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RomM is the Plex of self-hosted retro gaming. A beautiful ROM manager that lets you play games through any browser

By David Devey

RomM is the Plex of self-hosted retro gaming. A beautiful ROM manager that lets you play games through any browser

Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author.

Being able to play self-hosted games through a browser isn't particularly new. EmulatorJS has been filling this niche for over 10 years, making use of RetroArch's libretto cores to emulate games.

RomM uses EmulatorJS and subsequently RetroArch as the back end for playing games in a browser. However, where it really differentiates itself is with the ease of setup, metadata scraping, ROM management and support for RetroAchievements. You can import thousands of ROMs during the setup process and as long as they are named correctly, screenshots and metadata will automatically be scraped from sources such as Screen Scraper and the IGDB. New games can be uploaded through the web interface, and everything gets organised into platforms, with cover art, screenshots and gameplay videos.

Because RomM is based on EmulatorJS, pretty much every system can be played in a browser. Mobile browsers will give you the ability to use touch screen controls, but it also supports keyboards and game pads, as touch screens certainly aren't the most optimised or fun way to play retro games.

Although my ROM collection doesn't extend to every system supported by RomM and EmulatorJS, everything up to and including the original Playstation works well. Nintendo and Sega consoles work, as do Neo Geo, TurboGrafx and a decent selection of Arcade ROM's including CPS 1 and 2. Later consoles such as the Dreamcast, GameCube and PS2 can't be emulated in the browser, although these can easily be downloaded into your emulator of choice.

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