I started jumping through the hoops to get this working and my computer freaked out and prompted me to call Microsoft customer support. I'm dealing with it as I type this.

MOD EDIT: Thread title has been edited, please read entire topic before responding. Thanks.

It's important to be careful with anything online, I guess, especially so when dealing with the likes of ROMs. I've got it running well and am loving it, would be interested to hear what your problem is if you figure it out. Could just be an issue with the new release and a certain version of Windows. With it just coming out, who knows. I scanned mine thoroughly though (and just using their recommended setup pack for now).

@y2ken: is there setup instructions anywhere?

@dryker: Hey, DigitalCybercherries here, can we try help with what the issue might be? I'm not sure what "hoops" had to be jumped though, or especially what issues could cause someone's PC to have issues. It's a simple UE4 game and a very simple C# launcher to load that game. There are also included 4 emulators from the LibRetro cores list, all of which are also simple, safe and quite common. Can you be more specific of the issues. Feel free to Email us at digitalcybercherries@gmail.com for faster, more personal help.

@y2ken: Absolutely right, care should be taken. We've tried to be as careful as possible with how we package and release the game. Checked for no hidden files, removed any additional .exe files that are not completely necessary, things like that.

@spyder335: Yeah, we have setup instructions included in the Install+Readme.txt file. We also offer support for anyone with issues, just shoot us an email.

Hope this helps you guys. Shame such an aggressive post had to be made without any further information as to how we can help. :(

My man!

*high fives DigitalCybercherries*

Works smooth as retro silk for me.

@digitalcybercherries: Damn, on-site "customer" support for a free game.

Thanks for trying to help out.

Well I love it even though I have to run on medium due an aging what was once entry level gaming PC it's still fab. No issues on my side otherwise!

It looks like the "pop-up" instructing me to call Microsoft customer support may have been a hoax. My computer was frozen. I called the number on the "pop-up" and was directed to grant them access to remotely control my computer, but couldn't since it was frozen. They also wanted $150 to solve the problem. I went through this recently when downloading the Metroid mod for Spelunky, and had already paid someone to fix the issue and cover me for a years time, so I refused to pay someone who claimed to be a different third-party tech support provider for Microsoft.

Sorry if the post seemed a bit rash. I just wanted to warn people, since I know stuff that airs on Giant Bomb typically gets a huge traffic spike immediately afterward, and the UPF was still pretty recent. Plus I was still pretty sore from my Metroid mod experience.

Anyways, since I wasn't going to pay another $150, I hung up and called the people I had already paid to assist with computer issues that may arise. I was on hold for about 15min before I gave up and just pulled the power. When I booted back up, I did a quick scan, and everything seemed fine. I played games, surfed the Net, and poked around. Everything seemed good.

I'd really like New Retro Arcarde, but I'm afraid of it doing something to my computer. I loved the shit outta' the Metroid mod, but I lived with a constant barrage of pop-up ads for weeks before giving up trying to fix it myself and hired someone. I'd hate for a similar thing to happen.

Concerning the "hoops" that was asked about, when trying to "run" or "open" the New Retro Arcade file, I was prompted to download "Winzip", then prompted to download other stuff I can't remember, before the "pop-up" instructed me to call customer support and froze my computer. I deleted all recent downloads to be safe. A step by step instructional, including any software that may be needed, would be nice, so anyone attempting to download it would know what to expect.

Retro arcade doesn't have anything in it that would do that. Most likely you have some form of malware on your pc.

The best free option I can give you is something like avast run in safe mode and a startup scan to remove whatever the hell you have.

This sounds exactly like this video, but the guy in the video knows its a scam and sets up a virtual machine to see what the scammers would do. It sounds like you have some mailware on your computer from something, especially if this has happened before.

I'm like 99% you will never get an error asking you to call microsoft tech support. I use to get cold calls Alllllllll the time saying they were from microsoft and they have 'detected' a virus on my computer. Worse thing is a bet so many people fall for that shit. I just tend to tell them they are awful human beings and will report them to the police.

Edit: To get access to the download you have to unzip the folder, personally i use WinRaR http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm its completely safe to use and pretty common in its use, just install it and then you can right click on the Retro Arcade folder you downloaded and 'unzip to folder' after than you can open the folder as normal and there are futher instructions located inside

@dryker: I am not sure if you are trolling or not so I will answer your questions honestly.

You had malware on your computer that made it seem like it was telling you to call windows, what it really was was a call centre somewhere setup to scam you out of money,

I doubt it was retro arcade but who knows. Be more careful what you download to your computer if these things happen often. Install an adblocker and only allow sites you trust to show you ads and install a script blocker so you have to approve of all plugins being used.

