I was walking though my local Target this morning and it hit me. I remembered an article I’d read the other day that said Target has the new NES classic in stock now. I rush over to the electronics department, dragging my 5-year-old-son behind me and…
Sold out!
Aw man. I really wanted to check it out. To be honest, I wasn’t really going to buy one anyway because I still play my favorite classic NES games on emulators.
I’m still excited about with the new NES classic and the recent revival of ‘retro gaming’, though. There are a lot of great games from that system that are still as fun today as they were then. Classic. Yes, they use 8-bit graphics, have limited sound and music, and don’t have elaborate cinematic cut scenes or even age ratings. Yet, they’re still around because they’re simple easy to learn. And they’re just a lot of fun to play.
I still have the NES my parents bought me in 1988 and guess what? It works. I used to bring it out and play Super Mario Bros with my sons. Now with the magic of emulation, and newer, smaller, higher-powered computer systems, we can play the games I enjoyed as a kid. My NES, SNES, Atari, Sega, and PlayStation favorites all on one computer that is smaller than an NES game cartridge.
That’s right. I’ve taken my new Raspberry Pi 3 and loaded it full of these retro games. Well, they weren’t retro when I first played them.
Watch my retro gaming intro and short demo on YouTube! You’ll want to see just how cool this really is!
How I Pulled It Off
If you’re wondering how I pulled off this cool, little solution, here’s how:
Hardware
I’m using my new Rasbery Pi 3. I’ve recently picked up a Rasberry Pi 3 starter kit from Amazon along with a couple of gamepads.
Software
On my Pi 3, I use BerryBoot to install and boot into RetroPie.RetroPie is an all in one type package which includes Emulation Station and RetroArch. These software programs all work together to display an attractive user interface which makes it easy to switch between different game consoles using just a gamepad.
Berry Boot
You can download and read how to install berry boot at https://sourceforge.net/projects/berryboot/.
RetroPie
You can learn about RetroPie at https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation.
And download it for Berry Boot at https://retropie.org.uk/download/.
It takes a little time to set up and to load your games, but in the end it’s a very easy to use system.
What about the games?
The games come as files which are often called ROMs. These ROMs contain software that is extracted from the Read-Only-Memory (ROM) included in the game cartridges. These ROM files can be found by searching on the internet. I won’t link to any here for legal reasons.
Legality is the caveat to downloading and running ROMs in an emulator. From what I’ve found the rules seem to be as follows: You can download and use a ROM as long as you own the physical media. *It is, apparently, legal to own a software backup of your physical media. Meaning if you want to legally play Super Mario Bros 3 on an emulator, you have to own the game cartridge.
*Please do not misconstrue any information included in this paragraph as legal advice. If you are uncertain as to whether or not you can run your games in an emulator, contact the company or contact your legal counsel.
What do you guys think? There are so many possibilities with today’s hardware running yesterday’s software. If you decide to give this a try for yourself, please let is know how it goes. Or, if you are already running an emulator system, let us know how you do it.
Happy gaming!
Aaron
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