No-Intro
A preservation group cataloguing clean, unmodified game ROMs – the name is a promise that no cracker has bolted an intro onto the front.
In the 1990s console games spread as ROM files through release groups, many of which had added their own intro, altered the title screen or patched out protection. No-Intro formed in the early 2000s to produce the opposite: one verified dump per release, exactly as it sat on the cartridge, with checksums in DAT files the emulation world could build on.
The focus is cartridge-based consoles and handhelds, and the standards are strict – a dump should ideally be confirmed by several independent sources. Compared with TOSEC, which happily lists every variant in circulation, No-Intro is selective on purpose: one correct file beats ten nearly identical ones. Game historians call that a feature; scene historians call it a loss.