Here's the avast link

it's from cnet which hosts their files. Download it run the .exe file let it install let it run a basic scan after updating then if it doesn't find anything or even if it does choose a startup boot time scan. Select autofix all items. You'll be right as rain in a few hours.

What were the circumstances around this? Any sort of remote control "fix it" service sounds absolutely shady and on par with a scam.

All right. I nutted up and tried downloading New Retro Arcade again. Same run around:

- download Winzip to open the file

- need ROMs before running New Retro Arcade

- File Dropper opens when attempting to download "ROMs" (none of it has DigitalCybercherry branding. Have no idea if this thing is legit or what. Screw it! I click the "download" button. Another browser tab opens with the last Battlefield game on it (close that shit).

- click on the "Contact Us" button on the DigitalCybercherry's website for assistance. No joy. Does nothing. The "Donate" button works fine, though.

I thought this was supposed to be "simple"? Simple is: I click "download", the file downloads, I click "run", and the thing runs. A "free" virtual arcade is awesome, but if you need to pay to download a bunch of things to run it, things you don't need for anything else, it's not really free.

@haruko: I'll try this. Thanks!

This is an unfortunate post. Alarmist and aggressive with nothing pointing to any wrongdoing on Digital Cybercherries' part. I hope the title gets changed at least.

@dryker You either have existing malware or mashed a giant flashing download button somewhere other than http://digitalcybercherries.com/ and installed something nasty. Apparently this isn't the first time either. Take others' advice, grab Avast at least, and be more careful with the clickies. It's a jungle out there!

Edit: Also before this ends up locked down for discussion of where to get ROMs, totally don't do that cause locked down it will be. New Retro Arcade is super neat but also super grey. A moderate level of technical ability will be needed to get it all together, a one click and go installer for something like this wouldn't fly with some people..

I didn't realize people actually fall for this stuff, let alone blame a UE4 tech demo on it.

I'm not accusing DigitalCybercherries of any wrong doing. I'm just stating that attempting to download New Retro Arcarde set me on a path of questionable pop ups, prompting me to download other things. All of these are facts. The intent, the whys, and the whos behind them don't matter when the end result is the same. I've tried twice now, and had the same result (except the freezing computer part. Probably because I stopped downloading everything I was prompted to download). Perhaps I have something weird on my computer, but I don't have problems with anything else. I have anti-malware software on my computer, but I'll try this Avast thing to see if it comes up with anything new.

Again, I'm not trying to accuse anyone of anything, I'm just reporting my personal experience.

No you are in the wrong here bud. The thread title is "BEWARE NEW RETRO ARCADE!!!" you should not be accusing devs of malicious access of your computer due to your own ineptitude. Clearly you have downloaded some shit that gave you a virus but lack the know-how and common sense to trace it back to where you got it. You sound a bit like my grandma trying to use the VCR, but I assume you are just new to the internet or something and not just a boring troll.

Installed Avast. Scanned. Nothing found. Thanks for the help, though.

I didn't encounter any issues when setting it up myself, so I'm fairly confident in saying there's nothing wrong with the application - as for the process of getting the required files - as people have said, it's murky waters there, so you need to exercise caution.

It's generally good advice to be wary of pop-ups across the board on the ol' interwebs.

@dryker: What the contact button gives you an email to go to. For me it tries to open Outlook but I think it'll just open whatever email program you have. If you have an email program.

@villainy: Happens to the best of too, which is unfortunate. Recently I was installing some free-ware program and clicked a little too quickly - spent the next 2 hours cleaning my computer from the garbage I inadvertently agreed to install.

You should probably take your computer in to get checked because it's probably beyond fucked after doing that. Also, feel free to attend a computer safety course or something because I think you might need it.

Maybe you should consider formatting your hard drive and starting from scratch (back up anything important first!!!!), if nothing (avast, windows defender etc) is picking it up then it might be buried pretty deep. Maybe you could take a screen of what's going on?

I edited the topic title to more accurately reflect your problem since it wasn't a secret virus or anything, but instead more of a warning not to click on the wrong thing.

Also in the future please don't post in all caps, that includes topic titles.

Assuming it's really this bad, and isn't due to a simple user mistake/overlooking something, you don't want to back anything up yet. It could easily end up on another drive if you did this and at the very worst could be embed in files you want to save. You would really need to try to find it via regedit. I would suggest asking on tomshardware or something because there is always someone who knows how to get rid of that shit.

@andrew2696: I don't have an email program on my desk top. I use my phone and iPad for that.

Yeah, the whole post-install message it gives you where it's like "Hey, click here and maybe you'll find some ROMs, we dunno!" is pretty skeevy. I grabbed those ROMs and got out of there as fast as I could, but then again I got very good at the "which link is the real download and which nine are viruses?" game years ago.

