Recently I found out that DotEmu sells Sega Genesis games for PC. Does anybody know, wether these are ROMS + included emulator, or authentic PC-ports? Does Sega provide these versions? Are there no legal issues?

They seem to be from the sega genesis collections that amazon sells, which are emulators+roms

Thanks .
I always thought, emulators and roms were ripped/cracked software and thus illegal.

Not if they're actually licensed/legally done by sega or one of their devs. Those aren't illegal.

It doesn't matter how they were obtained (ripped, cracked or whatever), it matters who did it. If I were to get a hold of a shipment of genuine copies and started selling them it would still be illegal, but if an actual retailer who payed for the shipment sold them it would be legal. As long as the rights holder is doing it it is fine. That#s why emulators and ROMs are not illegal by default, it's just that most of the things done with them are illegal practices (i.e. software piracy)

Agreed, and as such he doesn't have to worry about those. He would technically still own the games as if he had the real carts.

Not inherently so. Dosbox for an example is an emulator, which is entirely legal. Other emulators don't need to be illegal either, and there are in fact console emulators which are legal. It gets illegal if you either don't own the game, or the emulator is dependent on something that you don't have the right to use. For an example, there is a PS1 emulator out there which is not dependent on a PS1 BIOS (which is owned by Sony), thus as long as you legally own the games, you are allowed to use this. Also, there are homemade games which are meant to be played on emulators or through other means on consoles, which are not inherently illegal either.

And if SEGA, Nintendo, Sony or whoever wants to create an emulator and let their games run on it, then that is entirely legal as well. Heck, the Wii virtual console is more or less emulators running on Wii.


As for the Sega Megadrive games/emulator that is sold on DotEmu, it is licensed by SEGA, and thus legal.

If you care there are some nice licensed Genesis collections for PC available. I think Steam has some but as I don't do Steam I picked up a nice group on disc from Amazon. I will say this, those games lose a lot of their appeal when you play them on a computer monitor, especially Sonic. Those were made for BIG screens.

It's the same thing on steam. The digital collections on amazon and steam are the same exact thing, and I believe those on dotemu are also the same thing.

That would be awesome. Out of amazon's download volumes, I'm only missing sega genesis collection vol.2. Well it's either 2 or 3. Can't remember. lol

Are any of them Sega CD games?

No.

That's a shame. I really enjoyed Ground Zero Texas.

And you won't get any game not made by sega.