Gaming Hacks

Legal Emulation

The whole issue of emulation is very thorny, not least because a great deal of the work done under emulation is somewhat less than legal, if sometimes tolerated. The user may not own the ROMs he is playing. Even if he does own them, it’s unclear whether he can legally transfer them between media to play them.

I won’t point a finger and disclaim loudly that you’re bad for using emulators and must go to jail without passing Go or collecting 200 dollars. I also won’t pass definitive judgments on legality, either. I will point to a few resources I believe are legal with regard to emulation.

Homebrew and Freely Distributable Games

You’ll find constant references to homebrew games in this book, sometimes running on the hardware themselves. As a rule of thumb, if someone has gone to the trouble of creating homebrew games that work on a specific console, PC variant, or handheld, they will work on the emulated version of that system as well. In that case, you need to find the correct emulator and then download the homebrew ROM to play.

If you’re looking for a general source for freely distributable games for multiple systems, even those not covered in detail in this book, the best console source is the PDRoms (http://www.pdroms.de/) site. It features over 1,700 ROMs of various kinds for over 20 different computers and consoles.

Often, hackers with particularly detailed knowledge of an individual computer host specific pages showcasing their wares. For example, The Amiga Legal ...