@dryker: Try running a boot time scan with Avast, some malware loads itself surreptitiously and a system scan won't catch it once the OS has loaded.

If that doesn't find anything try downloading MalwareBytes AntiMalware, available for free on their website, and do a full system scan.

@dryker: digitalcybercherries at gmail.com is the email but I can't imagine they could help you since I don't think they did anything to cause the problems you are having.

The best thing is when the scammer says they are "calling from Windows."

At any rate, I am editing the thread title. It is clear at this point that the problem Dryker is having has nothing to do with New Retro Arcade. My advice is to format the machine and start over.

I'm also curious as to what this service was that you paid someone for and to "cover you" for a year - sounds like a typical malware scam.

@kevin_cogneto: Indeed, the best defence against malware is simply having a good understanding of what is or is not likely to be dodgy - unfortunately for most, that seems to be a difficult skill to acquire.

Fortunately, like yourself I've a pretty good eye for that stuff these days.

Ever had to deal with ransom-type malware? Malware that does not allow you to boot your system until you pay their fee? That was terrible.

In your case, do a simple ctrl+alt+del to access memory usage and what processes are in active RAM. Kill any suspicious process. It might at least prevent crashes and lock-ups until you find a good antivirus software. I suggest Kaspersky.

The best defence is a good offence, click on every motherfucking html link in sight!

Wait...don't do that.

Might want to run something like Rkill just to be sure that any virus or malware hasn't hijacked any of your anti-virus software. It won't get rid of it but will give you an indication of what could be on your pc if anything. I ran into something like that a few years prior that even my anti-virus couldn't detect till I ran a few things. Best of luck to you man always the best protection is to be aware of what you are installing onto your pc.

Thanks, everyone, for the advice. I'll try some of the suggestions, but my computer seems to be running fine, other than that odd experience trying to get at New Retro Arcade. Hopefully it's isolated to just me.

The latest topic of this thread doesn't really make sense (or is too vague to be useful), but whatever. I don't really care. I was just trying to prevent anyone from running into the same problem. I can download lots of things from other sites without having this problem, so, at least for me, it seems to be specific to New Retro Arcade. But what do I know?

If you download enough viruses you won't have enough bandwidth for them all and they'll get stuck in the doorway ala the three stooges syndrome.

I think you might've gotten yourself too deep into the shady internet hole. Try running AdwCleaner.

The best course of action is to reformat and restart from scratch of course.

I am genuinely amazed that there are users of this site who don't have the level of skill handling a computer to run into issues like this. Not saying that anyone who has an issue like this is an idiot or anything, but this is a gaming site and that crowd tends to be fairly strong when it comes to using computers.

I'm am also ashamed with this community that no one has posted this video yet (1:07:45 ish for context):

If you don't have AdBlock, you probably clicked the fake download button that is an ad.

As a person who formerly worked in a tech support call center, this is my favorite thread.

I routinely call and fuck with these scam artists. Don't pay anyone, don't give up remote access, but do call, jam their phone line, and remind them how much they suck ass after playing dumb for a bit

Nothing legitimate in the history of ever will ever prompt you to do this, you done got scammed boi. Stay out of the internets basement, it's gross and sticky down there.

"So what you're saying is...I'm invincible?"

"No! Why in fact, even the slightest gust of wind could-"

"Did you hear that Smithers? Invincible!"

Hi, heres an article on these types of scams. Maybe start here? https://blog.malwarebytes.org/fraud-scam/2015/02/a-new-twist-on-tech-support-scams-pop-ups/

Wow this is gold. Especially OP saying nah it looks good now after everyone telling him he was already scammed once. If you get anything popping up in your screen where you are EVER asked for money immediately run AVAST and then Malwarebytes. If you still have a problem Google the exact wording on that popup to get it removed.

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

It seems that people in this tread have offered all the help they could and I'm glad you found that the issues were not caused by our game haha. Our company and small reputation would me immediately destroyed if we even dared try anything malicious to our users, especially with our new and exciting free software.

I hope everything gets sorted and we appreciate the people in this thread offering solutions.

We would just like to mention that NewRetroArcade comes in the form of a .RAR file, not .ZIP, so it's recommended to use WinRAR (as that's what was used to create the original file.)

For those who have had issues with the downloaded file, due to our servers acting up and only letting like 99% of the file download or something, here is another mirror link: https://mega.co.nz/#!VQYTSZDY!Q3Kr5Ae0l5LOEsd5lQLiP-Quv-B65EZQ7Slw0Pd0trc

Hopefully that will be better.

Thanks everyone, glad this has all be resolved. Happy gaming!