Emulation has been in the news recently.
Several game companies have been complaining about the
availibility of their old games. You can download the
games for free (unless you count 1 MB+ download times as
a cost). There are no checks to make sure you download
only games that you own. So obviously this would pose a
major problem to the companies in loss of sales.
Fortunately for gamers (and unfortunately for gaming companies),
many sites on the internet have not discontinued downloads of
the ROMS, and a others have
only discontinued donwloads of games still being sold.
This means that there is a very large number of older
games, including games from SNES, NES, Gameboy, and Sega
Genesis.
According to the websites where I have
read about this, downloading these ROM images (the games)
is perfectly legal as long as your own the game. So
legally, it provides a good way to play your old games if
your systems don't work or if you would enjoy the
features in the emulators (such as saving anytime). If
you download a ROM you do not own, you may only keep it
for 24 hours, and then you must delete it from your
computer. I'm not sure about the first rule, but the second
one is not actually legal.
The emulator can also
play games that were released only in Japan. Some of
these have even been translated to english!
As I have stated, these emulators have
several worthwile features for the avid game player.
Probably the best feature would be the ability to save a
game at any time. No more starting a level from the
beginning! Another cool feature in some emulators is a
built-in Game Genie code system. Unlike the actual Game
Genie, it can enter in as many codes as needed (only 5
could be entered on SNES) and keeps the codes in a
separate file for later use.
I would definitely recommend downloading
an emulator and some games. They will allow you to play
many older games no longer available and to play games which
never made it to the states.