papalonian,

Like others have said, any file can be dangerous. You need to be diligent in picking where your ROMs come from, if it’s a sketchy site don’t use it.

That being said I’ve been doing similar activities since I was like 12 years old and have got a virus exactly once, and it was completely my fault for not listening to my gut (disregarded some red flags because I really wanted something to work.)

JoeKrogan, (edited )
@JoeKrogan@lemmy.world avatar

Its easier to just infect a crack for a popular game and get a ton of windows “power” users to install it.

farcaster,

For emulators which use recompilation techniques, I suppose it’s technically possible to make them execute malware. But writing your malware in legacy XBox/PlayStation code to embed it in roms would also make it some of the most sophisticated in history just to infect a handful of retrogamers so I think it’s very unlikely…

Rhynoplaz,

Search for some emulating communities and see what sites they have recommended. The ROMs aren’t dangerous, but there are dangerous sites that promise ROMs.

LinkOpensChest_wav,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

FMHY is always my starting point. They’re really good about removing recommendations that have the slightest hint of anything malicious.

skullgiver, (edited )
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • echo64,

    Practically, yes. There was a zsnes exploit that did exactly this back in the day.

    cloudless,
    @cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

    Anything you download from unknown sites can be risky. You don’t even have to run the file in order to start the infection.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • retrogaming@lemmy.world
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines