Okay, it's not that hard.
PLEASE READ ALL OF THIS. I DID NOT TYPE ALL OF THIS FOR MY BENEFIT. PARTICULARILY YOU, BOSHI SINCE YOU'RE BASICALLY THE PERSON I DID THIS WHOLE THING FOR.
First, you MUST know 2 things:-Both Emulators and ROMs are SOFTWARE THAT YOU DOWNLOAD, not hardware.
-Both Emulators and ROMs are illegal by any means.
Whether that should bother you or not, I don't know or care. Most ROMs are of games so old it really has little to no significance whether they're illegal or not. As well, you're quite literally never going to be caught or sought after for having ROMs of ANY sort unless you are selling them to people and someone knows about it, or you are a massive collector/dostributor of them. Otherwise, no one's ever, ever, EVER gonna know you have them. EVER.
Second, you must know what they do:ROMs:What exactly ROM files are, are dumps from the actual cartridge game. What people do is this: They get a peice of hardware that they can dump the information from the cartridge to their computer with. The information is in a specific file and is then called a ROM. (You do not need the hardware they dumped it with to use the ROM file. You'd only need that if you were dumping games yourself.) At first, the ROM file should have an unknown extension and Windows should not know what it is. That's fine, because once you get an emulator, all will be clear.
You can find ROMs everywhere on the internet. But, searching for just "ROMs" in general will not get you very far. You should narow your search to a particular type of ROM, or a specific game ROM, I.e. "NES ROMs" , "Super Mario World SNES ROM", "007 GoldenEye N64 ROM", etc. For the very most part, the only consoles you can get ROMs for are ones tht utilize cartridge-technology. It IS possible to find ROMs of CD-Based games (For consoles such as PlayStation) but these are very, very rare, and excruciatingly difficult to find on the internet. As time goes by, we'll see this progress, no doubt.
And now, about
Emulators:An Emulator is a program that you can download from the internet that is used to play the ROM file(s) you may have found. Emulators are for the most part console specific, so for a SNES ROM, you need a SNES emulator, such as Snes9x or ZSNES. As well, emulators are NOT hard programs to use; they are generally very graphically-based. Even if they're not, they lok like a basic windows program, with blatant options right at the top (I.E. Load ROM, Configure Controls, Cheat Functions, Net Play, etc.) With most Emulators, it's farily obvious as to how to work it. I'll explain that in a bit, however.
Some good emulators for certain consoles are:
(Best ones (IMO) listed first.)
NES - NESten, Nesticle, RockNESx
SNES - ZSNES, Snes9x
N64 - Project 64, Ultra HLE
All GameBoy Versions - VirtualBoy Advance.
Sega Genesis - Genecyst
Ever-Obscure WonderSwan Color - Cygne
Why the hell do I even care and why would I waste my time?1) You get to play the godly classics you may have missed when they were in their prime. Virtually every NEs and SNES game is avaiable, and, truthfully, there's actually more out there than there wasin english cartridge form. You can play through the classics once more! You can even play some great classics you never could, even when they WERE in they're prime! (Pocky and Rocky... hehehehe)
2) You can play through games that were never before translated into english, but were through a ROM file. I don't know how infinitely thankful I am for this. I got to play Final Fantays 5, Final Fantasy 3 (J), and Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana II, PLAY THIS GAME NOW), as well as numerous others. My life wouldn't be complete if I never got to play through these three games to completion.
3) Try-before-you-buy basis. I did this for a few GBA games. Seeing as GBA games are getting rather expensive, and Nintendo's crap game to good game ration is rising fast, I found it better to get a ROM before actually buying the game. Then you know how it plays and such, so if the game you were gonna buy does end up sucking ass, then you knew not to buy it and throw money at some worthless company.
4) Try-before-they're-even-out basis. I had a ROM of Pokémon Gold 3 month before it was even out, translated by some wonderful chap. I don't know... there's something magical of being one of the few to have a game that's sur eto be extremely popular before almost everyone else does. Like me - Going on my 4th month of having Pokémon Fire Red before it's out, who knows when this game's ACTUALLY coming out. I could even have it a year before it come out in english! Note that a lot of people don't like ROMs because people can do this. Personally, I think they're just jealous that I got the game they wanted so dearly 5 months prior to them even knowing it existed, let alone released.
