With many of the gaming systems available today, you would have to spend thousands of dollars to enjoy them all. Not to mention the mess of many cords to connect all the systems, and the hassle of connecting and disconnecting the systems as you decide which one to play, and when. A simple solution is to use your computer and a console emulator.
Though there has been some controversy over emulators and their legalities, it has been determined that they do not infringe copyright, as long as none of the orignal gaming console code was used to create the emulator. There are plenty of smart programmers out there that have spent hours coding these emulators on their own, thus providing you with public domain versions of your favorite gaming consoles and the games for them. Even in this case, there are some emulators out there that actually do infringe on copyright.
WIth that in mind, you are responsible for conducting research to determine if your desired emulator is legal or not. You are also responsible for making sure the ROMs (the emulator game files) are also free from copyright infringement. Use what you wish, at your own risk, as you cannot hold myself, or Bright Hub liable for your downloads.
For the purpose of this article, we will be using an open source emulator for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
