For any old-skool gamers in the group...

[Canadian Mark]

If you grew up in the late 80's or early 90's, you've probably gone through the frustration of flipping through a Nintendo Game Power magazine and drooling over all the groovy 8-bit screen-shots of ridiculously priced games contained within its pages.

Here's a (mostly) legal way to end that frustration, by means of a free piece of software found here:

http://fceultra.sourceforge.net/

FCE Ultra is a Nintendo emulator, which basically means that it tricks your computer into thinking it's a Nintendo game console - so far, this is all legal - now comes the shady part... The Games.

The games are called ROM files (read only memory), and can usually be found on your favorite P2P network - typically you'll find a zip file with between 50 and 600 games in it. I've also seen some websites containing ROMS, but the best source I've found so far is in the old NNTP newsgroup:

alt.binaries.emulators.nintendo

This can be accessed through your email program, if your ISP carries newsgroups. The thing I like about this method, is that there is almost always the full range of NES game ROMs ever made posted (about 1500), and you can just pick and choose the individual ones you want to get.

I think the legalities of it all breaks down much like any other software. Say if you had purchased “Wizards and Warriors” in 1988, then you have every right to download a backup copy - no harm - no foul. Otherwise, it's essentially the same as downloading music, videos, etc. and frowned upon in the same manner. Enjoy at your own risk.

- note - I’ve also seen emulators for SNES, Turbo Graphix 16, Sega Genesis, and Gameboy Colour. You should be able to find any of these with a simple Google search.

[dyamond_girl]

Cool tip... fortunately for me that most of the great classics I liked are now available for the current systems, they have have been tweeked a bit but its all good!!

I heard a rumor that Atari was releasing a system. Do you know if that is true???? I think the last atari system we had was the 2600, then we upgrade to Nintendo, and so on.... now have PS2 and hold out for the next generation. 8)

[roseofblack25]

up until a few weeks ago the only video game system we had was the atari my dad bought when he was eighteen now my aunt has it cause one of the controllers stopped working and we liked to play the two players now we just play games on pogo