Emulator News

Change Over

2010-06-11T04:33:00.001-07:00

I have now found out that blogger is not a very good blogging service for my needs so I have moved to the new site of
http://www.gba-emulators.webs.com/
Hope to see you there!

Golden Sun

2010-05-03T01:09:00.001-07:00

Golden Sun is a game by Camelot Software Planning (I Think) and is an RPG. That's pretty much all the History…

The Game Play is pretty nice. It has the FF I fighting style . Random encounters. The controls are extremely simple. Takes a bit sometimes to solve the puzzles, but they're not so hard that you just stop playing all together just because you can't one of the puzzles.

The main characters are Isaac (your character), Garet, Ivan and Mia. They are all the usual of the children who can save the world. They are the characters you will be using for battle, while not having all the party members joining you.

This is going to be a pretty bad game review, because to be honest, I can't remember the plot. The main characters are trying to stop a group of people from activating all the towers or they will unleash something bad into the world. As you go through your journey, Djinn will help you. They are trying to use the elemental stars to activate these towers. As you progress through the game, you will unveil the story (obviously) and in the end, you will find out if you foil their evil plans.

NPC's…. They mainly say the same thing like most other games. It's pretty much the same. They move, say the same thing all the time for one part of the story. Nothing too special about these NPC's

Inventory may be a little different than other RPG's. Each character is allowed to hold a certain amount of items and if that number is reached, then the next person has to hold the item until everyone's number is reached, then you can't even hold the item. Weapons also count as items so they take up space as well.

Magic in Golden Sun is Psynergy. It's pretty much the same as magic, although it is learnt by Djinn. The type of Psynergy you have a t your arsenal (Don't laugh) depends on your class, and your class changes depending on what type of Djinn you have equipped. There are many combinations so you should try to find the one that fits you the most, or just look at a FAQ or something like that to see which is the best. Your choice. Magic is also used out of battle to solve puzzles. Obviously 'Heal' spells can be used outside.

Like I said, the Combat system is pretty much like Final Fantasy I style. When you enter the battle each of your characters choose to attack or use magic against the enemies and the you execute. The person or monster with the highest speed goes first and so on. Nothing too complicated.

The graphics for this are amazing compared to the other games I've played. It has the #D aspect and the scenery makes it feel like everything is real. The battle scenes also harness this 3D feature making the enemies look real.

Animations are also very good. Battle animations are good instead of the move up, slash at the air, and it damages the enemy. It attacks the enemy with a weapon if you chose it, it shows the actual magic that has been casted and things like that. Also, movement is pretty fluid. Nothing that looks too out of place.

Music. Well the battle music is always the same. The music depends on the area you're in and it all fits pretty well. It adds into the atmosphere into the game making it more realistic.

The main choices you can make for yourself in Golden Sun are Yes and No, while each one not really having an effect on the actual storyline, just how the conversation goes.

Humour is not too great, while it may be added here and there, but if you're expecting a comedic game, well you haven't found it.

Sound effects are definitely added, each outdoor Psynergy having its mostly unique sound FX. If you fall down or make something fall, you'll hear an FX. Mostly with all things that are supposed to be a sound, there is a sound. There are none for walking or crashing into a wall though.

The game does a get harder as you progress as most games. Enemies get stronger, puzzles get harder as you have more psynergysies to use. Nothing that would be too hard though if you train and you are pretty smart. Either that or you just get a walkthrough.

Overall, Golden Sun is an addicting game, with the storyline, fighting system, the puzzles and all the things that make Golden Sun a wonderful game. This is a very fun game that will probably keep you entertained for weeks or days, depending on how much you like RPG's.

If you find something and false facts in this review (definitely in the plot) feel free to comment and I'll try to fix it as soon as I see the comment.

Visual Boy Advance

2010-04-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

I've just started to use the homebrew channel on the wii and it seems that VBAGX is the GBA emulator on the wii. Sorry about that. EmuCR-Vba-m-r926 is the latest version of the emulators and has way better graphics than I had seen. TO be honest, I had been using VBA v1.8 beta for a pretty long time. Anyway, just an update on the VBA.

