Emulators
I spent a good portion of my childhood playing video games. Those games all were on game consoles like NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis. I discovered emulators in the late 1990s and fell in love with those old games again. An emulator runs software, i.e. games, for a completely different system. There are emulators for almost every game console and computer system ever made, and almost all of them are free.
The legality of emulators has always been a big debate. For the most part, if you own the physical game, then it is perfectly legal to have a backup copy on your computer. The legality of the actual emulator is a bit more complicated. Most emulators were written from the released specs of the system and the trial and error method of getting games to work.
Emulators are illegal if they reverse engineer the system software, called the BIOS, that runs on the gaming console. There are other aspects of emulators that may or may not be legal. I am not an authority in these aspects, so I won’t go into it here. My best advice is to contact a lawyer if you feel that something isn’t completely legal.
The games that you own can be easily downloaded using a P2P file sharing program. Again, it is perfectly legal to have a backup copy of anything that you own, so downloading this stuff won’t get you into trouble.
If you’re ready to start enjoying the games of yester-year, hop over to Google.com and search of SNES emulators, or whatever console you want. Just remember that neither I, nor this site, take any responsibility for your actions what so ever.
