New to the game...

[digitalbuddha48]

Before starting with this whole emulating thing I was just curious of how well it works and whether or not it's worth. Also, I am completely new to this so I would appreciate any kind of intro to emulating or the concept in general. Thanks in advance for your help!

[Jale]

Welcome to the board. Before going in, you must know some important facts about emulation.

• Old school systems such as NES, SNES and Sega Genesis work perfectly.
• Nintendo 64 and PlayStation work almost perfectly (minor graphics bugs, some games not working, etc).
• The past-gen (now) systems such as GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox are almost non-playable (very slow, glitchy, many games not supported), with the exception of Dreamcast. Dreamcast emulators have made a big improvement nowadays.
• Of course, current-gen systems such as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii are not emulated yet.
• Current handheld devices such as Nintendo DS and PSP are under development. Months ago it couldn't run any game. Now they run some at an acceptable speed.
• ROMs/ISOs are dumps of games from their media (CD, DVD and cartridges). We offer support in how to use emulators, but we NEVER offer ROMs, ISOs, etc, because they're copyrighted material. In other words, downloading ROMs and ISOs from the net is ILLEGAL.
  Some emulators such as PlayStation and Dreamcast require a BIOS file in order to work and they can be found on the net. The rules for this are the same as ROMs, they're copyrighted.

[digitalbuddha48]

Thanks... I was actually more curious about arcade games...some of my favorites that I've always wanted to have and I see this as a way of getting them. In regards to that, is there any online intro to how to start and/or use emulators (BTW I really appreciate the tips Butters!)

[alcoatjez]

@Butters: Nice summary

@digitalbuddha48: Check easyEmu for more info and some nice tutorials.

[digitalbuddha48]

Much appreciated