Also for steps on how to install the homebrew channel and VBAGX will be included in the next post. I'll also include the official instructions from the homebrew site.

Website

2010-04-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

I've just launched a site where you can download the emulators that I blog about on Megaupload.com . It may also hold some extra stuff from my blog and maybe just some random stuff that I come across. Anyway, sign up to it somehow or check on it often to get the goods on emulators.
Site:
www.emugames0.webs.com

What is an emulator and how does it work?

2010-04-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting in some time, not that anyone's reading it. Anyway I thought that if I'm making a blog about emulators, I might as well explain how they work. Just so you know, these were copied from a different site because I don't know the exact features of it.

A video game emulator is a computer program that can cause one computer system to act like a different system. Using emulators allows people with modern computers to play video games from obsolete systems or a different platform without having to buy the operating system or machine. While using your modern machine to play the original Atari® Pitfall may be fantastic, there is considerable legal controversy about copyright issues in emulation.

Console emulators recreate other systems and make them compatible with your computer. While they are most often used to revisit classic games long out of print or systems off the market for decades, they can also be used to modify games or translate them. Recently, classic gaming fans have been able to create new games for old consoles using emulator systems.
The first widely used video game emulator was released by a game-developing company called Bloodlust Software. The emulator, first created in 1997, replicated the original Nintendo Entertainment System® and was nicknamed NESticle. The program proved a smash hit with those longing for the glory days of console gaming, and was quickly followed by Bloodlust Software’s Sega Genesis® emulator, Genecyst.
Emulators are available to download all over the Internet, and now have working models that mimic most early game systems. It is entirely possible to have Sega Genesis®, Super Nintendo®, Atari ST® and Intellivision® games all playable from your desktop or laptop. Because of how copyright laws work in the United States, most emulators are shielded from legal threat. Most emulators are created by reverse engineering, a protected form of technology under the laws of many nations.
The legal controversy is about the video game downloads, or ROMs, themselves. These are protected under copyright laws, and it can be a violation to download or use them. This leads to an interesting situation, where it is perfectly legal to own a video game emulator, but not to own any games for it. Many video game emulator and ROM sites post a disclaimer saying that you may only download the games if you own the respective real versions of them, but this is often disregarded.
In recent years, computer gaming giants have attempted to fight the spread of emulation gaming by both legal and innovative means. In addition to putting pressure on government committees to crack down on websites providing ROMs, many companies also released compilations of older games for use on modern machines. Most recently, the Nintendo Wii® game machine has a built in emulating component, allowing users to legally buy games for many classic console systems and play them on the Wii®.
Emulators are a dicey subject and a legally gray area in many places. While they may cross some copyright laws, they allow gamers the chance to play games that are impossible to find otherwise because the system is no longer available. If you would like to try using a video game emulator, download from a reputable source and be aware of your local copyright laws.

Reference:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-video-game-emulator.htm

I hope I get more readers...

Project 64 - N64 emulator

2010-03-16T00:25:00.000-07:00

PJ64 is my favourite choice for a N64 emulator. It gets everything to work normally and there's not really much I can say that shouldn't be in the features section. There may be another emulator that's better that this, but if you just want an emulator that will work, choose Project 64

Features

Change in the plugins you want for your emulator
Change the menu language
Pause, reset, save and restore menu options.
Save states
Cheats (Easy to activate)
Full screen
Help maual

Homepage
http://www.pj64-emu.com/

Change in theme

2010-03-11T02:01:00.001-08:00

I'm changing the main theme of this site to a blog which talks about emulation and GBA (Gameboy Advanced) games. Just a quick entry, just so this blog will be able to be written in for a bit longer.

No$GBA - DS/GBA emulator

2010-03-11T01:55:00.000-08:00

No$GBA (Now going to be referred as No$) is the best DS emulator, even though it wasn't supposed to be. As you can probably guess from the name, No$ was meant to be a GBA emulator, but soon became a DS emulator. It's GBA emulation may not be that great, it's DS emulation beats DeSmuME with its speed.
It's graphics for GBA isn't as good as VBA and it's DS emulation's graphics may be too geographical (easier to see the shapes. Is it even the right word?)
It's sound can be bad depending on the rom. It can be slow if the rom is slow/fast. You can't really hear it properly and the songs are hard to follow, but this is only with a few roms. All of the GBA roms should work and most of the DS roms shouldn't have too many problems.
You can easily change the buttons to how you want them and you can easily change the settings to your liking, including the speed of the game.

