Here you can download some usefull software tools to help you manage a ROM collection.

Note for Beginners: before you can perform any operation on a ROM (renaming, byte swapping or whatever), you should have it uncompressed (unzipped) in a temporary folder on your hard drive (e.g. "C:\temp\"). Most utilities can't work inside compressed archives, and even those that can take much longer to process zipped files. After you are finished you can zip the ROM up again to save disk space, but if you want to play the ROM it may need to be stored uncompressed on your hard drive, depending which emulator you use (not all support loading of zipped ROMs). For zip/unzip software see general utilities and/or download RomZipper.

Rom Renaming

Don't rename your ROMs by hand! A renaming utility will save you time, and more importantly, it will identify bad ROMs. Note that any ROMs newer than the database in the utility (in this case, GoodN64) cannot be known, and hence will not be renamed. I suggest you assume any unknown ROMs are bad to be on the safe side.

GoodN64 v2.02a (400kb)
GoodWindows v2.4 (451kb)
bin.zip (627kb)

Download all three of these files and extract them to the same folder in the order above - the contents of bin.zip should end up in the "\bin" subfolder.

GoodN64 has a very comprehensive database of ROMs (probably the most complete there is). Be sure to use "_" instead of space (you must type "_" into the box), if you use UltraHLE. The only downside to GoodN64 is that it is DOS based (but can be run in a DOS box under Win9x and 2k), but don't worry because we have...

GoodWindows - a Windows front-end (GUI) for the whole series of "Good" tools, including GoodN64. Using this application rather than running GoodN64 standalone makes the whole process far quicker and easier for most people :)

GoodN64 is a complex program, I can't explain everything here. Make sure you have GoodWindows mode set to "Good Tools" mode, not "ROM Doctor". After setting the path to GoodN64, you can just hit "N" after starting GoodWindows to jump to "Nintendo64" in the choose system list. Consult the documentation included for further information.

www.kinox.org/rca/
www.emuhq.com/goodwindows/

Usefull reference - Good Tools Legend (small text file)

Here's a section specifically for a set of patches made by a nice chappy called Paulob :). What these do is convert known bad ROMs into known good ROMs, (note the wording please - these do not and could not "fix any bad ROM"), by appplying a small patch file using a patching utility. This saves people with slow connections having to find another download etc. if they happen to have a bad ROM, and want a good one (!). You MUST use these in conjunction with GoodN64 (see above). Instructions are included with the installer.

Paulob's "GoodN64 Bad2Good Patches" (3.85Mb)
Patching utility (IPSwin) (245Kb)

The reason that the patch set doesn't cover ALL known ROMs is that he hasn't included those that would raise the filesize unreasonably (i.e. some ROMs are too far damaged for a patch to be viable - the file size would double if just one more patch was included!).

If you have any feedback regarding these patches, please contact the maker at hotroms@hotmail.com.

RomZipper v1.22 (2.60mb)
RomZipper update to v1.35b2 (163kb)

Do you have lots of ROMs in a folder, and want them all compressed into separate .zip files? Or you have lots of Zip files and want them all unzipped into one folder? WinZip can't do either of these things, but RomZipper can! Saves loads of time :)

www.emuware.com/romzipper/

For ordinary compression software (like WinZIP) please see general utilities.

Tool64 (v1.11 BETA) (151kb)

A new (Sept. 2001) and very nicely designed byteswapping tool, supports all byte orders, batch byte swapping, auto file extension renaming... supersedes Byteswapper, UnFlip, and Rtool for our purposes. The BETA version adds zipped ROM support (though I recommend you always work on unzipped ROMs for speed reasons).

N.B. Only use this tool as a last resort! It is better to find an alternative, compatible ROM & emulator. It can cause damage to ROMs and various complications.

Occasionally you will find a game doesn't work on an emulator because it 'thinks' you have an N64 from the wrong region - you will see "This game is not designed for use on this system" or similar message coming from the game (not from the emulator!). Here's the tools you need to fix this:

PALadin v3.1 (39kb)
S-Paladin v2 (8kb)

Download both files and extract to the same folder. Run S-Paladin.exe and browse to your protected PAL ROM. Check "convert video" and choose Convert To NTSC. Also check "Fix country-check". Those settings should be correct for most ROMs. Hit "Convert". Now load the game in the emulator and all should be well :). If not, you may need to try other settings - consult the Paladin documentation. I recommend you keep a copy of the original ROM.

For a full archive of tools
www.dextrose.com