Play Home Design Games On Pc

Play Retro Games on Your Modern PC

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There has never been a better time for vintage gaming. For those of us who remember what games were like 10, 20, or even 30 years ago, the Internet has provided us with riches beyond belief. Remember when you had to stand in line just to play the latest arcade game? What about waiting months for a home version for the Atari 2600 or ColecoVision, only to find it was a pale imitation of the real thing? Remember how you didn't care, and that you played it for hours and hours anyway?

It turns out you can relive virtually all of it—or experience it for the first time, if you want to see for yourself how the game industry unfolded. That's not an insignificant thing, especially when you consider the now well-known issues surrounding historical video game preservation.

It's true that most veteran gamers have long since moved on to newer fare like StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Madden '11, and Mass Effect 2. Today, there are lots of terrific games to play. The best have stellar graphics, amazing musical scores, and captivating stories. Some even have retro-inspired game play, which makes putting up with 1980s-era graphics and balky user interfaces seem pointless. But for many of us, only the originals can satisfy.

To that end, using just a Windows PC, we'll show you how to emulate vintage machines of all the major types: 8-bit and 16-bit home computers, 8-bit and 16-bit video game consoles, arcade games, and older DOS and Windows 95–compatible PC titles. You're bound to find true gaming goodness, no matter where your loyalties lie. We'll also include some discussion of peripherals and controllers, all of which have changed over the last 10 years. Finally, we'll conclude with some details on a few treasured books that truly capture the glory of the vintage gaming scene.

Note that not everything is free for the taking. Some games, including those from Sierra and BioWare, are available legally only as part of collections. Others are mired in that grey area of quasi-legal status, where it's okay to play the games for research purposes if you have the original hardware, but not otherwise. We can't point anyone to sites that contain ROM images for legal reasons.

One other tip before we get started: While we'll give specific examples of emulators that worked well for us, as a general rule, you'll want to look for software that has been updated relatively recently. That's a good sign that you'll have no problem running that particular emulator in Windows 7.

The best part? There's so much out there now since the last time we looked, about so many machines, that it blew our minds while researching this article. It's going to be a whirlwind. Hang on tight, take some notes, and start your downloading. Continued…

Play Retro Games on Your Modern PC - Karateka