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Software you'll need

If I go to a ROM site and download a ROM of a game I own, then I didn't make the backup copy. Is it necessary that I make the backup copy myself?
AFAIK you do have to make it yourself. I understand the rule used to be you had to own the game, or delete the copy within 24hours. ROM sites posted that all over like it was bible. Then a few years ago that message dissapeared from everywhere. I am just making an informed guess.

Second point is that the copy I made is for backup purposes. Even if you allow me that getting a backup copy from a ROM site is ok, then I cannot use it until my original fails. So emulation, while I still have an original working copy, appears to be prohibited.
Emulation has legal uses, such as homebrew. Just check all the legal, public domain, homebrew games available at Zophar. Although I do realize you probably just mean 'Emulation of the backup', but the wording was a little off. ;)

As for the rest of your questions, clear as mud here. Not even informed guesses on this side.

I would actually pay for a reliable emulator with reliable ROMs. On several occasions I've poked around the net attempting to find a nice reliable emulator for SNES, 64, PS, and such and reliable ROMs. But there has always been either performance issues, why does the original Zelda lag on my 2.2ghz PC, or compatability issues.

Because you are a dipshit?

http://www.zophar.net/

You can find soundtracks extracted from SNES games at zophar.net. These are the raw spc files extracted from the roms, they sound exactly like the SNES music digitizer output.

http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Players are here (get the winamp pluging):

http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html

Be sure to check out Final Fantasy III (6 Japan) and Chrono Trigger.

You can find soundtracks extracted from SNES games at zophar.net. These are the raw spc files extracted from the roms, they sound exactly like the SNES music digitizer output.

http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Players are here (get the winamp pluging):

http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html

Be sure to check out Final Fantasy III (6 Japan) and Chrono Trigger.

Yes, SNESAmp (a .spc player) supports turning off each of the 8 Super NES DSP channels.

Or you can just rip all of a ROM's samples in one go with Snessor, available here.

I'm sure some people know about listening to old videogame software without out this hardware hack. You won't be as leet as this guy, but you can still enjoy the music.

You can find a player at http://www.zophar.net/utilities/music.html, a huge archive for just about every platform.

After you get a player for your choosen platform, you can click through to a song database. For example, here are the SNES songs available: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Have fun.

I'm sure some people know about listening to old videogame software without out this hardware hack. You won't be as leet as this guy, but you can still enjoy the music.

You can find a player at http://www.zophar.net/utilities/music.html, a huge archive for just about every platform.

After you get a player for your choosen platform, you can click through to a song database. For example, here are the SNES songs available: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Have fun.

Oops, that should have read "Fighting Golf". And there is a sound, check out track 35 in this NSF file. It's not as funny as it's not preceded by light jazzy music, though. It makes for the humorous anticlimax that is missing the ball in a golf video game.

The kids and their pot-smoking habits these days...

Some of them must be mods. My Mario jump comment got modded troll for some reason. I should really change my sig if that's the cause.

The Flash Cart that I linked to was just released this year. It doesn't have these co-processors built in, but you can buy an add on "T-connector" that lets you plug the flash cart and a real SNES cart containing the DSP co-processor used in many SNES games. There are other special co-processor types that some games use and can't be used with the aformentioned flash cart or copiers. However, these games are in such small numbers... less than 1% of all SNES games, that you can just buy the ones that you want to play, but can't get to work with your Flash cart or copier.

The most commonly used co-processor for SNES games is called the "DSP chip", and it is used in games such as Super Mario Kart, Pilot Wings, F-Zero, etc. The DSP chip is built in to many copiers, and many that don't have a built in DSP chip provide some kind of "piggy-back" solution.

The SNES is a great system for RPGs, fighting games, etc. I personally love fan improvements/translations to some of the SNES RPGs, such as the english translation of the and also the improved translation of the original Secret of Mana... as well as the english translation of Final Fantasy 5, the improved translation of Final Fantasy 2, which includes removed scenes from the original.... ...ahh, gotta love my SNES. Right now I have both a SNES flash cart and the Game Doctor SF7 copier plugged into my SNES. Tons of great gaming.

I know others have mentioned it in this thread, but do have a look at OCRemix.org and VGMix.com. Both have some very nice remixes of FF music. (OCRemix even has a remix of the FF6 theme in homage to Uematsu from Jeremy Soule, composer for quite a few recent games.) Finally, for the original stuff, I'd suggest having a look at Zophar's Domain. One of the reasons I still use WinAmp and not iTunes or such is for the SNESAmp plugin to play the SNES SPC files.

