EDIT: These first five or so posts were split off of Greatest Game Companies to make an emulators thread.

I used to be big into emulators. I had a messload of ROMs for MAME (the big arcade games emulator) and ROMs for ZX Spectrum, Atari 2600, NES, SNES and Genesis ROMS. then that computer died and I haven't bothered to re-download everything again, and that was about 4 years ago. At one time, i'm sure I had about 2,000+ ROMs on my computer.

I used to subscribe to a great British retro gaming magazine called Retro Gamer (the magazine was an "import" at bookstores and $12) which was awesome because it always had a cover disc of great old (mostly British computer) games and emulators. Then the company that made it went under and it was resurrected without the cover disc.

AtariAge is really cool for Atari 2600 games because its also the biggest Atari enthusiast website on the internet and even with the recent boom in 2600 interest, Atari has decided not to bother to go after them for including ROMs of 2600 games. Unfortunately they recently had to remove all their Activision games because apparently Activision is still marketing their 2600 catalog. I've played a few of the popular 2600 homebrew games and they're pretty good.

World of Spectrum is the big website for ZX Spectrum (an gaming computer extremely popular in Britian in the 1980's, but obscure in the US), because they actually have the consent of most publishers (and Amstrad, the makers of the ZX Spectrum) to host files for their games. Because of this, i've actually played alot of classic British computer games like Jet Set Willy.

Yeah I have a shitload of emulators on my computer.

NES/Famicom
SNES/Super Famicom
Genesis/Mega Drive
N64
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Atari 2600
Commodore 64
TurboGrafx16/PC Engine
Sega Master System/Game Gear
Neo Geo Pocket
CPS1/CPS2 (Capcom arcade games)

I wish I knew how to get ISOs to work so I can play PS1/Saturn/Sega CD games. I could also never get MAME to work, or find any Neo Geo emulators that work.

Oh and I've been meaning to find Spectrum and MSX emulators.

MAME is weird. Most of them seem to work in MS-DOS, but I remember finding one that worked in a GUI that you could download user-submitted histories of the games and pictures of the cabinets and play the games in a pop up window (was it MAME 32?)

The NES emulator I used was NESter. Didn't take up much space and did the job well. Now that you've jogged my memory, I now recall I had Neo-Geo Pocket and GBA emulators too.

I used a Spectrum emulator called ZX-32, IIRC. The best one out there is Speculator, but you need to pay for if you want it to be worthwhile.

I don't have time for emulators/ROMs anymore, but they were cool to have them for a year or so I barely had working internet and had to download stuff onto a thumb drive.

Nestopia is the most perfect emulator that I have, it plays anything. The only games I'd imagine I would have difficulty with are Gyromite and Stack Up because they used the R.O.B thing and it's not like I'm really missing out there.

Yeah and I never pay for any of this. So I'll give ZX-32 a try.

ZX Spectrum emulators are weird. Because the Spectrum was based on tapes (yeah, cassette tapes. I've heard stories of people who, when they were younger would go over to their friends house who had a new Spectrum game, and copy it onto a blank cassette on a boombox!), it uses a weird rom name and you might need to download two ROMs to make it work. Make sure you find the Spectrum version of Street Fighter II if its still up. It was made late into the Spectrum's life, and even how simple that version was, it was graphically taxing and is quite possibly the slowest game ever released. It takes 10 minutes to load a sluggish fight in which it takes 5 minutes to move over to your opponent. What rubbish!

Skool Daze and Elite are the best games for it, and Jeff Minter made a bunch of great games for the Spectrum before he made Tempest 2000, the only good game ever made for the Atari Jaguar.

Also, i'm splitting this up into an emulator thread.

Retro gaming thread eh?

I'm gonna be here a lot.

and by "Retro Gaming" I mean everything before and including the Fifth Generation (N64/Saturn/Playstation). The Sixth Generation (X-Box/Gamecube/Dreamcast) might get included after the Seventh Generation (the current one) gets replaced, but I think that the introduction of Online Gaming kind of separates the history of video games.

Also apparently, Sony plans on making PS2s until the Sun starts expanding, so I doubt we'll ever cover that here.

I agree, 5th gen is the end of the "classic" era and 6th gen is the beginning of the modern.

I make exception with the Dreamcast though, I think that counts as a retro system, since it never really competed directly with the other 120 bit consoles and was released to compete with the N64 and PS1.

Somebody give me step by step instructions for playing Pokemon Red on my computer for free with the ability to save games.

1. Download a Gameboy emulator.
2. Download a Pokemon Red rom.
3. Install the emulator.
4. Open the emulator.
5. Open the Pokemon Red rom with the emulator software.
6. Choose Squirtle
7. Any time you want to save, click "Save state..."

you can actually save it in-game like you could on the real game too, but you can do the save state thing too, just to be absolutely sure. With "Save state", you don't have to wait to save.

To bring a saved state back:
1. Run the rom
2. Click "Load save state..."
3. Select your save file

or while you're playing, just do the last two. No need to restart the rom entirely. Helpful when you fuck up mid-battle.

Visual Boy Advance (which is a GBA emulator) is probably the best Game Boy emulator out there. I recommend it too.

I used emulation to play either FireRed or LeafGreen (I think LeafGreen) a few years ago. They're pretty nifty remakes.

Much love fellas.

Thanks to this thread I have discovered a Dragon Warrior III rom download and have one of my favorite rpgs ever back in my paws to play and try to finish this time around. thanks!

Do you really not know how to work an ISO? You are worst nerd ever.

I can't find a good N64 emulator for Mac. Project 64 works great on Windows though.

Also, none of the gameboy emulators are working for me. Visual Boy opens up fine and then crashes everytime I try to play a rom