Emulating a Childhood (Part 2)

Most people think emulators are only used to play the basic games. Play an old game they no longer own. However, some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming, was with games that weren’t real, rather it was all with hacks.

When emulators came out, coding was needed for the games as well. However, people figured out that if they had the blueprint for a game, they could go in, and basically create a hack, or their own game. One of the best Pokemon games I’ve ever played is called Pokemon Light Platinum. It’s a game not by Game Freak or Nintendo, but a hack created by a random fan.

There are endless possiblities, and there are a ton of hacks. One of the most popular are Super Mario World 3 hacks, where a new story and new levels were added. Brutal Mario is one of the most popular, and it’s also one of those hardest. If you’re a Youtube junkie, you most likely have seen Mario Frustration. The game he plays in that is a hack, and is one of many hard games made for the hardcore computer gamer. Games are made to test skill, and others are just fun with really great stories.

Lastly, and personally this is my favorite hack of all time, and this hack actually answered so many of our prayers as a child. Thanks to hacking, PokeMMO was created, and for those who don’t know what MMO means, all you need to know is this is Pokemon online, where you play, trade, battle other real life people while progressing through the normal Leaf Green story mode.

Emulators have endless abilities, thanks to smart people acting on wishes, whether it be an impossible Mario level, or online Pokemon. This is where I get the most use out of emulators, it’s expanding my gaming horizons and playing hacks that are basically playable fan fiction. Do some research, and download a hack today, they are surprisingly more fun than some of the originals.

Emulating a Childhood (Part 1)

Based on a request, I decided to make another post about emulators, and even though they aren’t retro, you can certainly play retro games with these. So for this post, I’ll give a little info about emulators, and in a later post, the best things to use them for.

Emulators are basically the computer version of a gaming system. You look up an emulator for a system, download it, and you can play that system, with limitations such as multiplayer, on your computer. Then, you look up Rom files for games you want to play.

The most popular emulators and Roms are Game Boy based. The reason for this is because they are the easiest to code. I have yet to see a functioning current gen emulator, and that’s where the retro comes in. Emulators are basically used for the younger generation, like myself, so we can experience games that would cost hundreds of dollars just to find an ancient relic of a system, and most likely a game that is no longer widely sold on the market.

Emulators are technically illegal, and I really strongly suggest buying games, however, in my next post, you’ll see why I am really big on emulators, and the endless possibilities they bring. Emulators made hacks a good thing for gaming.

Gaming History – The First Emulator

Let me start off by saying, I think you should buy games, however for consoles that are not so new, or not so easy to buy, I think emulators can be very useful, and a very fun time, however if possible, do buy the game.

Emulators have actually been around much longer than you, and even I would’ve guessed. Believe it or not, they were around pre-2000s. And the first ones worth mentioning were made by Marat Fayzullin.

The first emulator he released was the Virtual GameBoy, however the first console emulator he released was the iNES, and that’s where the only real history lies.

The first release of iNES and  was in 1996. However, Marat wasn’t the first one to attempt this, as in early years a Alex Krasivsky found the initial coding for the NES and put it online, however he lost interest and Marat took over. At the time of the first release, there was only one working emulator, however it was extremely difficult to use. So iNES became the first program to use the .NES extension and the be able to easily be operated by a non computer expert.

Thanks to people like this, it’s easy to play games that are near non-existent nowadays. It helps the younger generation appreciate games that aren’t available, on systems that are near extinct. If the game is still buyable, by all means go buy it. However if you want to experience something that hasn’t been heard of or played before, and is hard to find, we should all know the pioneer who allowed this to happen, and thank him as well.