In the late 80s and 90s, arcade manufacturers like Capcom and Atari feared piracy. So they installed "suicide batteries"—a lithium cell soldered directly to the CPU. If that battery died, the CPU lost voltage and immediately erased its own decryption key. The board became a brick. Forever.
Here is a deep, introspective look into the world of MAME ROMs. mfme roms
We tend to think of video game preservation as a matter of backups. Keep a copy of Super Mario Bros. on a hard drive, and you’ve saved it. But that’s a lie. That’s saving the output —the pixels, the sound, the level design. In the late 80s and 90s, arcade manufacturers