• Although I have used these programs and files on three different PC's with no trouble, there is still no guarantee everything will work well for you. A couple small side known effects that have happened to me too are: Pasofami:While playing, the windows clock stops, so you will have to set your PC's clock when finished. SPW:Screen may turn white, system may occasionaly be unresponsive. My system: P100 w/ 32 MB ram.
• A 50 MZ processor is the bare minimum to run Pasofami and NESticle (NES), but that will not run the others very well at all. If you have a slower processor than this, then for sure don't even bother with any of them.
• Pasofami has had several releases after 2.5a, but they are said to do nasty things to your computer. This is thought to be possibly by viruses put into the program by the author in Japan due to people pirating his work. I have not used any versions after 2.5a.
• See the emulator sites on my links page for any games for the emulators that are not linked (blue and underlined) below.
• *regarding "Famicom":The first release (fami.zip below) is in Japanese, and contains several games. After downloading fami.zip, you then should download efamicom.zip (also below), which is just a replacement .exe file that will run the emulator in english. Simply overwrite the old famicom.exe with this file, and the emulator will run in english. Next, the newer version (fami2e.zip below) only works with some other .fam format games. It will not work with the .fam format games included in the first version. Famicom2e is already in English. You can get games for the famicom version 2 at the link below, by clicking "nes games". Famicom version 3.0 (4/97) also uses famicom version 2 games, so only the very first version uses different format .fam files.
• The emulators rated below are 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. Obviously, any emulator that earns a 5 is 90% or more PERFECT to the actual system, and in many cases has extra features built in such as Game Genie code entry or play over the internet!
• Last, but certainly not least, if you haven't already heard elsewhere, you are supposed to own these games in their original cartridge format to legaly posess them in "emulator" format. If you don't, you should only keep them for 24 hours.
• Please do not harass the emulator authors by asking them for ROMS or criticizing their work. We should all be thankfull, because they do not have to be even making the emulators. Be patient, they are always getting better.
• If you find the links for the roms (games) broken, let me know and/or check the newsgroups listed in the newsgroup section. Games are often posted in the newsgroups as well.
• These are by no means all the emulators that are available. I am mostly trying to carry the best ones there are. It is many times advisable to keep older versions of the emulators. Sometimes, especially with M.A.M.E., newer versions may improve some games/features and screw up other games/features. This is partially why I have not yet put up Mame30.

For as little as $100, you can purchase a device that lets the output of your PC's monitor connect to input on a TV. Now of course, you will not get the high resolution of your monitor, but 99% of the emulators don't use that many colors anyhow! Furthermore, it's great to be able to do other PC stuff on a large screen without paying $800-$3000 for those large monitors! These products can be found at your local COMPUSA Computer City, and Circuit City amoung others.

I have two of these, and would recommend them to anyone. Cost is about $25 US, available at any computer store. It works either as a standard 2 or 4 button gamepad/joystick, or as a 10 button gamepad/joystick that "emulates" keyboard presses-so even if an emulator doesn't have joystick support yet, you will with this baby! This is only one of many available gamepads/controllers currently available for the PC. There are several that are nearly identical to SNES controllers. For more info on this controller, go to Gravis's web site.

So you see, even though it may seem like "a console on life support", these are devices that every computer user/owner can use for a variety of other things as well-so why not have them? And don't forget, some of the emulators such as NESticle even have some features that the real system never had!

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Now playing..... Donkey Kong Country! Back to the top

David Ross