I love your website and have checked it out numerous times over the last several months! I've been working on getting a bunch of emulators (NES, SNES, GB, GBA, Master System, and GameGear) online as well, and set up to use on iPhones on my own website: https://pocketga.me/ I'm also doing online per-account game storage and state saving (not for all systems right now) which makes it pretty convenient to play around with on the go
Yeah I thought about that but it relies on people uploading their own games, so it wouldn't be very useful. I guess I could get in contact with some homebrewers but not sure if homebrewers games will generate much interest. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Actually I honestly doubt anyone would bother. We're talking games and properties that aren't just old, they're part of brands that don't exist any more. Plus, if it is such a problem, ROM sites would all be dead by now.
Namco, Atari, Gottlieb/Mylstar, and Williams/Bally/Midway (now held by Warner, I think) actively enforce the rights on these old ROMs. Not as sure about Sega, Data East, Taito, and Konami.
I can confirm this; I've seen them shut down MAME arcades relatively recently (and with good reason... MAME arcade machines that actually collect money are dodgy.)
It's even more egregious than that. Works for hire (assume most arcade games qualify as) last 95 years after publication. Individual author copyright lasts till death + 70 years.
https://archive.org/details/arcade_fantasy
It ... it's not a good game.