Emulator

After seeing an old Atari console in an auction house last week, I thought it might be fun to download a game emulator to play some of the old games. Or maybe games of other consoles.

But I have some questions:
1) is this legal?
2) if it is legal, what are some emulators that people can recommend? I don't have any experience with them.

Tasmania Green said:

After seeing an old Atari console in an auction house last week, I thought it might be fun to download a game emulator to play some of the old games. Or maybe games of other consoles.

But I have some questions:
1) is this legal?
2) if it is legal, what are some emulators that people can recommend? I don't have any experience with them.

Click to expand...

Hi Tasmania Green

About 10 years ago I built a Mame cabinet with 10,000 games on it.
It was a whack a mole cabinet that I converted to LCD display
and a Windows 7 PC, with X-Arcade controller, 2 trackballs and more.
I estimated that I could play a new game every day for the next
10 years and still not play them all.

I sold the above cabinet 5 years ago, and now I am playing with
Mame 0.281 from Pleasuredome with 20,000 games available.
I believe the downloads are over 5 terabyte in total, and one
of the downloads took nearly 5 days on an extremely slow link,
even though I have 1G network and Fiber Optic service.
If I recall correctly, you are required to use Torrent.

It is legal as long as you don't receive any money.
Someone still owns the copyrights to these games.

I don't plan to use a cabinet this time as it takes up too much space.
I plan to use my 65" smart TV in the living room, and 'maybe' wireless controllers,
trackballs, lightguns, flightsticks, etc, etc.
Something that will fit on your lap, or connect to a coffee table or similar.

Since this was such a large amount of files, I chose a HDD caddy with a
10 Terabyte HDD, so it can be mobile as well, all I will need is a monitor/screen.
And a portable PC/laptop, as the controllers will be mobile.
So now it will be portable, and I can take anywhere.

Let me say that even though there are 20,000 games, most are playable,
some are bootlegged, foreign language, adult oriented, or not fully operational,
meaning sound or video might be a little screwy, for the most part, you will
never ever play them all.

The PC that you use does not have to be a gaming rig, it doesn't need a lot
of computing power to play any of these games, a moth-balled PC would probably do
just fine for most games.

You can also add ROM's of your choosing to Mame to see if they will work.
Mame emulates many of the arcade classics.
I'll try to locate a pic of my converted whack a mole cabinet and post it later.

FYI, I was a northern California Technician for the Gaming industry
for 5 years, and then I went on to repair flight simulators for
the National Guard, so I do have a little bit of experience in the field.

Regards
RoyM

Happy Gaming.

Another option is the EXO series: DOS, Windows, and others. I have the EXODOS and EXOWin31 collections and they're massive. A TON of games, magazines, and other items for games as far back as 1985.

RoyM said:

Hi Tasmania Green

About 10 years ago I built a Mame cabinet with 10,000 games on it.
It was a whack a mole cabinet that I converted to LCD display
and a Windows 7 PC, with X-Arcade controller, 2 trackballs and more.
I estimated that I could play a new game every day for the next
10 years and still not play them all.

I sold the above cabinet 5 years ago, and now I am playing with
Mame 0.281 from Pleasuredome with 20,000 games available.
I believe the downloads are over 5 terabyte in total, and one
of the downloads took nearly 5 days on an extremely slow link,
even though I have 1G network and Fiber Optic service.
If I recall correctly, you are required to use Torrent.

It is legal as long as you don't receive any money.
Someone still owns the copyrights to these games.

I don't plan to use a cabinet this time as it takes up too much space.
I plan to use my 65" smart TV in the living room, and 'maybe' wireless controllers,
trackballs, lightguns, flightsticks, etc, etc.
Something that will fit on your lap, or connect to a coffee table or similar.

Since this was such a large amount of files, I chose a HDD caddy with a
10 Terabyte HDD, so it can be mobile as well, all I will need is a monitor/screen.
And a portable PC/laptop, as the controllers will be mobile.
So now it will be portable, and I can take anywhere.

Let me say that even though there are 20,000 games, most are playable,
some are bootlegged, foreign language, adult oriented, or not fully operational,
meaning sound or video might be a little screwy, for the most part, you will
never ever play them all.

The PC that you use does not have to be a gaming rig, it doesn't need a lot
of computing power to play any of these games, a moth-balled PC would probably do
just fine for most games.

You can also add ROM's of your choosing to Mame to see if they will work.
Mame emulates many of the arcade classics.
I'll try to locate a pic of my converted whack a mole cabinet and post it later.

FYI, I was a northern California Technician for the Gaming industry
for 5 years, and then I went on to repair flight simulators for
the National Guard, so I do have a little bit of experience in the field.

Regards
RoyM

Happy Gaming.

Click to expand...

Hi Roy,

Yeah, I'd say you have some experience with gaming. lol. I'll look into those. Thanks for the heads up.

Cheers,
Mike

converted whack a mole cabinet pic as promised attached.
Sorry it's not the best quality pic.
Regards
RoyM

RoyM said:

converted whack a mole cabinet pic as promised attached.
Sorry it's not the best quality pic.
Regards
RoyM

Click to expand...

Looks pretty cool Retro-vibe with modern tech.