My wife and I use two Logitech game pads one is just a vanilla controller the other is a cordless rumblepad. You have to manually program the individual emulators to accept the input though and some are tricker then others.
I find it’s VERY dependant on what game I’m playing. Something like Dragon Warrior obviously doesn’t need a gamepad but Mario World was painful to play on a keyboard.
Edit: oh yeah I nearly forgot the vast majority of keyboards can only recognize three key presses at the same time so if you’re playing a game that needs several buttons pushed at once it can end badly for you.
I still bust out the MAME arcade emulator once in a while to kill a bit of time with Zaccon, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Tron, Gyruss, and all those other games that I fed way too many quarters in the eighties.
Pinball fans should try Visual Pinball. It’s primarily a pinball construction kit using (I think) Visual Basic. But a lot of users have made pin perfect recreations of real world tables.
Yes but, I often have trouble findnig an emulator that completely works for me. But I missed some of my old commodore 64 games and have played at least partially on emulators on my mac: Zack McKrakken!, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and other infocom games, Indiana Jones and Atlantis, and Space Taxi. I’d really love to find an emulator that can play Loom, Rendevous with Rama, and Grim Fandango. Also, Although Starship Titanic worked in mac original flavor OS9, it can’t run on OSX even in system 9 mode.
Yes but, I often have trouble findnig an emulator that completely works for me. But I missed some of my old commodore 64 games and have played at least partially on emulators on my mac: Zack McKrakken!, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and other infocom games, Indiana Jones and Atlantis, and Space Taxi. I’d really love to find an emulator that can play Loom, Rendevous with Rama, and Grim Fandango. Also, Although Starship Titanic worked in mac original flavor OS9, it can’t run on OSX even in system 9 mode.
I have an Xbox and a PSP, both stuffed with emulators. (Strangely enough, I’ve never played an Xbox or PSP game on them. )
Regarding controllers, Radio Shack used to have an adapter that connected a regular PSX/N64/Xbox controller into your PC for less than $20. They’re available on ebay all the time too.
Any decent joystick with lots of buttons can be mapped in a good emulator. It won’t be 100% authentic but that never bothered me much. I have to say that my Saitek joystick I bought from Walmart for $30 or so is more than outstanding and can be used very well with any game you can throw at it as long as you map the controls in an intelligent way. All you need is a joystick or other controller that has at least as many buttons as the original one from the console and you should be good to go.
That’s what I do. For a SNES game, it’s the keypad and the following mappings: a for a, s for b, d for x, f for y, w for l, e for r, space bar for select, enter for start.
I’ve been playing some commander keen lately on DOSBox.
I also have NES, SNES, and gameboy emulators and play classic games all the time. Hell, I even have a NES emulator on my PDA, giving me (in theory) a portable Nintendo wherever I go. (The only problem is that my PDA doesn’t let me press more than one button at a time, so I can’t get it to work right. :mad: )
Arcade games. I was a real arcade rat in my younger days, and even now I make a trip at least every other week. 8- and 16-bit systems just couldn’t do these games justice.
I’ve never been a fan of games that require lots of paperwork or are way too freakin’ hard. I’ll be enjoying these arcade classics long after I get a new system. (Which, judging by what’s available right now, may be “never”.)
Have a lot Nintendo stuff as well but haven’t been able to get it running yet.
I’ve got NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 emulators. I used to play them more than I do now. Frankly, I don’t enjoy it as much as playing the actual consoles, but they definitely kill the consoles in terms of the number of games I can access.
My GF was reading this thread over my shoulder and was surprised to learn that I had Pac-Man sitting around. (I try to conceal my geek qualities wherever possible.) She squees: “I love Pac-Man!” and requests that I hook her up on her PC.
So now all weekend there have been periods of game-induced cursing floating through the house: "Tabarnac! Câlice! Maudit!" [Bawoo bawoo bawoo bawoo boop boop]
A friend of a friend rigged up a PC chock full of emulators in an old arcade cabinet, and loaded it up with classic games. He said he had every Atari, NES, and original Sega (can’t remember what that system was called) game on it, plus many arcade games. Tons of fun at parties. And I discovered that I can still beat anyone, at any time, with a ten-level handicap, at Dr. Mario.
DOSbox, Nesticle and MAME all saw play on my computer before I left Windows behind. I haven’t yet taken the time to get them working under VMWare. I also started playing a reverse engineered Windows version of Dungeon Master but haven’t installed that either since the switch. I’ve been working on that game since, oh, 1990 or so. One of these days, people.
I was delighted to find this Qix emulator. It’s built in Flash, and as far as I can tell it’s a perfect reproduction of the real thing from 1982. I don’t generally give old games a whole lot of time, but they just don’t make games like this one anymore, do they?
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