Emulator's allow you to bring back old classic titles, but they have new ones too.Oct 22 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Download some while you still can. Do you know what an emulator is? I didn't know much about them until I picked up this month’s addition of Electronic Gaming Monthly. I heard a little about emulators and ROM’s from friends, but I actually never looked into them until I read the article in EGM. The article was written by Marc Saltzman and was titled "Keys to the Kingdom" and it gives a basic look into what emulators are, where you can get some, and whether or not it should be legal? What is an Emulator An emulator is a device that allows you to run software made for another machine. The description the article by Marc gives is "an emulator re-creates the hardware environment of the original machine on your PC and runs the original ROM(read only memory)." While I have heard that emulators can even allow you to play Playstation titles on the PC and on the Dreamcast I don’t know if it is true. Is it your dream to be able to play Final Fantasy 7 on the DC with even better graphics. I know I have always wished to be able to play FF7. I don’t own a PS and don’t plan on getting one, but through emulation it could be possible for me to play FF7 on the PC if I could find the ROM. I have yet to get an emulator for PS yet but so far I have downloaded SNES, NES, and Gameboy Color emulators and ROM’s. I also have seen links to be download many old classics from the arcades, Atari, N64, PS2, and Gameboy Advance ROM’s. I am not sure about GBA and PS2 but I am positive about the rest. There are plenty of sites that have emulators and the ROM's that run on the emulator's. The only problem is that you will have a lot of pop UP’s, but it's worth it. Not only will you have to deal with pop UP’s you may have to deal with many sites leading to dead ends. They may say they have a bunch of ROM's but not have any or any that are worth downloading. Some sites will ask you to vote for them in the top 50 ROM sites on the web before you can download. This is what keeps these sites on the web they have a lot of legal problems with the Company's that made the games or the console they are supposed to be run on. Make sure you download the correct emulator for the ROM you want to download. I have emulators for GBC, SNES, and NES. So if you want to download a game on a certain system you must have the correct emulator first. Okay I hope I'm not frying your brains with all these facts so I will try to mix in some humor if you are actually still reading. One of the best thing about emulator’s is that they allow you to play games that you may have never actually seen or heard of before. I was born in the early 1980’s so I never really got to play many of the classic arcade or Atari games. Thanks to emulator’s and to people that actually have put the ROM on the web I am now able to play these classics that I more then likely would have never found otherwise. How many of you would actually go out and buy an Atari so that you could play pacman? Not only would it be hard to find, but who knows how much it would cost. Another thing about the ROM’s a lot of the older games have actually been improved on. Most of the games can now be saved anywhere in the game. You don’t have to wonder around and find a save point or wait till you die. This is great for games with hard bosses you can save right before you go into battle and won’t have to retrace steps if you lose. How much Space do they take up Well this depends mostly on the game, but I have downloaded several SNES RPG's and the largest was a little over 2.5MB. As for the N64 games I don't know. Most NES games and GB games around the 1MB mark. Games I have downloaded: SNES- Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 5, Punch Out, Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Final Fight, and Super Mario RPG. NES-Metroid GB-Antz Where do I go You can use a search engine and type in roms or you can go to one of the sites I recommend. Snes Heaven is where I got all my SNES games it provides a picture of the game, a brief description, and a rating. M.A.M.E was one of the first sites in this type of thing has tons of old arcade games. Before you start downloading all this stuff though you will need something to unzip them, I recommend Winzip. If you don't unzip then they won't work. The Catch While emulators are legal to use, downloading and playing ROMS is a copyright violation. UNLESS you own a copy of the game, or have written consent from their developers. Yeah like you could get written consent. While it may not be legal I am positive many people don't own the original format of the ROM's they have downloaded. Have I? Oh no definitely not, you know I have all those games right? Okay maybe I don't, but you have 24 hours to delete the game if you don't own it. Like people actually listen to that. The corporations aren’t singling out people they are taking out the websites. This is similar to MP3 files and Napster. Napster allowed people to download music for free and then the site got into legal battles. Well basically the same thing is happening with Emulators. The companies will file lawsuits and eventually a lot of the sites go down. Any sites with 64 or PS games are more likely to go down. The sites with these ROM’s are more likely to go down because the N64 and Playstation games actually look better on your computer. Thought’s on Emulation I believe that emulation should be allowed, but only for systems like NES and older. SNES is borderline along with GB games. I think that GBC, 64, and all the others should be left alone. Here are some quotes I got from the article in EGM. Creator of M.A.M.E. Nicola Salmria “Our work is culturally significant: we are trying to preserve these games for future generations.” Atari’s Mike Albaugh “Anybody using M.A.M.E. because it’s, ya know, cheaper than buying new games should seriously look into getting a life.” Ouch that hurt’s. Anyway for anyone who has any comments about this issue leave one and we can talk about it. So what do I need again? a unzip program like winzip an emulator for the original system the game was made for enough space on your hard drive (not very much is required for older games) Have fun if you are trying this out I hope it wasn’t too confusing. Thanks for reading my review and remember the rules on downloading ROM’s. Those rules are that if you don’t own the game you can only have the ROM for 24 hours, if you own the game it is fine, illegal to have on for more then 24 hours without owning the game without written consent.  |
| Read all comments (4)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
