Efficient Emulation; A Guide & Some Great Games

I’ve already been over why emulation is so much better than buying and stressing over commercial games; it’s free, the games are invariably better and you don’t have to worry about technology. It’s undoubtedly one of the most efficient ways to waste your life! So here’s a quick guide to how to do it:

Go to The Emulator Zone, and then to your chosen console from the left-hand menu. Now, the one drawback with emulation is that the newer the console, the harder it is to emulate. If you want to get Playstation 2, or Dreamcast games running, or anything like that, it’s system intensive and very difficult to get hold of games, so forget that. Who wants them anyway, with their fancy graphics and twatty, ‘realistic’ games? The SNES is the best console anyway, and it works like a charm through an emulator. Anyway, download your emulator (any of the highly rated ones will do) and then unpack it into a folder somewhere.

Then go to Rom-World, or if you don’t like it, find another site with the ROMs you want. A ROM is the file you get when you rip a game out of a cartridge or off a cassette tape, or whatever, and put it on a PC. They are the games you need to make use of your emulator. Downloading and using them is, well… mostly legal, I think. But who cares, right? This is the Internet! Some, like the Mario, Sonic or Zelda games, are a little more illegal to distribute, so you might have to do a special search on Google, and sift through a few pop-ups. But I’ve managed, so you can too! Just unpack the ROM to the same folder as your emulator and you’re away, load up the emulator, then load up the ROM from it’s menu. Map the controls from the system’s controllor to your keyboard, and you’re sorted. Don’t know what to start with? Well, do a search for good games on your chosen system. Or listen to me:

Super Mario All-Stars + World

This is the daddy, the most wonderful cartridge ever released for any console ever. Undisputed champion of all things. It contains all three of the original Mario platform games originally on the NES with better drawn graphics, as well as the tough sequel to the first game, previously only available in Japan, and the absolutely awesome Super Mario World, which is the clear favourite of mine. Now, everyone knows Mario, but few remember what made his original, 2D games, so classic. The first two are looking and feeling a bit tired these days, I admit, but they are still fun and very worth a blast now and again. But by the time they did the third and fourth the designers were dabbling with platform heaven, and they are still two incredible games. The animation is perfect, the controls sublime, the physics tuned so it’s never unfair and always fun to have another go. There are new ideas, enemies, situations in every single new level. The endless secrets make World the winner; you can best the last boss without playing half of the game, and to go back and find all those secret levels, and root out every corner of the brilliant and memorable map is a pleasure, and indeed a priviledge. My highest compliments go to these wonderful, wonderful Mario makers.

Chrono Trigger

If Mario represents the pinnacle of the platform game, which he does, then Chrono Trigger represents the pinnacle of the ‘console RPG’. This genre has only limited things to do with the beardy, complicated, slow games that PC owners call RPGs. Console RPG’s may have multiple characters, large worlds to explore, ‘experience’ points which determine the strength of your characters and lots of different weapons and armour to buy and use, but the similarities end there. In the best console RPGs, things happen. A lot of things, crazy things, with quite a pace. This game throws you around time with glorious abandon, one minute you’re in 65 million B.C fighting dinosaurs and dancing at a prehistoric rave, the next you’re in an apocolyptic wasteland fixing robots and manipulating machines. It never relents; the moment boredom threatens it simply throws you somewhere else and lets you flounder. The difficulty level is perfect, it never gets so hard that you feel overwhelmed; the fighting feels great with some meaty smacks and hilarious magic, and is never dull or overly strategic despite having a nice and relaxed turn-based combat system for lack of stress; the design and animation is lovely throughout, with a rainbow of bright colours and cute sprites. It even gives you warm feelings when you do nice things for people, you really end up caring about the characters and the world. It’s quite scary, in a good way.

Many more to added, soon.