Romcenter

An entire generation of video games is on the verge of extinction, and publishers do very little about it. Fortunately, emulators can keep them going for longer, but even if you keep the ROMs on your computer, they can still get corrupted in time. This is where Romcenter comes in. The software is essentially a ROM manager, which you can use to organize your emulated games and keep track of them, but the software can also attempt to repair damaged ROMs.

Romcenter is offered completely free of charge, with no hidden fees or restrictions. It comes in a light package, and you can install its components in just a few seconds. The program doesn't rely on any special tools or drivers, and it doesn't use a significant amount of memory or processing power.

Before you do anything, it would be wise to look over the program's documentation because it's a bit complex, but not too challenging. Also, you might want to back up your ROMs for good measure. What's more, the software provides you with some links to forums and even a video tutorial to help you get started. While it's not perfect, and success is not guaranteed, it's clear that a lot of work and dedication went into this project, and everything that can be done to fix your emulated games will be done.

Romcenter relies on a third party emulator for information about emulated games. You can either install one on your system and specify the path to its executable or manually extract the information from the emulator and import it into the program. Additionally, you can set up filters if you want to import only a few specific bits of information.

It can take a minute or even more to import information from an emulator, but you don't have to do anything during this time, and you won't notice any impact on your computer's performance. Once the process is complete, the program will show you a huge list of contents, all neatly organized in different categories, which you can explore in a tree structure. Besides looking over all the supported games, you can also look through originals, clones, games with CHD, bios files, games with samples, as well as games with bad dumps.

You can import your own ROMs through a standard browsing option, and you will find them in a separate part of the aforementioned tree structure. Although you can import emulated games in just about any format, you will only be able to fix ZIP-compressed game files. The software places various options at your disposal, for retrieving additional information about selected games and even for running them with the linked emulator.

Fixing an emulated game is essentially a matter of renaming files, creating dummy ROMs and replacing missing information, using everything you've imported from your emulator. You must understand that some ROMs can't be fixed, especially if the damage involves something more than missing info. However, the program helps you figure out which ROMs can be repaired or not ahead of time, so you don't have to waste time running an operation that may not succeed.

The program color-codes all ROMs to help you differentiate the good ones from the bad ones, and it also provides details about problems within the game files. Green items are healthy game packs which you can run right away without any issues, while yellow indicates that something is wrong, but it can be fixed. However, if you encounter red files, you won't be able to do anything because the damage is too extensive for the program to fix.

If one or more of your games are marked in yellow, you only need to select them and hit the Fix option on the toolbar and the program will repair them right away. The process usually takes a few seconds, and you can find a log in the lower region of the interface, which tells you about each action performed on your files. Alternatively, you can pick a specific action if you know what's wrong with your games. Once you're done fixing them, you will be able to play them again in your favorite emulator, without encountering any errors.

Romcenter gives you the possibility of making your emulated games playable again, without the need for any advanced knowledge or skills.