emulation high-end fun on low-end computers

Okay, so you have a crappy old computer or low end notebook, you're sick of Farmville and you think your computer's not much good for much more than YouTube and Facebook?

On most counts you're probably wrong! Using a process called emulation it's possible to have a retro buzz! How about some Sonic or some Street Fighter... for free?!

  Here are some easy to understand instructions on how to do just that! To make things easy for now I'll stick to cartridge based machines, but as you know your original copy of Zelda isn’t going to fit in your SD slot... To play your games you're going to need two things; an 'emulator', which is essentially an app used for mimicking the hardware of your favorite old school system. The second thing you will need is a ROM of your favorite game(s). A ROM is a virtual copy of a cartridge. So now you know what you need, this is how you get them. A good point of reference is www.emulatorzone.com they offer the best range of up to date emulators to choose from, organized by console. 

1. you decided upon the epic mega drive and fusion Download the zip or exe file (if file has a weird extension like .rar use a program called WinRAR (www.winrar.com) and then get your emulator!

2. Place the downloaded files in a nice little folder called emulators anywhere you like. Making a folder called 'roms' helps for organizations sake.

 

3. Now you need to get your games or 'roms'. I'm a big fan of www.emuparadice.com

for the sake of my example I'll download Earthworm Jim for the genesis/ mega drive.

 4. Now you have the ROM, place it in your ROM folder. Next, open up the emulator and press file-> open-> now go to were you stored your ROM. Double click and you're ready to go! ... Nearly.

 5. It's a good idea to have a little click about and familiarize yourself with the options within the emulator. You can set your own keys and if you have a USB gamepad like that of the PS3 or 360 they're easy to set up as your main controller (usually via an option menu).

Now you're all set! Hopefully my introduction to emulation got you going. if my really bad screen shots and steps dont help here is a "little watch me do it"

There's a lot of really nerdy things to play with and happy gaming memories to live over... highest score on pac-man gets after me!