Emulation Station

A lot of us, myself included, grew up with the sights and sounds of certain video games being ubiquitous. The “waka-waka” of Pac-Man, Tetris’s definitive theme music, or guiding Link through another adventure in Hyrule. Most of us, whether we’ve grown out of it or not, can look back fondly at times we’ve spent borderline-unhealthy lengths of time gripping a controller. Nowadays, video games are a very different experience, and typically a far cry from the simplicity of the ones from our youth. What if there was a way to recapture those feelings from simpler times? Is it even possible, or are we simply clouded by nostalgia?

When your once favorite games are retired to history, and the consoles on which you played them are now collecting dust in an attic, there are ways to revisit them in an attempt to once more enjoy the feelings they gave us in yesteryears. With modern hardware, you’re able to trick older games into thinking they’re being played on their native platforms; we call this technique “emulation.” While the process for emulating old consoles has gotten much easier in recent years, there are still some steps to take, both from a setup and rather surprisingly, a legal standpoint.

By far the easiest and most accessible way of emulating older games is by using commercial solutions offered on existing consoles. While the Xbox, Playstation and PC will offer “remasters” of old favorites, the Nintendo Switch leads the charge in worry-free emulation. You can emulate the NES, SNES, N64 and surprisingly, the Sega Genesis systems, right there on your Switch with properly mapped controls, on your modern television, in your modern living room. Some of these hundreds of games are sure to bring back memories of being huddled around a CRT television, furiously mashing buttons. It’s these games though which actually present the legal challenge.

To emulate an old game, you need two things. One is the emulator; this could be dedicated hardware, or software running on another system. The second, is the game itself. This represents a problem, as what if you’re trying to emulate a game which originally came on a proprietary cartridge, like that of an N64? In this situation, you’d need to use a copy, or image of the game and this is called a “ROM.” It’s these ROMs, which are illegal in most cases. Games publishers allow you to create a ROM from a game you already own, but this is often impossible for the average user. After all, it’s not like you can easily plug that N64 cartridge into your computer to read it.

Instead, the easiest way to obtain these ROMS of your old games is to download them from online repositories. While nobody has, at the time of writing, ever faced prosecution for it, this process is technically copyright theft. Being that this creates a legal grey area, the sites offering downloads of this type can be a bit of a minefield for nefarious software. It’s a tough situation for those simply trying to recapture the games of their youth, but can be rewarding for those with the time and inclination to properly research. Winter’s still upon us though, so perhaps revisiting an old, pixelated adventure is an excellent use of a cold afternoon.