LE FastCounter

Welcome to the Emulators page

[Introduction][ROMs use rules] [The consoles]

[Downloads] [FAQ]

    This page bring the best emulators, in my opinion, for each of the following consoles. But if you don't know what is an emulator and how it works you can read this brief explanation:

What's an emulator?

   An emulator is nothing more than a software capable to make your PC simulate the behaviors of another machine.  This software translate a binary file that contains specific native instructions of it system to new format instruction recognizable by yours PC processor. This is needed because the console or arcade hardware is completely different from the PC hardware. When a game is made for a specific system (e.g. Sega Genesis) all program instructions are dimensioned for the actual hardware such as the console processor (in the Genesis case a Motorola 68000) and the audio and video chips. The emulator is  requested since the binary code is, in the most cases, completely different from each processor. A Genesis' program doesn't makes any sense for a IBM x86 PC compatible system and vice-versa. The same happens to the video and audio controllers. Everything must be nicely recoded and translated to be recognizable by the computer. These facts so explain why your old childhood's dream of an universal adapter between consoles never was released! Only in the nowadays, where many consoles reached their retirement and the new consoles are powerful enough to emulate another hardware we can see third party developers developing this type of hardware and softwares. By now it's possible play Game Boy and Super Nintendo games on the N64, Master System on the Play Station and, believe or not, Play Station on the Sega DreamCast using the new console-to-console emulators. Older cases are restricted to the Master System to Mega Drive cartridge adapter and Master System to Game Gear adapter (since the two consoles are basically the same Z80 processor based system, except by the most advanced graphical system in the GG).

How to use an emulator?

    The emulators in this page are easy enough to use as  I got only the emulator with a nice and intuitive "click and play" style Graphical User Interface (GUI). To end this page playing an old console classic under your computer follow the steps:

Download the emulator of the system of your choice. In the next section you can read a brief description of each old console from the domestic videogames golden age. To choose your emulator and do the download click  here. Then come back and continue the next step.

Unzip the emulator using the  Winzip program if the file is ZIP type or install it on your hard drive if the file type is .EXE in a folder of your choice.

This is the worst part in the process: get the ROM(s) to play on the emulator. This task is quite difficult because it's considered piracy keep such files on sites in the internet. Free web hosts like this (www.tripod.com) get rip of your page if this type of material can be found on your page (that's why I'll not keep ROMs in this site, sorry!). It's necessary quite a nice patience under search engine sites to find a good ROM source site, since this type of URL is removed from the servers in no time. You can try the search engines. I almost ever got what I was searching for using this method: Use the Altavista search and the keywords:

+"roms"+"download"+"videogame"+"game-name"

substituting "videogame" by the console name and "game-name" by the game name (Duh!). For example, to find the "Donkey Kong Country" ROM from the Super Nintendo console key in the search:

+"roms"+"download"+"snes"+"donkey"

Several matches will pop-up on the screen, but don't be so happy: the great majority of the sites no longer exists and all you'll get will be the famous "Error404 - Page not Found on this Server" message. Gathering some hours will be enough to find what you are searching for. And so download as files as you can. The page probably will no longer be online tomorrow and so...

Ok, now you have the game and it's time to run it on the emulator. If the game is compacted, unzip it as described before in the same folder of the emulator. Run the emulator and click the "Load Game", "Load ROM", "Open ROM" (or something like that...), selecting the file you want to run. If everything gone right you can be playing that old good game in few seconds as nostalgic tears will drop from your eyes. Don't worry about. That's normal  :p

* Don't forget to configure the joystick or keyboard before start trying to play. Will take too much until you realize what key does what...

Remark!!!
To use freely any of the available roms for download, you MUST be the legal owner of the original cartridge. If you don't have the downloaded rom, you can try it then delete the rom in 24 hours after the download or buy the respective cartridge from a legal sale representing near you!!!
 
 

Old Consoles: These consoles was the childhood's dreams of my generation...

Atari 2600: Who never had or, at least, played some Atari2600 game??? These nostalgic people now can feel again the excitement of River Raid, Hero, PacMan and, of course, our dear Pitfall... I advise you to download the PC Atari Emulator and all ROMS (ALL Atari2600 games plus the emulator, compressed in zip format, fit in two diskettes! 2.8Mbytes !!!).

Sega Master System e Game Gear (8bits): In my opinion this was the best 8 bits console ever created. With games such as"Alex Kidd in the Miracle World" and "Phantasy Star", the Master System conquered several fans in Brazil. To run the roms you should use the Emulator Meka .

