How to Emulate Video Game Machines on Your Laptop, Netbook, or Desktop PC

Whether you loved the 1980's like I did, are a child of the 70's, really big on the 90's, or from any other era...you more than likely have have some fond memories about one or more of your favorite video games. Wouldn't it be great if you could re-live those awesome times and stroll through memory lane playing those same video games again? You can! Your computer is more than capable of emulating most all of those games from yesteryear, and most of the systems for them have been made available for you in a purely digital form for free!

This article details the specifics on how to get emulators and roms for use on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. But don't fret, unix users! Most of these same emulators are available for you under the same names and from most of the same sites using the exact same rom files!

Let us address the emulators you will need first, how to get them, and a few notes about each one you should know when you start to use them. After this, I'll tell you where you can get these roms for each system. For some systems, such as the Sony Playstation or Neo Geo, you will need to obtain system BIOS files. You won't need BIOS files for most of the other emulators, because they are already built-in to the system.

Atari Lovers:

If you're a fan of the atari 2600 games, then you'll want to download a program called Stella. On Google, type out "stella emulator, download" (without the quotes) and you should be taken to one of several sites which have the freeware program available for download. Once you've downloaded it, install from the setup program and start Stella. Once it's running, you should have a large box on your screen that pops up. On this box (the emulation window) there is a button that says "Options". Click on Options, and then go to "Config Files". Tell it which directory you want to use for your atari games (rom files). For example, if you want to place all your atari roms into a directory under the root directory in a folder called "AtariRoms", you would launch a windows explorer box, go to My Computer, click on drive C, then right-click anywhere on the white-space area of the windows explorer box and select the menu option "New". After you select New, a second box should appear that prompts you for what new thing you want to make. At the very top, it says "Folder". Click on Folder, and name that folder AtariRoms. Now you can copy the atari games that you download to this directory, and when Stella goes to look for games, it will always know exactly where you want it to find them. You can load a game simply by clicking on it, and start a game with using the F2-F6 keys. The space bar is the equivalent of the "fire" button on an atari joystick, and the arrow keys are the direction controls for the joystick. You can exit a game at any time by clicking the X on the box.

Nintendo (NES) Fans:

I've been emulating the nintedo entertainment system on my PC since 1997 with windows 95. Back then, nintendo emulation was a fairly new thing and had years of work done to work out all the bugs and add additional support for newer games. Still, they got everything done and I was able to run the results from years of work by cool people comfortably on my Windows 95 machine (which by then I had upgraded to Windows 98). Whether I was using Windows 95 or Windows 98, I was able to emulate all my NES games using the Nesticle program from a site known as Zophar's Domain. After using Windows ME for a few months (and promptly throwing it into the nearest trash can), I went on to using Windows 2000 for my home system before going on to XP. As you may find, Nesticle has some difficulties running under Windows 2000 and Windows XP, since a lot of system remapping and inconsistencies have occured which causes program expectation conflicts to occur the moment Nesticle tries to switch to protected mode to emulate your games. Windows 2000 and XP use DOS in an entirely different way than 95 and 98, which has a lot to do with this. You can still use other emulators that seem to work fine though. The one that works the best for me is a program called RockNES. I do miss the familiarity and cozy interface I had become used to with Nesticle, but RockNES works great under XP and 2000 without any problems, and plays all my games just fine.

Super Nintendo (SNES) Fanatics:

Although the Nintendo Emulators are a bit picky above based on whether you are running 98 or NT-based systems, you shouldn't have any trouble at all with emulating Super Nintendo games regardless which system you are using. The program of choice for this one is called ZSNES, and has many versions available for it. ZS_Knight and his team did a great job on this project, and most everything works as well (if not better in a lot of ways) than the original Super Nintedo system. Like the Nintendo Emulator above, you can save states (snapshots of wherever you are at within miliseconds of any game), and restore those states whenever you want to. Consider it a time machine that you can use for your video games to go back and forward to the exact spot that you want to without having to play through the game ever again to get to that point! You can save a state by pressing the F2 key, and restore the current state by pressing F4. You can select up to 10 slots to save a different state of the game to by pressing F3 to choose which one you want. You can get to the menu and pause the game at any time by hitting the escape key. From this menu you can adjust audio and video settings, rom settings, load a new game, or reset the current game. You can define all of the keys that you need to for the SNES joystick buttons from the menu.You can exit the program and the game by selecting "Quit" from the first menu box. You can also use ALT+TAB to switch between the ZSNES program for windows, and other programs if you do not want to exit the emulator or the game and need to just go to another program for a moment. You can switch back by holding down the alt key as you press tab back to the ZSNES program.

