Packaging up a homebrew SEGA Genesis ROM with an emulator for commercial use

Hi!

I'm developing a SEGA Genesis game which I hope to release commercially, and I'm planning ahead for porting to other platforms (specifically Windows, Android and iOS) after the initial release. The most obvious solution would be to package it up inside/alongside an emulator, but I'm having a hard time finding emulators or emulator libraries whos' licenses allow for this to be done with the aim of making profit from selling my title.

At this point I'm not concerned with the cost or difficulty, I'm just getting my research together.

A lot of Googling has revealed which ones I can't use, does anyone know any that I can use in this manner?

Cheers,
Matt

 

You should be fine with anything that's GPL that doesn't have any additional restrictions. You'll need to check the details of each but that should help narrow down the search. Off the top of my head Gens is one that should fit the bill.

 

I'm fairly certain anyone in the market for such a thing knows how to load it into an emulator of their choice. If you're not concerned with the cost or difficulty however, I would guess more people would be interested in a cartridge release! Unfortunately I don't have any insight on emulators you can include in a sold package however.

 

A cartridge release is first up, and I'm hoping it'll be popular enough to warrant a second+ manufacturing run, but I'm looking into options for people with interest in the game but neither the expertise nor the hardware to have it running on a real Megadrive or set up an emulator. As with any game developer, I would like my title to reach far out and be as accessible as possible, and in this day and age (for better or worse) it's all about mobiles. It's not a trivial task to download emulators and ROMs on an iPhone if you don't know what you're doing, and I certainly couldn't release just a ROM file on the Apple Store.

I'll read deeper into GPL licenses, I made the poor assumption from the start that they were a no-go area where sale for profit was concerned.

 

Apple would probably have less of an issue with the game data as DLC separate from the emulator than they would with the emulator itself. If you don't bundle the game with the emulator and remove any ability to load other games you'll get kicked out of the Apple store faster than you can say blast processing.