ROM

From GamerWiki

A ROM is a technical word which refers to a soft image of a hardware-based game. For example, the ROM of an arcade game is a software file that has been created by dumping the program stored in the arcade game's internal Read Only Memory chips to a file on disk. This soft file, stored on disk, can be loaded by an appropriate emulator in order to run the game as if it were being run on the arcade game's original hardware. Another example of ROM usage is when handheld, or console, games are copied from their game cartridges to disk files, then called ROM images.

The practice of making, distributing, and using, ROM images is discussed in the MAME section, as it is highly controversial and in many cases, illegal. The illegality of ROM images centres around breach of copyright and licensing.