Don’t Imitate… Emulate

If you’ve never tried an emulator before, blowing the dust off those old favorites is easier than you’d think. For the majority of emulators, all you require is the main emulation program, the bit that does all the hard work, and some game images (or ROMs) to load into it.

Dedicated emulator sites, run by genuine enthusiasts, are ten-a-penny nowadays, so it’s easy to find a website and download any emulator which takes your fancy (most webmasters tend to do their homework and ensure that the latest versions are available). Emulators vary in size, but can be anywhere from 50k to 500k. The best thing about emulators is the price: they’re completely free.

Game images can be downloaded in a similar fashion, although you’ll probably have to scour the Web for yourself – any emulator site worth its salt won’t include game images with the emulators because of the legal minefield associated with their supply and distribution (more about that later).

Luckily, many sites include links to enthusiast pages which have information on how to build your own transfer cables, and this is by far the best way to obtain images for your emulator, as you’re making a legitimate back-up of your own software rather than an illicit copy of somebody else's.