These days this should not be an issue for emulation, but unfortunately it is since the solution takes a small amount of education, and because there are no legal, official places to buy roms other than the rare packaged emulator re-release that some companies make.
I’d guess most people here already know how to verify a checksum, but the average computer user does not. It’s a skill that should be taught in schools.
But roms don’t have an official distribution channel, so to know that one is good, you have to rely on community projects like Redump and No-Intro. Compare your hashes to theirs, and you should be good. A tl;dr: just do a search of “myrient”, as that’s the most recommended place to get correct roms these days.
There are practical purposes beyond avoiding malware too. The RetroAchievements project makes it possible for people to earn achievements in emulators, but for it to work properly you need to use exactly the right versions of a rom that each game supports. RA relies heavily on RetroArch, and RetroArch uses it’s own method for hash verification, so here’s a guide for getting started with that.
These days this should not be an issue for emulation, but unfortunately it is since the solution takes a small amount of education, and because there are no legal, official places to buy roms other than the rare packaged emulator re-release that some companies make.
I’d guess most people here already know how to verify a checksum, but the average computer user does not. It’s a skill that should be taught in schools.
But roms don’t have an official distribution channel, so to know that one is good, you have to rely on community projects like Redump and No-Intro. Compare your hashes to theirs, and you should be good. A tl;dr: just do a search of “myrient”, as that’s the most recommended place to get correct roms these days.
There are practical purposes beyond avoiding malware too. The RetroAchievements project makes it possible for people to earn achievements in emulators, but for it to work properly you need to use exactly the right versions of a rom that each game supports. RA relies heavily on RetroArch, and RetroArch uses it’s own method for hash verification, so here’s a guide for getting started with that.