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Emulator formats
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Introduction For years now, people have been trying to emulate different home consoles with different techniques, but when you download one of there emulators (some call them Simulators), they say either in the read me file, or on there website "Please don't ask us where to download ROM images as we won't answer your question" or something similar to those lines. the reason for this is simple, it is Illegal to download ROM images of games or CD images if you do not legally own the original file, some company's will let you download these ROM files for a backup or something similar, other don't. But there are different types of ROM images you can get. Here is a few well known file formats. ---- .BIN Windows loves to call these binary formats, but this is the most typically used format, as there are read by virtually all emulators. Here are a few ROM images that use this format. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. ---- NES/SNES ---- Game Boy files (Please help contribute and post more file formats that use the .bin formats) .cue/.iso These are normally disc images, they are are only ever used for disk images, some emulators can even handle Nero's NRG images. Sega Dreamcast ---- Sega Saturn ---- Sony PS1/2 ---- Sega/Mega CD ---- Xbox (Please help contribute and post more file formats that use the .iso/cue formats) .zip/.rar Very few emulators are known to use the rar format, but tons of them use the zip format. Sega Game Gear ---- Game Boy ---- Xbox ---- Sony PS1/2 Other Formats commonly used If you've got a ROM image somewhere on your hard disk, and it's not in the above files, it might just be not commonly used a lot, some emulators have there formats the same as the consoles name. Here are a few known ones .GG this is most likely to be a Game Gear format or Google Gadget format ---- .NDS New emulators can run very few DS roms, but here is the file format ---- .SMD Sega Mega drive roms (hence the format) ---- .GBA Game boy advance files, you can also get .nds.gba, this is ok and works with gba emulators ---- .XEX The new 360 file format, no emulator exists yet to play them, but here is the file ---- .EXE Yes, its that windows format again, but the PS1 uses a special EXE format for the PS1 and has no icon ---- .32X Sega 32X files, you can't go wrong here ---- .SMS Sega master system format ---- .PAT Used by Kega Fusion, this isnt a ROM format, but what is used for storing cheat codes ---- .DOL/.GMC Gamecube disc image ---- .ZIP used by MAME,Kega and all sorts of emulators, these store various files from Arcade Chips to Game Gear files ---- If your ROM file isn't one of the above, then there's two reasons why. 1. You have a invalid ROM file, in that case, you may as well get rid of it unless it's reason 2 2. I haven't came across that file format, in that case, feel free to edit the page and put yours in. With all these rom files, you might get confused about which one is which, but, whenever you download a ROM, make sure you have the original game it came from or you will be violating copy-right laws and potentially breaking the law. Also, with the PS1 format, be careful with them, they could be viruses or, if you run them, might make your system go unstable. 
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