Rant: What's wrong with romsites?, Not a ROM request thread!!

Okay, before I start, I'll make it clear again: This is not a ROM request thread. If it's not OK, then please inform me and edit the post, lock the thread or delete it.

I've been looking for a GBA ROM. I usually go to an awesome ROM site (I won't mention it so as to not break forum rules) which is probably one of the best on the Internet: no porn, no annoying adverts, no voting, no fake downloads, etc.
Their servers are down.
So I go on search for one...
Every place I found has one of these, in many cases more..
+ Voting requirement. Checking the source code of the pages in each of these cases revealed these would make you vote three times, then say your votes were invalid. I never voted on any. Most of these looked identical.
+ Fake download links. On one, the ROM lists would take you to a page with a hentai ad and vote link.
+ Popular ROMs restricted from downloading. All the good stuff couldn't be downloaded.
+ Keywords to trick you into visiting by searches, such as "gameboy advance roms" (of which the site didn't have a single reference to other than that)
+ Porn, popups, smileys, fart button, hentai, vote, etc ads. I hate these.
+ Badly designed sites making it impossible to find anything easily.

Rant ended. Anyone want to comment?

This post has been edited by Jouw on Aug 24 2006, 07:10 AM

Yes I agree with everything.

It's people taking advantage of people wanting to do illegal things. There are some pretty good romsites out there that I use regularly, but I can't say them.

But you're above the board :(

Everything you said is true and irritating, though I guess we can't say we're much better, what with breaking the law and all.

I know of at least one fantastic ROM site for old school games (no pop-ups, only a single banner on each page, fast downloads, no voting, et cetera), but that's it; other than that site, all of the sites that are even "decent" are still pretty sucky.

Sounds like a nice site, the one I go to is similar. They have loads of different systems though, everything from Atari to GBA and DS (maybe someone knows it, the only thing I'll say is that the owner gave everyone enough download points to get NSMB when the rom came out and they had some sort of trouble)

I know a good site, but it's going down from time to time

Obtaining roms, especially the hard to find ones seems to be a lot more hard than it was back in the day.

I love the ones where every link redirects to the Top X site that you just came from

and said ROM site was #1 on the list

Haha, if it's the one I'm thinking of, they have EVERYTHING - the zip files even have different language versions of the games

Heh, the site i'm using even uses the 7zip format for the SNES games :P

And I even got the justin bailey or wth hack with my super metroid download...

Me, Klobs, and Elly are all thinking of the same one.
I know which one Jeff is talking about though. Great for older games.

Unfortunately no one seems to know which I'm talking about, and I have no idea which everyone else is (my favourite has newer games as well, the different language versions are packaged seperately, and snes games don't come in 7z files)

I think the one I'm using does not carry GBA roms for legal reasons.

Wich is fine and dandy anyway.

For MAME roms I go to an different site, as I find games i like trough MAWS and instead of title, look for the romsets name. >_>

This post has been edited by Elly on Jul 2 2006, 05:52 PM

There's this one ROM site I go to that doesn't have any of the thing you've mention, well, expect for pop-ups. But I cannot tell you...

This post has been edited by Stixdude on Jul 2 2006, 05:54 PM

Stixdude, I think after reading this thread everyone would have got the general idea of "no rom links here". So you don't have to worry, just don't post a link or name.
I wish ROM discussion and stuff was allowed here...

That's why I rely mostly on torrents for my ROM needs.

Because they know everyone is after these ROMs, they like to take advantage of and annoy.

I'd prefer having a forum to visit to the hosting getting revoked for allowing roms.

This post has been edited by King Bobo on Jul 2 2006, 06:42 PM

Most of them don't have roms anyway. They'll just say you voted wrong, or make it so that eventually when you DO get past teh whole voting process you get taken to a ROMS TOP 500 ENTER HERE link, which link to a whole array of sites doing exactly the same. 8)

I think I go to the same site Jeff does. I rarely use ROMs anyway... only if I have a craving for a game I haven't played in forever and don't have access to (mainly awesome SNES titles).