Super Nintendo / Super Famicom (16bits): For a long time this console dominated the 16 bit console market being technologically superior to Sega Genesis. Famous titles:"Donkey Kong Country" trilogy , "Street Fighter II", "Top Gear" and Star Fox. Emulator of choice: ZSNES

Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (16bits):This console is a classic! I think everything must played Sonic at least once! Another great titles: "Phantasy Star 4", "Quackshot", "Toe Jam&Earl", "Super Monaco GP" and "Streets of Rage". To play the roms download the Genecyst emulator.

Nintendo (8 bits): I don't know too much about the Nintendo 8 bits because I only played it sometimes, in a console of a friend of mine. I really think the Master System is much better than the Nintendo in almost all points (except number of titles). Anyway the emulator Nesticle is worth a try.

Newer Consoles: The childhood's dreams of the new players generation...

Sony PlayStation: The most popular new console. With thousands of famouse titles as "Tomb Raider", "Driver 2", "Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9", "Grand Turismo"and others in CD format instead the old cartridge this is a great machine! To emulate this console is required a more powerful machine than the nedeed to emulate the older consoles. Something like a Pentium III 550MHz at least is pretty recommended. A nice 3D accelerator is also quite good. Use Bleem! to emulate this machine (note this is a demo version, only. The real complete software must be purchased to fully functional emulation).

Nintendo 64: A pretty powerful console that not evolved. I see it as I seen  Master System, with a great hardware but a pretty bad marketing strategy, losing market for it's concorrent. Too bad for the consumers that purchased the console (about US$700 when released) and today cannot see a simple shadow of hope coming from this investment. Their games are pretty well ellaborated so the ROMs are huge! The newer games ROMs are 20Megabytes medium-sized. Great titles as "Zelda 64", "Donkey Kong64", "Super Mario64" and "Banjo & Kazooie"are worth a download. But to emulate this powerful hardware will be requested a pretty nice machine: A nice 3D accelerator (at least a Riva TNT2) and a Pentium 550MHz. I didn't found a perfect emulator yet. Almost every emulator I tested can run only a limited number of titles and it's common several texture rendering problems. The best of all emulators I've tested is Nemu64 with a near perfect software rendering engine. The problem is the speed: 3 fps in my Pentium III-800MHz without 3D video board. Anyway I think this will not be a problem for too much time since the processor market grows every day exponentially. In a not so distant future every one of us will have a 2GHz powered processor at least...

Arcade Machines: I dare you say you have never played an arcade machine at least once!

Capcom CPS 1 & 2 series : This is the hardware platform of the most famous games ever coded. I deal you played at least once one of the top hits: Final Fight, Ghouls 'n' Ghosts or Street Fighter II. Based on the Capcom CPS arcade hardware (1985) those games were the pioneers of the nowadays fighting games. The graphics are still considered pretty well done and the fun factor is great. Keeping the eye in this success, Capcom released the CPS sucessor: the CPS2 arcade engine in 1988, an evolution in the game industry. Better graphics and sound capabilities and more process power granted the incredible new generation fighting games such as Street Fighter sequels: Zero and Alpha, Marvel vs. Street Fighter, X-Men - Children of the Atom and the entire Vampire (aka DarkStalkers) series. If you really love this type of game you MUST download the following emulators: Callus (for CPS games) and MAME, FinalBurn or WinKawaks (for both CPS and CPS2 games). Oh, I almost forgot it: The game ROMS are pretty big (over 20Mbytes) and   you'll need at least a Pentium 233 MMX machine plus 64M RAM to run it on a descent speed.

Diversos (Capcom, Konami, NeoGeo, etc...) : If you would like to play the old style games or other classics such as PacMan, Elevator Action, Turtles in Time, Golden Axe, Space Invaders, Double Dragon and many others you can use the incredible MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) to play it! This emulator, as it name says, can emulate several arcade machine hardware boards, resulting in a compatibility of practically all games ever coded, in a total of 3155 roms supported! Visit the www.mame.dk site to try the old arcade games again. There you'll find all this  ROM packs. BUT keep on mind the MAME emulator is a pretty heavy cargo for the CPU and will need a good machine to run. At least a Pentium III 500MHz will be required to run the newest games in a near-perfection speed.

Calculadora HP48: Isn't a console but have some games. It's the ideal calculator to play at the boring advanced calculus class. Every game developed to this platform was made by hp48 users around the world, some of them very interesting: "Doom", "Tetris", "Columns", space ships games such "Space Invaders"and  "Phoenix", "Slot Machine" and others. I also developed some titles: "Minehunt 3D", "Heli48", "Bingo", "Lab3D" and the never finished RPGs: "Phantasy World" and "Portamón". The emulator is quite good for software testing before send it to the real machine and to run the HP48 programs on the PC. If you are a HP48 user or have some curiosity about the softwares, get the emulator and visit the HP48 section

The Best Emulators for Download:

(Come back ceck for updates soon...)