 NINTENDO
ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM
In the first part of the 80's, many people thought
of video games as
a fad. When the video game trend slowly started fading away, Nintendo
chose
to call its new console an 'entertainment system' and not a video game
system. At the time, Nintendo was a relatively small company so they
actually
approached Atari to help them market and distribute their new system.
But
Atari's executives felt the NES had no real future. The Nintendo
Entertainment
System came out in Japan in 1984 around the same time that
Colecovision,
Atari 5200, and Vectrex appeared. But the NES did not come to the USA
until
1986. With raster (sprite) based graphics and a higher output
resolution
which surpasses the blocky graphics of systems like the Atari 2600, its
popularity lasted over 10 years.
In the early 90's, the NES was redesigned. It had
a sleek new design
with a SNES look and it included more conformable controllers, thanks
to
its a rounded edges. The NES's popularity pretty much died in the mid
1990's
due to the arrival of better units. But its imprint on the gaming
community
will not vanish anytime soon. Powered by many great games like Super
Mario
Bros, Double Dribble, The Legend of Zelda and Mike Tyson's Punchout,
the
NES is perhaps the most popular console system of all-time.
Source:
Destination Emulation. NES section under Game Menu/Consoles/Nintendo.
FCE Ultra : Homepage
: DOS/Linux/Windows/Pocket PC
This is by far the best NES emulator I have ever
run across.
Out of the 700+ NES ROMs I have, there are only about 7 which do not
run
correctly on FCE Ultra! Its a hell of an emulator and new versions are
always being created. This is the way emulators should be, fully
compatible
with most games, great sound, and with full power pad and zapper
support.
You can log the sound to a file, snap a screen shot, emulate the Game
Genie,
even play over a network with your friends! The newest version can be
downloaded from the FCE Ultra homepage. If you use the Windows version,
be sure you have installed the latest version of DirectX (available at Download.com)
before you play. Download this first and foremost for your NES needs.
|
RockNES
: Homepage
: DOS/Windows
RockNES is another great emulator most notably because of its front-end
and hardware support. Its one of the few emulators that can make use of
your computers 3D accelerator card. Why? I really don't know, but hey
its
cool :) Ever wondered what the original Mario looks like with
anti-aliasing?
Well now you can find out. RockNES also provides a good front-end which
tells you what ROMs you have in a specified directory, their mapper,
size,
if they support a battery, etc. You can also play over a network with
its
built in "NetPlay", but I found it somewhat lacking in the stability
field.
Another nice feature is the ability to capture screen shots and even
movies
of NES ROMs. RockNES is a good emulator to try out if you don't like
FCE
Ultra or want to play with your 3D hardware.
|
NESticle
: Homepage?? : Windows
and DOS Version .42
What can you say about an emulator named "NESticle" and whose author
is listed as "the fecal-lord". Actually NESticle was the first NES
emulator
to really catch on and is still nice to have around. It has a lot of
the
common options like screen captures and net play, but also includes
other
features like the ability to capture movies from your NES ROMs and to
chat
with people who your playing over a network. Of the 700+ ROMs I have,
only
about 7 of them wouldn't run on FCE Ultra or RockNES, yet those 7
seemed
to run fairly well on NESticle. I guess this emulator still has reason
to stick around. I don't know if the author of NESticle still has a
homepage
or not because I failed to find it. Also, updates to NESticle are slim
to none, so it looks like version .42 will be the last. There is a
version
.43 out there, but it lacks network play and seems a bit sluggish, so I
think its best to use .42 |
C
P
U
J
U
N
K
Y
.
C
O
M ®
© 2001-2006
All trademarks and company logos are copyright of their respective
owners
Privacy
Statement
|