Sega Master System, Game Gear, and Sega Genesis Enthusiasts:

The good news is that you can emulate nearly all of these systems with just one program that I like to use called Kega, made by Steve Snake. It even gives you the look and feel of the older television sets by showing static when you start the program, and whenever you free a rom (unload a game). Like the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, you can save and restore states (with the menu or by the use of hot-keys: F5 automatically saves to the current state aned F8 auto-restores), and you can save avi videos of what you do as well (a feature that the SNES and NES emulators also have). Although the sound seems a little different than the original console for the Sega Master System, sometimes you can get it to sound the same by telling the emulator to use 8-bit sound with 22,000khz sample rates. To toggle between a window and the full screen mode, hold down the alt key and press the enter key. It works the same as maximizing and minimizing a dos box under windows. You can reset the game emulation machine (hard reset) at any point by pressing the escape key. To exit the program, you can just click the X or go to the menu and then exit.

For Neo-Geo, X-Box, and other systems:

There are gameboy advance, turbo-grafix 16, and other emulators for a variety of systems that work pretty much the same ways. As for Neo-Geo and certain arcade emulation machines, you will need a BIOS image file for the emulated computer itself. You can usually obtain these through torrent sites or through select rom-sites and emulation sites on the web. It is more than likely that you will need to seek out a source for a torrent these days, since there is still controversy whether or not roms and emulators (and any other parts of them) can legally be bundled together on the same site(s). Most of the Neo-Geo emulators and similar arcade systems are based off of MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) and a great deal more information can be found when you google for "mame, download, win32".

For Sony Playstation 1:

Playstation 1 games are emulated fairly well, even on some of the slower systems. One of the best emulators to use has always been Connectix VGS (virtual game station) and it has its own BIOS built-in so you won't have to go looking for it. Unfortunately it is not free software, and while certain versions seem to work flawlessly on Windows 98, they don't seem to work correctly or at all on 2000 and XP. Alternatively, there are a few playstation emulators that are completely free and will work just as well as long as you have the right bios for them and place it correctly under the bios directory. The ROM files are just direct copies of the entire CD of a playstation 1 game, and are generally distributed on peer networks as .ISO files since ISO is an easy standard format to both read and write cd images in.

For Playstation 2:

Playstation 2 games require a lot more power, and are a lot more demanding of the processor and resources of your PC than the playstation 1 emu is. You are also dealing with a DVD rather than a CD for the game medium now, which means that ISO extractions will be at least 4GB rather than 600-700MB. The DVDs are more sensitive to scratches and blemishes than CDs too, so be aware of that if you try to make a copy. With this emulation system, you'll need a lot more physical RAM to run it on top of double to tripple the minimum requirements to run a PS1 game. You can extract the Playstation 2 games from off of the dvd game discs and use them similar to how you would with loading playstation 1 image files from the PC. The playstation 2 emulator I use is called PCSX2. I had to obtain a bios for it which was a bit tricky. After I obtained it, I was able to rent a Playstation 2 game and play it just fine. There are a lot more bugs and things still to be worked out on the PS2 emulators, but for the most part you can play a good bunch of playstation 2 games on your PC without problems. The faster your computer is, the more RAM you have, and the less you have running when you execute PCSX2 to play a game, the better!

For Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii:

These system projects are currently still under development. They are not yet to a level where they can be released for home computers to use to successfully emulate completed games without issues.

Obtaining Roms for your game systems:

So you have an emulator...or two...or three! But now you need games for them? No problem. Check out http://www.romnation.net and download whichever ones you need. Technically, you are supposed to own the game physically. Well, most people don't. Or at least, they did but don't physically own them anymore after years of using the original system or something happening to it. Since most of these systems are no longer manufactured, sites like this are a great service to gaming fans who want and need to have their games back, and don't believe they should have to pay over, and over, and over again to get them. Just select the system you want a rom for, the alphabetical category it falls under, enter the verification code to prove you are not a computer trying to steal all the roms from their site...and presto. You now have a video game rom.

The Nintendo Games, Sega Games, and a few of the neo-geo games are readily available here. Upon trying to download a few playstation games, I found only pop-ups and links to other sites that generate pop-ups and try to make money off of circle-jerk web sites. Blah. You can avoid all of that for Playstation games by going to the pirate bay to look for playstation 1 game torrents for games that you used to own, or by making back up copies of the current playstation 1 and playstation 2 games that you physically own. You'll want to use an ISO extraction or duplication technique. Please refer to some of my earlier articles which will show you exactly how to do that on windows and linux for free.

Last but not least, there are sites on the web which provide retro-gaming joysticks and game controllers that you can use via a serial or usb port to play the games on your computer just as you did on your video game system years ago! Be sure to check these sites out on the web. They're a definite must for the serious retro-gamer!