CoolROM.com

Excellent website. It is safe and free. They have emulators for a lot of the older systems, snes, n64, gameboy etc. The reason it lost a star b/c of the fact they have no tutorials which would be helpful to a lot of newcomers (YouTube has great tutorials) and they are missing a lot of software. For instance, they have the emulator (technically the console that you are downloading on you PC) but sometimes they don't have the Rom or Iso files (technically the individual games you are downloading on to your PC) and Visa-Versa. Oh and a lot of the 6th gen console emulators are really hard to use like the PS2 but once again they have tutorial on YouTube. So if you are looking for older console games to play I recommend using N64 and Gameboy Advance to start with. They are the easiest to use and the site has all the games for it. In ten years this site will be a legend and most likely still running.

This website used to be very good, it gave you a direct and easy download for a lot of emulators and roms. Now, it requires you to run an installer for games and emulators, which pesters you with malware ridden "extra" downloads. When I ran malwarebytes on the installer for a snes emulator, it came up with dangerous and is now removed from m computer. $#*! you coolrom, you used to be the best site for emulators and roms, but now you are trying to push malware infected bull$#*! onto us with your big name in the emulation scene. STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS SITE AS POSSIBLE.

I downloaded 2 roms and 1 gave me a trojan and the other gave me a dotbundler. The website gives you viruses.

I'm confused. On my iphone, through the in-app browser on the emulator GBA4ios, it downloaded several GBA games just fine. On my laptop, however, when I tried to download a PS1 game... it forced me to "download their downloader for safety from viruses." It then proceeded to give me the check-box option of installing some browser call Astromenda. I left it unchecked.

What's the first thing this f'ing downloader does? Installs Astromenda. My desktop then proceeds to fill up with apps and games I didn't install. I immediately backpedaled and destroyed any semblance of these programs on my laptop (PC Optimizer Pro being one of the culprits). This site is insane. I don't trust their "40,000,000" download numbers. There's no way that they had that many users willfully put themselves through this bs.

Go elsewhere. I've heard Emuparadise is a much safer site to use for your roms.

I trusted this site for years. This was the place I came to for emulators and roms. They delivered without fail. I was incredibly enthusiastic when they started uploading entire ISO's for PSX games back in the early part of '09. Now this place has absolutely gone to $#*!. They're far beyond repair. I went to download a Genesis rom earlier this evening and their $#*!ty $#*!ing download manager infected my computer with malware. Never again will I return to this website for ANYTHING, and I highly recommend that nobody else go there, either. This was one of the most reputable emulations sites online for many years. Now their name is $#*! and I wouldn't recommend this site to my worst enemy. I don't know what happened but this entire site has gone to hell. What a crying $#*!ing shame. I'll never, ever download anything from there again. I'll stick to Emuparadise or other sites from now on. These sad people can go $#*! themselves. I hope Coolrom goes under and they all end up working at McDonald's for the rest of their lives. That's all they deserve.

As many others have stated, I used to use CoolROM regularly, they were great. I stopped using it for a couple years and when I went back to it a couple months ago wanting to get a N64 ROM. I found out they had all their Nintendo ROMs forcibly taken down by Nintendo of America. Nbd I thought. I downloaded N64 emulator and them immediately went to another ROM site for the ROM of the game I needed. Shortly there after my internet browsers were infected with the browser hijacker Vosteran. HOWEVER, I thought it was from the other ROM site I used. If only I had read these reviews about CoolROM after that.

Fast forward to the other day. I went on CoolROM, downloaded a emulator for the GB Advance, and went to another site to get a ROM(another Nintendo game) Low and behold my browser got hijacked again by Vosteran. In the process of removing it AGAIN I was attacked by something even nastier, this fake, Windows bad image error virus. Just google "bad image error" on Google and learn about what a utter nightmare it is to your PC. I eliminated the problem within 24 hours but it was such a stressful experience that NO ONE should have to go through. Now, this whole time I thought the culprit was not CoolROM, but out of curiosity I googled reviews for CoolROM and found this.

It's appalling this site is still up and running, I am sure many more will fall into this trap because they normally would use CoolROM in the past with ease or heard positive things about it from others. No more, this site isn't what it used to be. AVOID AT ALL COSTS

While it does host a multitude of roms from across so many consoles the issue is the fact it has it's "ad supported downloader" THIS CARRIES VIRUSES/MALWARE INTO YOUR PC. To prevent this use the download link under the "This file will be downloaded through the CoolROM Downloader making the download process much faster and ensuring the file is virus-free." message.

Use the "Alternative download link (with ads and timer)" as this is perfectly fine.

Got a virus attempting to download a PS2 bios. You definitely want to stay far away from this website.

Downloads. Exe files to your computer that when run installs malware and adware on your computer, avoid at all costs!

If you want a legit site for downloading ROMs, go to Emuparadise or Romulation (if searching for Wii ROMS). This site will often install programs without knowledge: I have once downloaded Sonic 1 and it installed "CoolROM Downloader" without my knowledge then changed my main page into "CoolROM safefinder," which fills up my entire cache and had to restore Firefox to it's original state in order to get rid of it.

The FAQ clearly says "Our downloader is an executable program that makes your download process much faster (by directly downloading the file and accelerating download speed) and ensures the file is virus-free," but in reality it in fact installs viruses on the computer, and the only way to download it without the downloader is the alternate download with ads and file timing.

The alternate download is also the download before they replaced it with the scammy downloader, with extra ads and file timing. It is not recommended for classic console fans, however, forgetting the irritating download, the quality of the ROMs is very good.