Emulated Gaming
Console and arcade emulators have been around for a long time and offer an easy way to play old classic games on your PC. Most of the emulators here will run on pretty basic PCs. The Nintendo 64 one will push your PC most, but should be fine.
Getting hold of the games (known as ROMs) can be tricky, as are the legalities. If you don't actually own the game, you are supposed to delete the game ROM file within 24 hours of downloading. There is no way that anybody will know whether you have or not.
All of the emulators and ROMs mentioned here are stored on external site. I am not responsible for the content of these sites (the legality of the content may be questionable and some of the advertisements may be aimed at an older audience).
You will have more fun if you purchase a game / control pad for your PC. I'll have them listed on the Upgrades pages soon.
What system do you wish to emulate?
- The Nintendo 64
- The SNES
- The NES / Gameboy
- The Sega Mega Drive
- The Sega Master System
Or, you can: -
- Get game files (ROMs)
The best Nintendo 64 emulator is Project64 and you can download it from the official site here.
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There are two excellent SNES emulators. I prefer Snes9x, which you can download from the official site, here. Alternatively, you can download ZSnes from the official site here.
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The best NES emulator also emulates the Gameboy (classic and colour). It is called REW and can be downloaded here (no official site available).
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There are a number of Mega Drive (also known as Genesis) emulators available. The best supported is probably Gens which can be downloaded from the official site here.
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The MEKA emulator supports Master System and Game Gear ROMs aswell as a few, more obscure, Sega platforms. It can be downloaded from the official site here.
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There are a number of websites where ROM files can be downloaded for free. Here's a selection of the best: -
- Rom Nation
- Cool Rom
- ROM World
- Rom Hustler
Please bare in mind that some of these sites may contain advertisements of an adult nature.
Some ROMs will be harder to get hold of as they are "ESA Protected" which means that they can not be distributed legally. However, a few minutes searching with Google should point you in the right direction. Alternatively, you could try using LimeWire or a Bit Torrent Client.
Always virus scan anything you download from the internet before you use it.
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