Video Game Emulators
| Published 12/10/04

Graphic by: Jenny Conner

The Internet has opened up many opportunities to get things for free. Free movies, free shows and free music can all be downloaded quickly and easily; however, many do not know that video games from gaming systems may be downloaded and played with relative ease.

This article will use Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) examples, but the same terminology and software applies to the all systems from SNES, Sega Genesis, n64 to arcade games and the Game Cube (though good emulators do not yet exist for the most recent systems). First things first, before you can play, you must learn the lingo.

An emulator is a piece of software that artificially recreates the original gaming system on your computer. So for this to work, you must download an NES Emulator. Note, it is not illegal to download emulators. Most of them are free and have been lovingly coded by software geeks.

A Rom is an "image" of a video game. It is the code that those little plastic NES cartridges contain which causes pictures to be displayed on the screen. So for an emulator to do anything you must have a Rom. Note: It is illegal to download a Rom unless you actually own the game, though this is a difficult requirement to enforce.

So, emulator = gaming system (NES) and Rom = game (NES cartridge).

Install the emulator and open the Rom with it to play the game. Depending on the emulator and set of games, it may take a while to get it configured for your particular computer. The controls are difficult to get used to on a computer so it might be recommended to buy a USB controller. Below are some links to a couple NES emulators.

NESten
NEStopia

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