Itunes For Roms


Shirohagen

Brutal Deluxe
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Hi everyone,

I was just using iTunes this afternoon and thought what a great idea it would be to have a similar thing for ROMs.

"iROM" could keep lists of all the game ROMs you have on your computer, and let you set up sets for each platform - linked to whatever emulator you use. It could let you put in info like year of release, developer etc and even display the cover artwork like iTunes does, acting like a games database. You could view games by year, developer, genre etc using a sort of ID3 tag for ROM type structure (probably maintained in the seperate database) It could scan for new ROMs on startup and generally just make it all as easy as possible...

...the clever part would come with the addition of the GP32, when you could decide which ROMs to keep on the SMC and which to replace, that way you can maintain an extensive ROM collection on the computer, but make the most of the precious SMC space only carrying around what you want at any given time. iROM could automatically put the last 10 played ROMs on the GP32, or the 10 most played etc etc...

What do you think? Does anyone have the enthusiasm for a project like that? If so, just do me a favour and make a Mac OSX version, as despite Mr Spiv's best efforts I'm already pretty negected as Mac user, and iTunes is Macintosh at heart! ;-)

I have RealBasic for the Mac so I could give it a try, but I'm rubbish! I really wish I could program, as I would definately be making this otherwise! If anyone fancies it just put me down for the 1st copy...

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Thanks for the reply, I checked out that thread but that's not really what I mean. That was about buying/sharing ROMs like the iTunes Music Store, but I meant something to organise your OWN ROMs on your machine seeing as buying ROMs or downloading them from others is not really allowed...

As iTunes is to the iPod, iROM would be to the GP32, a way to organise the ROM collection and organise which files are on the SMC. The artwork and game info parts would be pretty important, an attempt to catalogue the history and add another layer of nostalgia. iTunes accesses a track title database to name MP3s so maybe an iROM program could use a system like that to gather info about the game's pedigree etc so people could enter it for others to share...

Although it is obviously an idea geared towards the GP32 community, it could attract wider attention for the other people who would simply want to organise their emulator collections. That way it would actually market the GP32 as the next step for those people - like bringing iTunes to Windows has brought PC owners to the iPod.

Also, if it worked, then there's no reason why it couldn't organise MP3's and video too. Apple fans are eagerly anticipating a video iPod which is years away, but the GP32 could do it now!

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Thanks for that, i looked it up and it sounds good, although as it's not for Mac I can't tell what features it has and I couldn't see any mention of the GP32.

Richard Bannister does a ROM Organiser for OSX (www.bannister.org), but it's some way short of the things I have suggested. Any coders short of a challenge? This would be a killer app!

;-)

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