This week Andy had to have a surgery procedure that required an overnight hospital stay. While in, they brought him a Super Nintendo cart to play games on and he was soon addicted to “Super Mario World.” I also loved these games, but it’s really fun to see kids today fall in love with the same games we loved as a kid.
Now keep in mind that Andy has a Playstation2. Also in this house are a couple Nintendo DSes, an Xbox 360 and a Playstation3..not to mention several PCs, including his own that are more than powerful enough for gaming.
When he got home, I connected an Xbox 360 controller to his PC, installed zsnes, the Super Nintendo Emulator, hit up Pirate Bay for some good Super Nintendo Roms and he was off. Now he hasn’t delved into the library very far yet, Super Mario World still has more than it’s share of his attention.
The point to this post is that today, even with high end gaming machines around, these old classics still hold their own. I can still play the Mario and Zelda games today, all of them. The original Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior are still favorites of mine.
If you haven’t gotten into the gaming phenomenon, let me give you all of the details you need to get started on your own retro gaming escapade.
A quick spin to www.emulator-zone.com will give you all of the info that you need to emulate the following systems, and more. (with different degrees of success)
- GameCube
- Nintendo 64
- Gameboy
- Gameboy Advance
- Super Nintendo
- Classic Nintendo
- Nintendo DS
- Sony Playstation
- Sega Saturn
- Sega Genesis
- Sega Master System
- Arcade Systems
There are more of course, even some of the newer consoles, but in my experience those emulators are unstable and support a very small subset of games, such as the Xbox Emulators that exist just to play Halo.
Personally I have tried the MAME arcade emulator, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and Playstation emulators, all with good results. Of course a gamepad is a must for these games. You can play them with a keyboard, but why?
Literally thousands and thousands of games can easily be found on http://thepiratebay.org/ in ROM format. A ROM is a dump of the original cartridge or cd/DVD that allows you to play the game on the emulator.
A word about legality. To put it straight, this is NOT legal. Nintendo and such companies have long since quit policing these, although that is subject to change with the emergence of classics on newer systems such as the Nintendo Wii.
That being said, in a little over two days, I had over 1500 games for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Andy has been playing his heart out and hasn’t touched his other systems once. The Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (or an Xbox 360 wired controller) can be connected with no trouble and work flawlessly for these games.
If you are really needing to get a fix of some old classic games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid….why does it seem all of the Classics are Nintendo games??? Then head over to the sites listed above, download an emulator, find some ROMS on Pirate Bay of some of the sites linked below, and get your Retro Gaming on.
Enjoy!
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I am a software engineer, blogger, photographer, musician, technology enthusiast, father, husband, brother, son and obsessive compulsive weirdo. I enjoy riding bikes, watching movies, listening to music and reading like a mad man. If any of these topics interest you, you have come to the right place!
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