Renaming rom file extensions (N64 especially)

[phantasy]

I can't believe I only JUST learned it was safe to rename a few of my games' file extensions from .bin to say .sms or .gg and uniform them in a folder.  I like this also because I can file associate them with an emulator so I can on a whim, double click them to test or play.

 

I'm wondering how "across the board" this rule is or if I have to be careful.  I did notice when I tried changing some N64 files from z64 to v64 I ran into issues with some emulators not liking them until I changed them back.

 

Has anyone compiled a general list (if one is even necessary) or wondered this?

[rastan]

I can't believe I only JUST learned it was safe to rename a few of my games' file extensions from .bin to say .sms or .gg and uniform them in a folder.  I like this also because I can file associate them with an emulator so I can on a whim, double click them to test or play.

 

I'm wondering how "across the board" this rule is or if I have to be careful.  I did notice when I tried changing some N64 files from z64 to v64 I ran into issues with some emulators not liking them until I changed them back.

 

Has anyone compiled a general list (if one is even necessary) or wondered this?

 

why not just associate all of the N64 extensions with the emulator and do that for the other roms that may have multiple (unique) extensions. definitely would be a problem with emulators that use the same extensions and only use one extension like .bin or .iso, etc.

[Dabil]

As a programmer of 30 years I can tell you very matter of factly that it is a terrible idea to change file extensions in this way. It shouldn't be done, ever.

The reason why is because the file extension isn't just a tag. It's identified what type of file format the file is in. So just because the emulator can still identify what type of file it is after you change the extension does not make it a good idea. Lots of problems can still occur that you may not notice right away.

An example I have seen on the past was that a particular PlayStation emulator would not load games that used .ape files. So a person changed the extension .bin and then changed the .cue file to match. This got the games to load but there were missing sounds and music and the games would often crash at certain points. The person who did this had to redownload half his psx collection to get things right.

There are tools that will let you change files of one type to files of another. Save yourself some trouble and use the tools to make conversions.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[thatman84]

As a programmer of 30 years I can tell you very matter of factly that it is a terrible idea to change file extensions in this way. It shouldn't be done, ever.

The reason why is because the file extension isn't just a tag. It's identified what type of file format the file is in. So just because the emulator can still identify what type of file it is after you change the extension does not make it a good idea. Lots of problems can still occur that you may not notice right away.

An example I have seen on the past was that a particular PlayStation emulator would not load games that used .ape files. So a person changed the extension .bin and then changed the .cue file to match. This got the games to load but there were missing sounds and music and the games would often crash at certain points. The person who did this had to redownload half his psx collection to get things right.

There are tools that will let you change files of one type to files of another. Save yourself some trouble and use the tools to make conversions.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

I recently come across some advice (which I didn't question but though it was a bit odd) to change .rom file to .bin.

Think it was a bios file for a console I just set up, got it written down somewhere!

The advice was that .bin and .rom have the same code inside so doesn't matter.

Is this correct?

[rastan]

certain files are perfectly fine to change the extensions but obviously changing the extensions of others is looking for trouble especially if they are associated with specific programs. CD bases systems normally use the same extensions anyways, either .iso, .cue and .bin... so associating any of those with a particular emulator is going to cause problems for sure.

 

just stick with the simple roms and systems like NES, SNES, n64, GENESIS, etc.. and just associate them with each emulator... that's the best you're gonna get i think. is it really that much trouble to just load up a emulator and scroll thru the roms to check them out/play? i get you want to just open folders up and execute the roms basically... but considering the trouble.. it would make more sense to just open up a emulator if you wanna test/play

[Dabil]

Or you might want to try a little program called Hyperspin to start your games. I heard it makes starting games and emulators pretty easy.

To thatman84, changing the extension of a bios file isn't all that big of a deal. You can always just name it back if it doesn't work, or if it doesn't work with your emulator of choice you may not want it anyway.

I am just cautioning that you should be careful with a complete library of files such as artwork or rom library. Otherwise you may find yourself wasting weeks redownloading the library to get it usable again.

Another example I will give is with one of my buddies noticed when that ePSXe would play Tekken3 and all if his other favorite games by loading the .bin file directly without using the .cue file. Which caused him to come to the conclusion after testing that the .cue files aren't really needed. So he deleted all his .cue files.

Then a few weeks later he began to notice that some of his games didn't work, or around crash. You see ePSXe doesn't need a .cue file for single track games (such as Tekken 3). But with multi-track games it will often fail spectacularly. He tried borrowing all the .cue files from another one of our friends collections but the differences were too vast. He ended up having to but an external hard drive and copying the entire collection. Easier fix than redownloading so he got lucky in that respect.

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[wesfranks]

I know in the case of N64 roms, it can be a little more complicated than just changing one or three letters in an extension.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_64_ROM_file_formats

 

I found this out about fifteen or twenty years ago when I downloaded the wrong set of byte-swapped roms with a dial up connection and then had to research it and figure out how to fix the roms I had for use in an emulator. Took too long to find and re-download an appropriate set. Back then there weren't too many resources. I thought they were screwing with people when they started talking about "little endian", "Big Endian" and "Big Endian-Byte Swapped" roms.  Started out with a hex editor, then found a utility to flip the byte and rename each rom automatically. Depending on the system, this type of thing is likely handled by the emulator nowadays. But you never know.

 

I have learned since then to do the research and download the highest quality and most painless rom sets, rather than struggle to fix them later.

[JoyStickKilla]

Thing is that the bin extension is just a file that is in binary format. Yes there are games/roms(think it happens more on older systems) that are really just the games in binary format. They just at one time decided to adopt an extension to better fit that system. In this case many times you can just rename them and it will be fine. I wouldn't personally go out of my way though to rename extensions just for the hell of it.