Friday Fun – Classic NES Gaming

NES_Mario123_Quad__80665.1430492328.500.500As with many consul publishers, after a certain amount of time the older systems become less viable and the systems fall into the category of Abandonware. Wikipedia defines abandonware as: “computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Sometimes, it is used as a blanket category for any software over a certain age, usually five years. The term has no legal meaning. This means that labeling any kind of software ‘abandonware’ does not make it legal to make copies of it or publish it on a website. Unless the author puts the software in the public domain, abandonware remains covered under copyright law until its copyright term expires.”

I want to state upfront, if Nintendo has a problem with this guide, please contact me and I will remove it ASAP.

Now on to the goodness! As with many older games, true geeks cannot let go of older technology. Just because Legend of Zelda is in the 10th version (Twilight Princess) doesn’t me that the original isn’t a kick ass game! Realistically it is pretty easy to get your hands on the old games, not to mention the player for them.

Old consuls that are running on a PC are called emulators. At this time there are emulators for the classic NES, N64, Sega, Playstation One, and a ton more! Also there are games for each; we have been able to find many of our favorites with ease. These games are known as ROMS. Roms are easy to find with a quick Google search and there are literally 100s of sites that carry them. Some of the titles that we’ve owned over the years include: Afterburner, Altered Beast, Bad Dudes, Blades of Steel, Castlevania, Contra, Cyberball, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon, Dragon’s Lair, Duck Hunt, Excite Bike, Gauntlet, Ghosts n Goblins, Kung Fu, Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Metal Gear, Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Paperboy, Rampage, Skate or Die, Super Mario Brothers, Spyhunter, Super Dodgeball, Tecmo Bowl, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

So, with that being said, here is what you need.

The emulator for the Classic NES that we really like is called NEStopia. Available for both Windows and Mac OS, Nestopia is probably the most robust NES emulator available today, featuring cycle exact emulation, a ridiculous number of mappers, and lots of custom sound chips. It is also an open source project!

NEStopia homepage: http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/

Download the emulator here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nestopia/Nestopia135bin.zip?download

To get the games; one simply has to search Google for NES ROMS

http://www.google.com/search?q=NES+ROMS

Here are just a few of the sites:

FreeROMS.com – it has many banners and oddities, but the roms work and the site has most of the games we are looking for.

http://www.freeroms.com/nes.htm

ROMNation.com – less banners

http://www.romnation.net/srv/roms/nes.html

If you have more information; better sites for download, or just feedback, post it below!