The Benefits of Emulation and How To Get Your Emulators Working Properly

Oh, hi there again! 

Welcome Back!

This time we’re going to be talking about *drum roll*

 Emulators

** !! WARNING !! **

THE USE OF EMULATORS IN AND OF THEMSELVES IS NOT A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAWS. BUT THE DOWNLOADING AND USE OF ROM AND ISO FILES WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS IS A BLATANT VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAWS, UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY OWN A PHYSICAL COPY OF THE ROM / ISO FILE(s) IN QUESTION.

THE PINUP GAMER DOES NOT RECOMMEND OR CONDONE THE USE OF ILLEGALLY PIRATED MATERIALS AND THUS WILL NOT PROVIDE INFORMATION ON HOW TO ACQUIRE SUCH ITEMS.

I, myself, am a multi-platform gamer, in that I use both consoles and PC to satisfy my gaming needs. But lets face it, you can't just put a PS2 or GameCube in a car and play it, now can you? Well, OK, yeah you can if you have a television in your vehicle, but we don’t all have that, now do we?! With an emulator, all you need is a computer (laptop you goobers) or a smartphone and you can play your consoles everywhere!

Working Emulators have been coded for nearly every console ever created, and I will provide links to the official sites for each one at the end of this rant.

Recently I had an urge to play Final Fantasy XII but my dilemma lied, however, in the fact that I was in a hotel and had neither items in my possession. I remembered a friend telling me about emulators several years back, I also remember telling her that that was the stupidest idea I had ever heard (who the fuck needs THAT?!) WEEEELLLLLL…….. anywho, I took to the interwebs and began my search. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for and then some.

HOLY SHIT!!! ALL THE THINGS MAN…. ALL . THE . THINGS!

From DOS to Wii, You name it, you can find an Emulator for it, hell there is even an emulator to mimic Android OS (WAHHHHHHH?)

 

I know this is a lot of info to take in all at once

The newer consoles have bitchin' graphics right? Well, that carries over to the emulators as well, so for like the GameCube/Wii Emulator and the PS2 emulator specifically will require a descent graphics card (sorry not my fault). Do you have one? 

I imagine you do, don’t you?

99% of emulators are ready to play off the bat, all except the Sony Playstation2, the BIOS file needed to run the PS2 emulator is still under full copyright and thus cannot legally be distributed with the emulator. You will need to use a memory card transfer devise to migrate the BIOS file from your personal PS2 system to your computer. There are ways to find them on the internet, but it would be against the law to divulge specifics of that information.

Now that you have the emulators you want, we need to get the ROM (or) ISO files onto your computer.

Google search for ROM files for OLDER games (Nintendo 64 and older) and download them (please see warning at beginning of post)

Newer games (disc systems) use a format called ISO files. These can be easily extracted using a tool called Magic ISO, just follow the instructions of the program and BAM you have the image files for your personal use on your computer.  Placing them in a special folder within the main emulation program folder is recommended, just to keep it all organized and easy to find.

GC/Wii discs use a different format that is unreadable on Windows OS formatted PC’s sorry, can’t help you in that regard.

Do you have your ROM / ISO (s) ready?

SWEET!

Pick an Emulator and open that bitch up!

Every one is different but they all generally have a drop box bar on the top with various names “file”  “tools” “etc…”

Ok now explore those options and choose your ROM or ISO and Away you go! There are many sites on the web that will explain exactly how to get the best graphical quality for your computer. It will take far to much time / room / patience that, quite frankly I do not possess to hold your hand through every single little thing. Besides I cant see directly into your damn computer and therefore cannot tell you exactly what to do. Just google that shit and I promise you will find what you need. It might take some tinkering, but you’ll get it. 

OK, now that I have piqued you interest and told you what the fuck to actually do, how about I do the nice thing and give you direct links to the stupid things?

DOS-Box – MSDOS Emulator

FCEUX – NES Emulator

ZSNES  - SNES Emulator

Project 64 – Nintendo 64 Emulator

Dolphin – GameCube AND Wii Emulator in one glorious package

VisualBoy Advanced – Gameboy Advanced

No$GBA – Nintendo DS Emulator

ePSXe – Sony Playstation 1

PCsx2 – Sony Playstation 2

PPSSPP – Sony PlayStation Portable

Sega Saturn , Sega Genesis , Sega Dreamcast – please google for yourself as the hosts contain copyright protected material and will not be posted here.

Atari 2600 – Please google for yourself as the hosts contain copyright protected material and will not be posted here.

ColecoVision – Please google for yourself as the Hosts contain copyright protected material and will not be posted here.

All of these websites are the Original Distribution Sites, except for the VisualBoy Advance (has been an open source application for a long time now).

Have questions or comments? Leave them in the comment section for us! We can't wait to hear from you!