5) Built in GameShark/GameGenie/CodeBreaker/ProActionReplay. Almost all emulators come with these cheat devieces built right into them, to allow you to either beat and extremely hard game with ease, or mess up a game badly on your second run through (looked higher upon by the likes of me) As well, these cheat devices suffice as almost any version of their real-life couterpart.
6) Ability to slow down gameplay, speed up gameplay, and other altering effects, like removing and adding layers to the graphics. With this, you could use this function to either cheat your way through some places, speed up dialogue, or help you with my next point,
7) Ability to rip Graphics and music form a game. Always wondered where people got these perfect screenshots? I don't think they've all got an AverKey hooked up to their GBA player on their NGCs, peeps. See all my Raccoon pictures? Ripped via assistance of ROM (RDM clothes added by me.) As well, you can get music dumps from the game, that can be partiocularily useful. They're perfect sound dumps, not crapy, varying-quality MIDI or large .wavs or .mp3s. They're minor, insignificant files that play perfect quality music. What else could you want?
8) NetPlay. This funcion is godly. Allows you to play multiplayer ROMs via the internet with your online friends. This is so good, you'd just have to do it yourself. Imagine playing Kirby SuperStar with one of us, even thought we're miles and miles away!
So really, in essence, there's not reaosn not to want to get an emulator and some ROMs. Particularily of classic games. Brings back all the good memories of my childhood...
Now, I suppose you'd like an emulator and ROM for free, to get you started and understanding how it all works, eh. Well, click to correct links below for each part:
Emulator:
www.angelfire.com/darkside/kefkamahut/ZSNES_Emulator.zipSuper Mario World ROM:
www.angelfire.com/darkside/kefkamahut/Super_Mario_World.smcNote that ROM files for SNES games are .smc or .fig files. The extension is different for different consoles, and can have some vairance within themselves.
Now, for a brief explanation of what to do, and then hopefully you can figure out the rest:
1) Unzip ZSNES. Run the program. Likely, it'll start windowed. FullScreen it. Likely a prompt will come up telling you some pointless banter. Press "z" to close that window. Then, from here, you have an emulator. ZSNES is one of the more GUI-based emulators (Graphical User Interface.)
2) Go up to the Config menu, and select Input #1. From here ,you can define your controls on the keyboard. Everyone has their personal favorite way of using the keyboard, but you can find your own. Note that if you have a controller or joystick set up, you can use it here.
I'll tell you my set up if you'd liek to use it. Mine's understandable because it's set up like a SNES controller:
Up, down, left, and right are their corresponding keys.
A button = S Key
B button = Z Key
Y Button = A Key
X Button = W Key
L Button = Q Key
R Button = E Key
Start = Enter
Select = Space.
I find that easy becasue the buttons are oriented like that on a SNES Gamepad (Envision it in your mind.) But regardfless, make it however you see fit. It's YOUR emulator, your style. Bottom line.
3) Play the game! When you download the ROM file, put it in a place you can find easily (Desktop, maybe the ZSNES folder itself (That's where I keep mine)) Once you've set up your controls, go to the Game tab on the top menu. Select "Load". From here, find the folderon your hard drive where the game(s) are. Once you find the correct folder, the ROM files that exist and work will be shown in the big box to the left, where they can be selected.
Use the directoy finder to... find the directory, check to see if the directory matches up, because if it does, your ROM files will be listed there. Double clickthem to play them!
4) Once you find it, double click it, and let the game begin! Use the controls you have made to play the game! If you need to return to the GUI to change controls or other settings, press Espace. Press escape again to return to gameplay.
If you're having difficulties with how good it runs (If your PCs even nearly as good as mine, you should have no problems) you can alter such settings in the Vidoe and graphics menus of the config tab, such as Frame Skip and resolution. Frame Skip would likely be the culprit. Set it to auto frame skip, or 3 frames skip if you're having issues.)
Note that not all emulators are alike. But they're all similar and straight-forward to use. Talk to me if you need additional help.
So, I hope this helps. PLEASE READ THIS WHOLE THING, I DID NOT DO ALL OF THIS FOR MY BENEFIT.
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