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You’ve seen it.
And yet, when you searched for those particular games in Steam, nothing comes up.
What is this witchcraft?
What you saw, my friend, is called emulation.
It’s by no means new, but you shouldn’t feel bad for not knowing about it.
This isn’t exactly mainstream cultural knowledge, and can be a little confusing for beginners.
Here’s how emulation works, and how to set it up on your Windows PC.
What Are Emulators and ROMs?
So an emulator is a program you run, the ROM is the file you open with it.
When you do, your machine will run that old school game.
Where do emulators come from?
Generally, they’re built by fans.
In almost all cases, though, these emulators are distributed for free online.
There are several emulators out there for every retro gaming system you could imagine.
And where do ROMs come from?
In theory, you could fill a collection this way.
You’ll have to figure out how to get ROMs yourself.
Is downloading ROMs legal?
Wetalked to a lawyer about this, actually.
But there really isn’t caselaw here.
But what software to use?
The absolute best emulator setup, in our humble opinion, is a program calledRetroArch.
Give them a shot, then look up alternatives if you’re not satisfied.
If you’re a Mac user, you might want to tryOpenEmu.
It supports a ton of different systems and is actually pretty easy to use.
Here’s a quick tour of how emulators work, using Snes9X as an example.
Emulators generally don’t come with installers, the way other Windows software does.
Instead, these programs are portable, coming in a folder with everything that they need to run.
you’ve got the option to put the folder wherever you want.
Here’s Snes9X:
Click File > Open and you might browse for your ROM file.
Open it up and it will start running immediately.
you might start playing immediately.
On most emulators, Alt+Enter will toggle full screen mode in Windows.
But this is really just the beginning.
