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Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

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Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#1

Post by gassi »

RomM is a self-hosted app that allows you to manage your retro game files (ROMs) and play them in the browser.

Think of it as Plex or Jellyfin for your ROM library: it automatically fetches metadata, artwork, and game information from online metadata sources to transform your folders into a browsable collection.

You can play games directly in the browser for consoles like the N64, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation 1, using the integrated web emulator (https://emulatorjs.org/). Members of the community have released integrations for Playnite (Windows), muOS (Anbernic handhelds) and Decky Loader (Steam Deck), with many more in the works.

The team has been working on RomM for just over two years now, and we're incredibly proud of what we've built so far. There's no company behind the project, just a bunch of friends building something together that we've wanted for a long time. And of course, the code is open-source and AGPLv3 licensed.

Check out the (kinda slow) demo running on an ultra-cheap VPS: https://demo.romm.app/

Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player
github.com

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#4

Post by zurdi »

garrettjoecox wrote: post #3

Could you explain the benefits of using this over retroarch, lakka.tv, emulator station, EmuDeck (steam deck wrapper around some of these), etc. Playing through a browser seems like a downside for me personally

This is a self-hosted solution, unlike all those sofware you mention. You will install this in your server through docker and you will manage your ROMs library with a clean interface. Being able to play in the webUI itself is an extra since we just integrated emualtorjs (from emulatorjs.org)

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#6

Post by gassi »

garrettjoecox wrote: post #3

Could you explain the benefits of using this over retroarch, lakka.tv, emulator station, EmuDeck (steam deck wrapper around some of these), etc. Playing through a browser seems like a downside for me personally

Ideally you would use both, and the community would build integrations that allow, say, EmuDeck to pull games from the server onto your Steam Deck and sync saves back to the server.

I usually play on Windows with Playnite (https://playnite.link/), and the plugin (https://github.com/rommapp/playnite-plugin) allows Playnite to pull and display the list of games for each system, after which I can install the ones I want to play onto my PC.

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#8

Post by gassi »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #7

I'm not really understanding the usecase here. Is it MAME but for playing in a browser?

At it's core it's a system for organizing and displaying your collection of retro games (ROMs). Instead of navigating through folders or manually moving games from a hard drive to whatever system you want to play on, you can load them into RomM, navigate to the app and download them from the browser.

You can share it with your friends so they can access your library, use the plugins to download games directly onto some platforms (without a browser), or play older systems in the browser for a quick session.

At some point we'd like to handle save file sync between devices so you can stop playing on one device and pick up where you left off on another!

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#9

Post by bane »

RomM is a great project! I've so excited to see the integrations coming along.

As somebody who's setup a lot of little retroboxes, the idea of doing it once and having my collection served off of my homelab to all my other devices is incredibly appealing. Web-based emulation has come a very long way. Still I prefer to play off of my individual devices many of which don't have good browser support.

Setting those systems up can take hours each, but being able to point something like a Batocera instance or an ES-DE setup at a server and have it self populate with roms, bios files, screenshots, etc, would be a dream. It sounds like this might be the future of the emulation ecosystem and it sounds amazing!

Re: Show HN: RomM – An open-source, self-hosted ROM manager and player

#10

Post by bane »

gassi wrote: post #8
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #7

I'm not really understanding the usecase here. Is it MAME but for playing in a browser?

At it's core it's a system for organizing and displaying your collection of retro games (ROMs). Instead of navigating through folders or manually moving games from a hard drive to whatever system you want to play on, you can load them into RomM, navigate to the app and download them from the browser. You can share it with your friends so they can access your library, use the plugins to download games directly onto so…

Is there anyword on integration with Batocera, ES-DE, or Retroarch? Those mega systems would get supercharged with it. The homelab community would likely catch on very quick.
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