- Emulation: All You Need to Know -   Version 1.0

:An Idiot-Proof Guide:


Table of Contents
 I. Emulators
  - What They Are
  - How to Use Them
  - Which Systems are Emulated
 II. Roms
  - What They Are
  - How to Use Them
  - Legal Issues
 III. What You Need
  - Compression/Decompression
  - Programs
 IV. Note
  - About this Faq



.Section I: Emulators.

|What They Are|
 As we all know, the video game industry has been around a while
 and because technology improves frequently so must this industry.
 At any rate, the consoles that play these video games have been
 translated to the computer medium by the means of emulation.  To
 put it simply, the emulator programs pretend to be the Nintendo,
 Gameboy, or whatever on your computer.  In essence, an emulator
 acts as the hardware for the given console and translates the 
 games being played into terms your computer's hardware can under-
 stand.  The games that emulators can play on your computer are
 dubbed roms, which i will get into later.

|How to Use Them|
 Well, you use them like you would any other program, to put it
 frankly.  Of course, if you have a mac, you wouldn't be able an
 emulator that was coded for a windows PC, so it is important to 
 get an emulator that is for your OS of choice.  Inside most every
 emulator there should be an option to Load a game.  Obviously, that
 is what you want to do to play a game.  If you want more information
 about a specific emulator you should go to their website.  As a note,
 if you are running Windows, you can also play Dos based emulators
 through windows.  Sometimes it helps to do a Restart in Dos mode under
 shutdown though if you choose to use a Dos emulator.

|Which Systems are Emulated|
 Nearly every system is or is currently in the progress of being 
 emulated.  Everything from Atari to Dreamcast.  Not to mention some
 old computers like Commodore 64's and arcade game machines.  I don't
 know much about such emulators, as I've never delved into those re-
 cesses of the emulation industry.  I rarely even play Nintendo games 
 except for the purposes of satisfying the occasional bout of nostalgia.



.Section II: Roms.

|What They Are|
 Roms are the video games, dumped onto computers and uploaded to the 
 internet so people can try them out.  Rom stands for Read Only Memory,
 which means basically that it can only be used with the assistance of
 another program which can read them.

|How to Use Them|
 In a word: emulators.  To play a rom you must load up the emulator for
 whatever system the game was made for.  In other words, you would not be
 able to play an Snes game with an Nes emulator, or a Gameboy game with an
 Snes emulator.  

|Legal Issues|
 In the magical land of online "space" legal issues on matters such as 
 emulation and roms are annoying to traverse.  Keep in mind that emulators
 are perfectly legal (Sony doesn't seem to think so with the advent of Bleem!),
 or at least it is mostly legal.  It is the roms that happen to be questionable.
 However, it is stated in the law books that in the ever expanding world of
 software and hardware, any software that isn't being sold in stores for the
 profit of the people that made the program, is perfectly legal to give away for 
 free online.  In other words, Nes games are legally free,  as are Snes games.  
 However, if you want to be completely safe, lawful, and uptight, you can also
 delete the roms from your computer after 24 hours of downloading it.  In even more
 words, anything you download for free (including every new game in stores and such)
 can be kept on your computer for 24 hours.  Think of it as a testing grace period.



.Section III: What You Need.

|Compression/Decompression|
 Since not many people have the fastest possible connections to the internet,
 keeping downloadables small makes for quicker downloads and a happier experience.
 In steps compression.  Compressing a file makes it smaller, plain and simple.
 Some files compress better than others, and it just so happens that roms 
 generally compress by as much as 50%.  50% is a very larg number in terms of 
 compression, so the compressed file that you download is taking half the time
 that an uncompressed file would.  However, compressed roms won't work in the 
 emulators so you will need to uncompress them first.  You will need a special 
 program for this.  Common compressed file types include .zip and .rar.  .zip is
 by far the more popular of these two.

|Programs|
 To uncompress the compressed files you need a program.  Since basically all 
 roms and emulators are compressed in a .zip format, you should get the nifty
 little program called Winzip.  True, there are other "unzippers", but Winzip
 is readily the best of the bunch for the common end user.  If you don't have it,
 and you might not if you haven't been on the internet scene for a while, go to
 www.winzip.com.  Its a free program (albeit a trial one that lasts forever), and
 a must have if you download anything frequently.



.Section IV: Note.

|About this Faq|
 Faq's are created in response to frequently asked questions so that those 
 questions aren't asked quite so frequently.  This happens to be my first
 attempt at a faq, so it may be a little rough, but oh well, its better 
 this then me having to explain you such things in a short email messgage.

::Feel free to distribute this, but give me the credit I justly deserve for
  it.  In other words, don't delete the "Created by," line below if you
  plan on putting this somewhere else.

 -Created by, Justen Kreiner, 2000-