasswordSucks on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @10:32PM (#44253798)

The database idea is neat, but I'm not really sure what the web emulator part adds besides bloat. Either an animated .GIF or an HTML5 object with buttons to click to demonstrate, e.g., standing horizontal jump trajectory vs running horizontal jump trajectory would not only be less overhead, but much more immediate.

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