emulators?

[aimeekitty]

sooooo I haven't looked into emulators for years... but I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep and be able to play some older classic games I like. Those of you who use them, could you tell me more? :) Can you use them with MAC & PC?
Do they really work like the old games actually did, or are there drawbacks?
which do you use?

I think once the holidays are over and we start converting the garage, I'm going to set up the Xbox, ps2 and maybe the dreamcast and Snes on a switchbox on the living room tv so that we could play any of them easily. But I'm not sure if my SNES even works anymore. :) I'm trying to figure out the best way to do all this.

Comments

[tacohime.livejournal.com]

At his old apartment, Christian (my bf) had a crapload of consoles hooked up to his TV. Radio Shack will set you right. Christian got two straight up rca switches and they worked fine. If you want to make with fancy connections, he says, it'll take a bit more. We have component boxes since we have an HDTV. We don't use an rca anymore cos we can use component, pretty much. At our old place, we used rca and coax.

If you want to know more or anything, I'll ask him as he is the brains behind the sophisteracated tay-vay setup we gots.

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

yeah, I remember we used to have something like that YEARS ago back when I was in highschool. My dad had it so we could play NES, SNES or VHS really easily. but it's been a long time! :D I think this is a great way to actually get to use older systems.

there's no friggin way I'm ever selling or throwing away my pink modded dreamcast if I can get away with it. LOL.

and hugs to you.

[zimbach.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to tell you since I don't use them myself, but a great many game console emulators for Mac can be found < a href="http://www.bannister.org/software/emu.htm">here. I'm sure there are even more emulators for PCs, but I don't know them.

SInce they emulate the original hardware of the game consoles, they are intended to perform identically, but there are sometimes issues with the display, speed, and controller configuration. Most of the emulators have adjustable settings where those issues exist.

The problem is finding the ROM images for the game software, since though the formats have been largely abandoned and many of the companies no longer exist, the software is still copyrighted.

[mincedniku.livejournal.com]

The one I used to use was this one: http://www.zsnes.com/
Works fine from all around, from my experience atleast. I used it mainly to play Seiken Densetsu 3.

I don't even know where my SNES is, I just told my mom to make sure not to throw it out. xD And our NES is busted. My sister's ex thought it'd be a good idea to take it apart, then couldn't get it back together again, lol. Not that any games we owned still worked anyway. I think we had three copies of FF1... xD

[sweetmary.livejournal.com]

I use Zsnes and Visual Boy Advance.
They're right here on my compy (PC) and I grab a PC controller and play me some games.

ZSNES is..that's right..SNES oooh, aaah. Chrono Trigger and Harvest Moon all night long! (hasn't happened in ages..but when I have time..oh boy howdy!)

The best part about emulators is that you can DL Japanese games..and some folk create translated patches. :D (Totally have Sailor Moon SNES game. :D Dorkery!)

I don't now how helpful I am. Back when I didn';t have my own compy, my brothers showed me the magic of emulators and roms. I have no idea about transferring them to actual consoles..b/c I'm not that cool. Although, you can do it for gameboy, gba, and such if you buy this cartridge..and upload games to it..then play them. I'm hazy on that, since it's my brothers' territory and not mine.

Good luck. :D It's all such fun to say "I think it's time to kick it old school.." and do just that..immediately.

Speaking of which, I need to get me some NES goodness. >_>

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

WAH?? you can play like, say, old SNES games emu'd on a GBA system itself? O_O?!

[lumie.livejournal.com]

I have tons of emulated games on my PC, some are good, some are not so good, and some are games you couldn't get otherwise, so it's good enough. I would recommend getting a game controller for the computer if you don't already have one. I think MAME is one of the most popular emulators. It was designed to be run in Windows, but there is a Mac port, too. You can download MAME stuff at www.mame.net/download.html

For the Dreamcast, there is a pretty nice Nintendo emulated game collection (I got mine from Rey-Rey), and supposedly a Sega "Smash Hack" which is like the Sega Smash Pack, but with tons more games, although I have no idea where to get that.

[jezeroth.livejournal.com]

ZSNES works great for SNES roms, I know that. Saved state stuff, sound and graphics are good and run well... Also depends on how good your computer is. You animate and such, so I'm going to assume you have a pretty decent machine which means that the emulator will work very well. ZSNES in particular has no slow-down with me, but some of the Gameboy Advance emulators such as VisualBoyAdvance has a little of it if I'm multitasking and have several big-memory usage programs going on. And yes, that's the GBA emulator I use as well. :)

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

for my personal, I use a dual 2.5 ghz power pc (mac G5) with 2.5 gb ddr sdram. *_* I hope that's fast enough? sadly, I got this machine to be able to do my animation stuff, but I've been so busy that I haven't been able to. (all the work I've done recently has been completely by hand, and scanned and composited by the people I worked for, so I didn't really have to use my system for it)

I'd be great to EASILY be able to play some of my favorite older games again without having to disconnect, connect, and then deal with grainy resolution issues on my monitor (my flatscreen computer monitor does not get along well with gaming systems resolution for some reason, even xbox has a bit of "wow, I can see every pixel in a BAD WAY" going on...)

[persoconchii.livejournal.com]

I used to have ZSNES and it was great!
You could save images or even hide certain levels of art ingame itself...
you could also save or pause almost anytime while playing! [really useful during some really annoyin copycat game in CT]