VIDEO GAMES AS EMULATION

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While many people pirate the latest computer video games, many others seek out video games from their youth. Such video games may have originally appeared in coin-operated arcade machines or specialized home video-game consoles that have long since been discontinued. Arcade machines and game consoles basically consist of a dedicated computer and a video game stored in a ROM (read-only memory) chip. Video-game consoles allowed people to play different games by plugging in different game cartridges that held different games burned into their ROM chips. The problem is that unless you have the actual hardware to run a particular video game and the ROM chip that holds the game, you can’t play the video game.

To overcome both problems, game enthusiasts have developed ways to burn the contents of a ROM chip to a digital file, known as a ROM image, and they have created emulation programs that allow a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux computer to emulate the actual hardware that the original game ran on. So if you want to run old video games on your computer, you just need to find the ROM image of the video game and an emulator program that can run that particular ROM image on your specific computer. Figure 13-3 shows a Nintendo Game Boy emulator running on Windows XP.

Figure 13-3: With the BasicBoy emulator, you can play Nintendo Game Boy games under Microsoft Windows.

Note

Note Most people create emulators for the sheer joy of playing a favorite video game on their personal computer. Because emulating another machine can be tricky, emulators range in quality from excellent to buggy. Unlike most programs that you can install and run, installing and running most emulators is not particularly easy. Be sure to read any documentation that comes with an emulator so you can install and run it correctly without any problems.

FINDING AN EMULATOR

Basically, there are three types of emulators: single-machine, multi-machine, and personal computer emulators. A single-machine emulator only mimics one type of machine, usually an obsolete home video-game console, such as an Atari 2600 or ColecoVision. Once you have a single-machine emulator running on your computer, you can run all of the video games that were designed for that video-game console. To find an emulator for a specific machine, visit one of the following sites, as shown in Figure 13-4:

ClassicGaming http://www.classicgaming.com

emulation.net http://www.emulation.net

Emulators Unlimited http://www.emuunlim.com

Game Revolution http://www.game-revolution.com/download/emulator/emulator.htm

MorphGear http://www.pocketgb.com

Figure 13-4: Many people have created programs to emulate once-popular home video-game consoles, such as Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx-16, and Nintendo 64.

Multi-machine emulators typically mimic coin-operated arcade machines rather than home video-game consoles. One of the most popular multi-machine arcade emulators is MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator), as shown in Figure 13-5. To grab a Windows or MS-DOS version of MAME, visit the official MAME site (http://www.mame.net). To find a Macintosh version of MAME, visit MacMAME (http://www.macmame.org).

Figure 13-5: The MAME emulator lets you play classic arcade video games on a personal computer.

Besides programs that can emulate video-game consoles or arcade machines, there is also a handful of programs that can let your computer emulate another personal computer. So if you want to play an old video game designed for the Macintosh or Atari ST, you can always turn your PC into a Macintosh or Atari 400/800/ST clone by visiting Emulators, Inc. (http://www.emulators.com). If you have an old MS-DOS or Windows game that you want to play, grab a copy of Virtual PC (http://www.microsoft.com), which runs on Windows and Macintosh, or VMware (http://www.vmware.com), which runs on Windows and Linux. Figure 13-6 shows Virtual PC running the classic MS-DOS video game, Doom.

Figure 13-6: Virtual PC lets you play MS-DOS games on a Windows or Macintosh computer.

GETTING ROM IMAGES

Once you have an emulator installed on your computer, the next step is to get a game. Video-console games were often sold on ROM chips packaged as cartridges, while arcade machines often had their games burned into ROM chips soldiered directly into the machine. Because you can’t plug a PlayStation cartridge or arcade machine ROM chip directly into your computer, video-game pirates copy the instructions stored in a ROM chip to a digital file known as a ROM image. With a copy of a ROM image of a game, you can play that game through an emulator on your computer. ROM images of games often take up less than 1MB of storage space, so the copying and distribution of ROM images is rampant on the Internet.

Note

Note If you’re using a computer emulator program, such as Virtual PC, you don’t need ROM images. You just need a copy of the video game and whatever operating system that game needs to run on. You can often find old video games through file sharing networks or on websites.

To find a website that offers ROM images, just visit your favorite search engine and search for ROM images. Some video-game pirates even sell CDs stuffed with ROM images over the Internet and through online auction sites, as shown in Figure 13-7.

Figure 13-7: Many websites sell CDs full of illegally copied video-game ROM images.

You can buy legitimate ROM images of different video games from StarROMs (http://www.starroms.com). For ROM images of public domain games, visit PDROMS (http://www.pdroms.de).

To find ROM images or to get help installing and running an emulator program for your computer, visit one of the following newsgroups:

• alt.binaries.emulators.mame

• alt.binaries.emulators.misc

• alt.binaries.emulators.arcade

• alt.binaries.emulators.neogeo

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