Nah, he's just not a fan of NSFs.

Try here: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Then go here for the Winamp SPC plugin: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html

Try here: http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/

Then go here for the Winamp SPC plugin: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/spc.html

It's not like this was the first Atari ST emulator ever. It's a port for crying out loud.

When I am thinking of games of old, I can find you examples of both electronical music and orchestral music used to greatly enliven the atmosphere. That is, even then there were two approaches (Im speaking about the pc games of the beginning of 90s).

Anyone remembers Betrayal at Krondor? The cd version with awesome music? Thats one of the best examples of 'old school' archestral pieces that is far above a lot of I ever heard in a game (the floppy version has music that is not as good, but on other hand it does not have a full cd for music).

On other hand, I have to do the obligatory StarControl plug (and not to forget Ur-Quan Masters, remake with cool remixed music). Thats one of the better examples of the really good electro music.

Still, there are very good pieces in both old arcade, nes, genesis games and such like. Get the NSF Winamp plugins, and you can listen to the really cool sound of old nes games. Do a google search on NSF files, and there are quite a few places where you can get them. My very personal favorite is music Dragon Fighter.

Hmm, too bad that I have to get back to work. There's still a lot of ground to be covered. It is so unfortunate, that Soviet Russia started with Speccy and did not have anything before it. So many great games that we (russians) did not get to play. :>

In short, don't insult a scene because you use it to play free games and expect them to run perfectly without any contribution. Emulation is about learning. It is not about getting things for free.

Me and my cohorts at S+F Software are getting a game published via the Goat Store, if they can get the pressing details worked out. It's a addictive four player puzzle game called Inhabitants, also available on Lik-Sang

The nice thing about the DC is that it is quite easy to code for using open tools. The KallistOS library gives you easy access to the hardware. It even has a openGL library that does a decent job for simple 3d stuff, and a badass object oriented 2d library.

There's plenty of emulators available for the not-so-dead dreamcast
http://www.zophar.net/consoles/dreamcast.html

that's okay, because if you don't like using XMESS, here's a few other NES emulators:

FCE Ultra
NEStopia
VirtuaNES
FakeNES
TuxNES
Nesti cle
NESten
iNes
FWnes
Famtasia

these are just the ones I could name off the top of my head. I'm sure one will work. in any OS you'd like, in fact.

XMESS is going to for complete accuracy over speed. unfortunately, accuracy depends on the skills of the developers, not to mention free time and motivation.

there are good emulators for just about every system, on every OS. this is not an issue. check out Zophar's Domain for a list of good emulators for every system.

NESten, maybe? FCE Ultra? Nesticle is way old, and is not really recommended as far better emulators have eventually come out. Though even the NESten creator admits it's not perfect; "nesten" means "almost" in Norwegian. One emulator, however, Nestopia, is pretty much perfect, though. So perfect it won't run smoothly on iBook. Zophar's Domain has a huge archive of emulators for all systems. Highly recommended. For emulation on a Mac, though, EmuScene has more information.

For someone looking for pure Nintendo music, try here. A small Winamp plugin and you'll be listening to 'authentic' 8-bit NES music in no time. I recommend Solar Jetman, Faxanadu, Castlevanias, and Mega Mans, as a start. BTW, if anyone has better resources for ripping NSFs than the link, please let me know. I've been trying to rip a few but the instructions/tutorial on that page are unusable to me.

Yeah, that's nifty, but where's my original games? Is this the best that they can do?

SNES

Super Game Boy.

SMS: First gen.
Genesis: Not backward compatible.

As others have pointed out, it appears you never owned a Power Base Converter, which plugged into the Genesis and had a slot for Sega Master System, much like Super Game Boy or 32X. You also missed the following:

• Game Boy Color (plays Game Boy games)
• Game Boy Advance (plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, as well as a load of emulated titles)
• GameCube (Game Boy Player accessory, bundled with the system for a while, plays all GBA compatible games except for Majesco's GBA Video titles, which crash on purpose on Game Boy Player because the owners of copyright in the original audiovisual works objected to the limitation that the Cube cannot output Macrovision encoding)

This sounds similar in spirit to what emulator and video game fans have been doing for years, only the video game translations are legal.

In the post-Atari era (but before the PSX started making it big), an American-made video game was a rare and often horrible occurance. The only way the video games got translated for release over here was if the company thought that it would make a profit on the game and if it fit an "American" audience, which excluded almost all role-playing games.

