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Emulators to test
games AS personal computers get more powerful, they can do a lot more. Among other tricks, they are now powerful enough to do a respectable job of pretending to be other kinds of computers, game consoles, mobile phones and what not! Welcome to the world of emulation. Predictably, the most popular type of emulators are the ones that emulate game devices like the Sony PlayStation or the Microsoft XBOX and even the Atari video game consoles. For a while, there’s been game-players emulation underground. Shareware emulators flood the Internet; letting PC-users use their machines to run games designed for game systems like the original Nintendo. And some of them work pretty well. How they do it? An emulator is a complex piece of software that emulates the abilities of the system it is trying to copy. The basic use of emulators is to present a virtual interface to the game developer to test out his product. So the developer does not need the actual device to test out his product, he can do so on the emulator that is running on his PC. Emulators are nothing without ROMs or disk images, because they are the actual copies of games. Think of it this way: the emulator is the console and the ROMs are the cartridges. An Atari 2600 does you no good if you don’t have any cartridges. Each ROM has a specific emulator associated with it. For example, to run Atari games, you would need "Stella", which can be downloaded from http://stella.atari.org. Stella will allow you to run only Atari games. Other Atari emulators would also do fine. If you want to play a Nintendo game you would need an emulator like "Project64", downloadable from www.pj64.net/iedefault.htm./ and the ROM’s of the games you want to play. Depending upon the type of emulator you want to use, the minimum, or rather we should say the recommended system configurations vary. Stella, the Atari emulator will run on even low end PC with RAM as low as 8 or 16 MB. On the other hand, an emulator like Project64, the one that emulates Nintendo would require a PC which has a processor capable of running at 1.2 GHz, so now is time to buy that P IV you’ve been dreaming of lately. The recommended RAM is 256 MB, and the minimum free hard drive space should be at least 1 GB. Ok, forget the processor; buy a whole new PC itself. Legal issues As far as emulators go, all emulators are legal. It’s not illegal to emulate something, unless the emulator contains copyrighted material such as a BIOS image. The legality of ROMs is a mixed bag. Some of them are legal, while some aren’t. Most ROM’s fall in a huge "grey area," as they are technically copyrighted but are not making anyone money or still being sold, as is the case with the Atari ROM’s. ClassicGaming.com only covers games for discontinued systems, as they are no longer making their manufacturer any money. If you dig deep enough on the Internet, you may find ROMs for games whose manufacturers; who hold the copyright, don’t even exist anymore. Still, technically, it can be illegal for you to download these ROMs. Confusing isn’t it? The good news is that there are exceptions. If you have the cartridge for any of your favourite old games like Contra, PacMan etc it’s legal to download and play its ROM from your computer. Whether or not the cartridge works doesn’t matter. Even if you don’t own the cartridge for a particular game, it’s legal to download its ROM as long as you delete it within 24 hours. Some companies have shown their generosity by releasing ROMs 0f their games into the public download under the not-for-profit distribution policy. Another exception is the games that fall under the category, "New Classics." New Classics is the term used to describe new games written for old systems like the ColecoVision, the Atari 2600 etc. Sadly, there aren’t too many of these New Classics, as it takes a lot of patience, skill, and research to write them. But whatever are there, are quite interesting and fun. So go to www.classicgaming.com/vault and download whatever you want and that too legally. PlayStation and XBox Perhaps the emulator that
is creating the most noise is Bleem. Bleem is an emulator for the Sony
PlayStation. Bleem allows games designed for the Sony PlayStation to be
played on personal computers without using the actual PlayStation
hardware. Bleem is widely available on the Internet, it cracks too. Don’t
ask us from where, use Google instead! Bleem is extremely easy to
install. In fact, you don’t need to install it at all. Copy the small
(under one MB) file to your computer and that’s it. Install the latest
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