(or, how to play video games on your computer)

What is emulation?

Well, to emulate something is to imitate it- like if you emulate somebody else, you pretend like you are someone else.One computer can emulate another- in this case your computer is pretending it is a Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, a Double Dragon arcade machine, or whatever. Basically emulation means playing console and arcade games on your computer. For intance, I have emulators for the TurboGrafx 16, NES, Super NES, Genesis, and about 10 other systems, including Commodore 64 and Atari ST. There are currently no working emulators for Playstation or Nintendo 64.

However, having the emulator is just the first step- you also have to have games to play on it. It's like getting a Nintendo with no games. The games (ROM images- usually called ROMs) are really pretty easy to get.

Emulation is NOT all about getting free games. It is about reliving the glorious days of the 80s and early 90s when games were not about fancy 3D graphics and the games actually had some substance to them instead of just good graphics.

One of my favorite things about emulation is that I get to play a lot of games that I either can't find anymore (Solar Warrior, Wizards and Warriors, Black Tiger) or never came out in the US- Final Fantasy V, or any of the Gundam games for instance. Some games even get translated by dedicated folks like RPGe (I removed this link sonce apparently they've gone under?).

Is emulation legal?

Kind of. A lot of that depends on what games you are emulating. Actually writing an emulator for, say, the NES is perfectly legal. Having ROMs is not- unless you delete the game within 24 hours or you own the cartridge. But as far as I know nobody has actually gotten in trouble for emulation. I know that Nintendo in particular is pretty nasty about people distributing their ROMs, whereas if I'm not mistaken all the Atari 2600 games are in public domain (copyright-free) now.

Where do I get games?

There are two main sources of ROMs: the Web and newsgroups. The newsgroup alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo has tons and tons of great games and everybody there is pretty cool. Also then you don't have to deal with banners and broken links and all the other junk that goes along with the Web.

A quick word on newsgroup ettiquette- if you are new to a newsgroup, get the FAQ (frequently asked questions) before posting, to avoid making people mad. And make sure your posts are relevant to the topic of the group- for instance, don't ask about Genesis games in the Nintendo NG.

Also if you know what Hotline is there are a lot of good ROMs servers on there too.

How do I use this emulator?

On a Mac, it's easy- open up the emulator (for instance SNES9X), a window comes up and you open the game. Just like opening any other file.

If you're on a Windows machine you don't have it quite so easy. Windows is such a bloated, slow operating system that you have to run emulators from DOS and deal with its cryptic command line interface. They make emus that run in Windows but they are too slow to be useful, from what I understand.

If you are a bigger nerd than me and want to learn how to make an amulator, check out Marat Fayzullin's page. He wrote iNES and has a great FAQ on hardware emulation that's way over my head, but if you know C pretty well it might make sense to you.

Well that's basically the skinny on emulation. It's really easy to use and you don't have to have that fast of a computer- any Pentium or Power Mac should be able handle running NES games and anything over about a 166 Pentium or Power Mac can run Super Nintendo / Genesis / etc. games adequately. If you have any questions feel free to email me.