Once emulation of the SNES became feasible, dedicated bi-lingual fans began translating the games by themselves or in teams and provided binary patches against the non-translated versions of the ROMs. This can't be compared in any way to open source, as another poster compared the translated manga, because almost none of the translators ever released any of the tools or documents that they used in the translation.

Video game translation is still a thriving community today and is one of the best ways to experience some of the greatest games that never saw the light of day on these shores.

Assuming there are emulators for Linux

http://www.zophar.net/unix/unix.phtml

The GG also had a better speaker.

I've heard the Game Gear's speaker, and it's not all that good. Reading the specs, I discover that its tone generators can generate only 1/2 duty pulse waves, not 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and arbitrary waveforms like the Game Boy could. In addition, the Game Boy's tone generators could go nearly an octave lower. Plug in headphones and listen to the soundtrack of, say, Zoop or any Mortal Kombat game for each system, and you'll notice that the Game Boy version's instruments sound marginally more differentiated.

It could play every Sega Master System game with an adapter.

That was good for its time. But now the Game Gear Advance can play Sega Master System games as well, not to mention NES games. (Yes, I'm calling the GBA the Game Gear Advance because it's the handheld that Sega develops for now.)

Some tools here might help fix that. Try Mo'Slo or Bremze. This would keep you from having to deal with the old hardware, nice when your 486 dies and you can't replace the dead component.

The GBA isnt _that_ difficult to code for, is it?

Why couldnt scummVM be ported to gba?

According to zophar's gameboy page there are lots of nifty emulators for gba already.

Sierra's AGI, NES, SMS, SNES (!), tg16, and even spectrum.

While I would like to see more oldschool PC games ported to gba, I certainly wouldnt put this in a crisis situation. There are some pretty good alternatives.

I partly understand the underlying matters behind this issue, and you are always allowed to make a back-up copy of anything you buy as long as making the copy doesn't circumvent any copy-protection, doesn't break other laws AND ... (This is the important part) YOU are the only one who uses it. period. No one else may use something you backed up from a copy-written work. Following with this, I believe no one else is allowed to make a back-up for you, nor are you allowed to obtain a copy of a back-up someone made of the work even if you own the a copy of the original.

I was shown an interesting essay a while back on this particular topic, so here it is:

The Question of ROMs

I don't think there are any freeware Game Boy Advance games in circulation yet.
Think again.

...for the serious geek that delights in these sorts of novelties: If you haven't already, grab a copy of MetEdit. (It's a decent Metroid{NES} editor. Zophar's Domain should have it.) Read through the guy's help/faq file or just look at the map... There are actually some rooms in the game that you can't get to! (I think the devs forgot to add connecting hallways and later forgot about the rooms altogether?) It's seriously such a strange thing to discover like 15 years later! The author also solves a few other mysteries, like the wacky alternate worlds you can get to using that wacky up & down door method.

I don't think DuckMan was saying that the x86 based OS's should be running natively. I think he was referring to something more like: "if you are going to have a list of Powerbook OS's then the list should contain only ones that run natively." I agree with him about the cheating. If emulation is OK for the list - then why didn't the author run as many MAC emulated OS's as possible as well as any additional Windows ones? There was an article recently on Slashdot about replacing a TI calculator OS with an open source one - so don't forget calculator OS's in the list either.

I don't think DuckMan was saying that the x86 based OS's should be running natively. I think he was referring to something more like: "if you are going to have a list of Powerbook OS's then the list should contain only ones that run natively." I agree with him about the cheating. If emulation is OK for the list - then why didn't the author run as many MAC emulated OS's as possible as well as any additional Windows ones? There was an article recently on Slashdot about replacing a TI calculator OS with an open source one - so don't forget calculator OS's in the list either.

[Karma Whore]

DemiForce Final Fantasy (and other) translations, or, for other games/parties, why not try Zophar's collection of translations?

[/Karma Whore]

Yes. Many have. Off the top of my head, the following platforms are emulated on the GBA:

Gameboy (oddly)
NES
Sega Master System
PC Engine
Spectrum
Atari 2600

As for MAME, a direct port is pretty unlikely, as, based on the existing population of emulators (and my own experiences), it's necessary to write in pure ARM assembler to achieve reasonable frame rates, as it has a measily 16mhz ARM7TDMI in it.

Anyway, you can go here for links to various GBA emulators.

Talking of games with a long life due to mods...look at Super Mario Bros....There are at least 70 (I counted 74...) hacks of it (the ROM image, that is) available at Zophar's Domain! Some of which featuring: Final Fantasy 1's Black Mage, Spiderman baddies, Link, and drunk russian Mario!

I've already done that, it's easy..

