In Emulators / NES ROMs

First of all this guide will cover the basics of emulation in general. Emulation is the process of emulating, or convincing software to think that it is running on it's native platform. Such as NES ROMs, which are direct copies of the software found on an NES cartridge. What the emulator does, is presents itself to the software (or ROM) as an actual NES. By having an interpreter that will translate instructions that the software would normally pass to the NES hardware, into instructions that your modern PC or Mac (or any other platform for that matter) can understand.

All of that being said, you can emulate the NES on almost any hardware. Even other gaming consoles, such as the Sega DreamCast, (which I have experience with, and will be covering later in the article) or the Microsoft Xbox. This article will be focusing mainly on the Apple Macintosh computers and the Sega DreamCast.

The first thing you'll want to do is find an emulator for your platform. Many emulators for various platforms are available here; for Mac OS X emulators.

You'll probably end up using either RockNES, or NEStopia from the above linked site. We'll first cover RockNES, which is intended for systems with fewer resources. (RAM, processor speed, etc.)

Installation of this emulator is very simple. You can follow this link; to download the disk image file. Then simply mount the disk image, and drag the RockNES executable to your applications folder. You can then run RockNES from there. It's not suggested to run applications from the disk image for various reasons. NEStopia installs exactly the same way.

Upon opening RockNES you'll be prompted to locate an NES ROM file, a file that usually ends in .nes. NES ROM files can be obtained from this site, or various other sites on the internet which I'll cover later. Once you have pointed RockNES to the NES ROM file, and selected the 'open' button, emulation should begin automatically. You can then activate Game Genie codes by clicking the edit menu bar button, or by pressing the command key + G. If you find emulation is not running smoothly enough for your liking you can edit the video options by clicking on the RockNES button in the menu bar, and selecting preferences. From this menu you can adjust the size of the RockNES window, configure video effects to smooth pixilation, edit the sampling rate of the audio, or configure your keyboard or joystick. (Joysticks are only supported with the use of Emulator Enhancer, which can be obtained from the Bannister software website as well)

Now for NEStopia, it's really very similar to RockNES, so similar in fact that all of the options are are the same. It can be downloaded here;

As for save states, these allow you to stop and resume your game at any time. No more leaving the NES on for days at a time . Save states in these two emulators can be used by selecting the options menu in the menu bar, and selecting Freeze State. Which will prompt you for a location to save the state file. By default it saves to the the active user's documents folder, which should be fine. To load the state simply click the options button in the menu bar once again, and select Defrost Game State, then direct it to the location of your saved state file, and carry on playing.

Emulating the NES on the Sega DreamCast is slightly more difficult than the Macintosh, but still very simple. Chances are you'll want to use NESterDC for NES emulation on the DreamCast. It can be obtained from here; and all you have to do is download one of the disc image files, burn it with the appropriate CD burning application, and pop it in your DreamCast.* You'll also need to create a second disc with the NES ROMs on it which you will swap into the DreamCast when the emulator is loaded. but that's as simple as burning a data CD containing the ROMs in a folder called GAMES (case sensitive). So I'll not go into the further detail on that here. As for actually running the emulator on the DreamCast, it's dead easy, all of the controls are listed right on the screen. You should have no trouble from here on out.

Obtaining ROM files can be a battle. But there are many places to get them, there are a number of them on this site itself be warned though, not all ROM files you may download will be fully functional 'dumps' and may not run as desired. If that happens, you'll just have to download the ROM from a different place. Also, you are required by law to own the original game for which you are downloading the ROM file, Neither myself, nor NESfiles.com will be held responsible for any repercussions that may result if you do not abide by the law.


In closing, this should be all the information required to get you up and running with emulation on your Macintosh or DreamCast.

*this assumes your DreamCast is capable of playing CD-Rs, which would require it to either be manufactured prior to August 2000 (if I remember correctly) or have a mod chip installed.

The Dream Cast is where I first experienced emulation. It was with NesterDC, and it was great. The only problem I ever had was that the controller wasn't very good with games that only allow Up, Down, Left, and Right. If you accidentally hit diagonal, your character will just stop moving. You have to be ultra precise with it. Other than that, it was a blast!

that's the reason I've never really played the NES Zelda games on my GameCube, that and the D-pad is much too small on the GC controller.

Yes, that's why I have new found respect for the analog stick on the newer systems. They should design the stick a little differently, though. I find that I push left alot of the time. Maybe they could put a divet on the left side for the thumb to better fit against it.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean

Well, the analog stick is rounded, and my thumb tends to press against the side of it after awhile during use. If they could put a groove in it for the thumb to fit, it would a better level of comfort.

Ah yes, I didn't like the DreamCast stick very much at all... once those little nubs wore off, the thing was slippery if you had even a little sweat on your thumb.

But I think this is moving away from the topic, so perhaps we should continue this in the 'worst controller' thread.

I can't remember 100%, but I believe I used to have trouble with the save feature on NesterDC. If I remember right, I could save, but not recall the save for future use, thus making the save feature basically useless. Was there something wrong with the emulator, or did the stuff on the disc get burned improperly?

it could have just been the version of NESter you were using, I'm sure I've saved and loaded mine. Although I currently only have a single VMU, so it's always full. But that's being fixed soon.

I remember having 6.0, but I might've even had 7.1 at some time, too. I'll ask my buddy, he usually remembers everything!

I think the one I'm currently using is 6.0, some image I downloaded that had a zillion NES ROMs on the disc too, I haven't even checked out half of them

Yes. I seem to remember it had ALOT of Mario hacks on it. One of the cool ones was where you could be the Princess on SMB1. Also Vader Mario was pretty funny!

yeah, those hacks are always good to kill a few minutes with, I can never usually play them long enough to get anywhere though