See here...

Having the machine would be really cool, but you can emulate the Apple I right now if you like.

Java Apple I emulator.

Other Apple I emulators for Windows and Macintosh.

I'm just about to give them a try. Can't find anything for Linux or UNIX though :-(

No you don't. Go get an emulator. I recommend Zophar's Domain as a portal for all your emulation needs. You could be playing Oregon Trail right now.

Emulation is not illegal, nor is reverse engineering a game engine. Freecraft required you to use the graphics from the Warcraft 2 cd, or the free graphics set. There was nothing illegal about it.

Writing an emulator for any system is not illegal, no matter what the game companies want to make you think. Look at sites like Zophar's Domain for a list of emulation projects out there.

...90% of hardware improvements are essentially wasted by programmer inefficiency.

Look at those amazing 4K demos that people did (and stll do) for DOS. People are doing wild stuff here-- things like real-time pseudo-3D rendering, fractals, you name it-- all inside of 4 kilobytes of code. And most of these demos will run just as well on a '286 or (at most) '386 than today's space-heater chips.

Contiki is a lovely example of what can be done with efficient coding. In my experience, this sort of efficiency is NEVER achieved today in "commercial" projects or even in OSS/FS code-- people never even come close. The only areas of computing which have seen significant improvements (I don't just mean "more widgets" or "better interfaces" (the latter has nothing to do with hardware improvements, so don't even mention it)) in recent years have been:

* Gaming (perhaps the only area where efficiency is even SOMEWHAT appreciated, as it leads to higher FPS)
* Rendering (ditto)
* Real-time scientific simulations

In 1980, I could flip on an Apple II and have a usable prompt inside of a second or two. Nowadays, even with a screamin' P4 or Duron will get you a 30-second startup time-- if you're lucky. That's just to boot up the OS. Wanna start a word processor? That'll take even longer.

If you want to get a sense of what MY expectations were that were shattered, go grab a good Apple II emulator and some appropriate software and fire the emulator up. Make sure that it's running at the full possible speed-- not "compatible" speed (which is 1.02MHz, if I remember correctly). Look at how fast stuff runs... and that's in emulation. Sure, there's no fancy GUI, there's no clippy, whatever you think "modern" OSes have to have... but the point is that even in emulation, old stuff runs REALLY, REALLY FAST. If the same mentality of "efficiency is everything" that was necessary during the days of limited hardware power was voluntarily adopted today... well... imagine Windows XP starting up in one second (and not crashing). Imagine being able to swap cool new games on floppy disks. Imagine most games being distributed on Mini CDs, even those with lots of videos and speech, since a full (650-700MB) CD would be overkill for them.

Then wake up and realize it's time to go buy some more RAM again... ho hum...BillG just raised the bar on hardware requirements. Back to the treadmill we go...

I know about the PS1 adapter; I currently use an EMS USB2 adapter. However, I also mentioned Super NES controllers. Can you provide a link to an adapter that turns a Super NES controller, or any of the dozen or so other models supported by DirectPad and NTPad, into a USB HID joypad?

However, your USB to parallel solution may not work well for the MBV2 cable that connects a PC's parallel port to a GBA's link port. Does this cable have a USB equivalent?

Check out some of the more known sites about Emulating and roms like zophar's domain and cherryroms. On ebay you might be able to get such a backup tool.

But I'll probably be sticking with Tile Layer (found here). It was good enough for me in high school and it still does the job today.

Nesticle allowed you to edit the tiles WAY back in 98. I had lots of fun back then, editing my old NES games to do goofy things like have the guys in Kung Fu throw spoons at you.
I'd give Nesticle a look.
It may be considered outdated as a dos app'. But it's still the original king.

Why do I have the distinct feeling that, in the not-so-distant future, most companies will receive their funding from anonymous people in brown paper bags left on the street corner...the funds in small denominations, unmarked, and non-sequential serial numbers.

Trust me...the day I win Powerball several organizations are going to receive anonymous donations.

Seriously: "GBonGBA v0.4 01/12/03 - As weird as it sounds, this is a GameBoy emulator for the GameBoy Advance. It allows you to play GameBoy roms on your GameBoy Advance without the use of a GB Bridge."

It's quite playable, although some of item names and such are still scrambled, at least in the version I downloaded a while ago. You can get the original Japanese rom from Cherryroms and the patch from Zophar's Domain I'm honestly not sure whether or not that's the most current version, but like you said, Dejap's down at the moment. Personally, I think it's worth downloading for the cheesy Star Trek rip-off in the intro alone...