Homepage:
http://nocash.emubase.de/gba.htm

Features
Advanced options
DS/GBA rom compatibility
Active emulator forum for emulation help

How to use an emulator - The basics

2010-03-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

For people actually reading this blog, but not knowing what an emulator is, this will tell you about the basics of emulation. OK, to explain what an emulator and rom is, keep reading.

Let's just say an emulator is a T.V with an inbuilt DVD player and the rom is a DVD.If you just have the T.V, then you can't play the DVD because you don't have any and if you only have the DVD, you can't watch it because you don't have anything to play it on.
So if you only have the emulator, but no rom, then you can't play any game, because you don't have one and if you only have the rom, then you can't play it because you don't have anything to play it with.

Ok, now that's done, now on how to play a rom, which is usually the same for each type of emulator.
To play a rom, open up the emulator and press ctrl+l to load a rom, but if that doesn't work, go into file, then open/load rom. You might have to select execute emulation/rom, but that can be in different places, but may be in the emulation menu option. Other types of emulators, like No$GBA, automatically go to a load screen, where you choose your rom and it loads it automatically. There are a few ways to open a rom, but if you're smart enough to find an emulator and rom, you're probably smart enough to figure out how to load up a rom.

Next is the little bit more advanced settings. Just so you know now, these are not really the 'advanced settings'. More just the basics of the advanced settings.

With most emulators, you will be able to save states. What this means is that can save wherever you are in the game exactly like it was when you saved it. So lets say you saved while your sprite was walking and then your sprite stopped walking. If you then loaded your state, you would see your sprite exactly where he was before, walking. Another example is that you're facing a boss. You save state when you are about to beat him, and you are about to strike, when he kills you. If you just load the state, then you can dodge the bosses attack, then kill him. On VBA, the way to save states is to hold shift and press one of the F(no.) slots. To load it, you just press the F(no.) slot you saved it to. So let's say you wanted to save a state in pokemon, so yous aved in F1 (shift+F1). You lost the battle, so you want to load states. You press F2, but nothing happens. It doesn't work because you didn't save it to F2. You press F1 and it works. There are others, like No$GBA, when you have to press ctrl+S or F6?, to get a save screen. You then name it and press save. To load, you press ctrl+l or F7? and you get a load screen. You choose which save state to load and it loads. This is a much slower way, but it still works. There are also other ones like espxe where you change slots with F2, save with F1, and load with F3. This also works, but it's annoying when you ahve to keep pressing F2 to get to the save state that you want. That's all about save states.

Cheats. Cheats can be used in some emulators and are usually used with Action Replay codes and Gameshark codes. These can be found on the internet and most of the time on found on google. They can also be found on GBAtemp. They are usually able to be added on the cheats menu option.

Well that's pretty much all you need to know about emulation. If you want to find out more, then just play around with your emulator, but keep a copy, just in case.

If you need anymore advice, just comment and I'll see what I can do.

VBA - Gameboy (Advance) emulator

2010-03-01T01:04:00.000-08:00

The VBA emulator is the best emulator for the Gameboy advance and Gameboy consoles. It makes the graphics pretty good, considering the GBA's small screen. It's still being updated now, so you know that it's going to get better. Tell me if I'm wrong, but they're up to VBAGX. I'm not sure what this exactly is (which I know is pretty bad for me), but if you havee more info, could you tell me in some shape or form so I can edit this post. Anyway, whenever I play any GBA games, I always use this.

Features
Realtime save/load
Turbo with the presss of a button
Cheats
Loads of options and add-ons for looking at the actual games code?

Homepage:
http://vba.ngemu.com/

Introduction

2010-02-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

Hey blog readers. This is just another one of my blogs that I've started out. I had another one (www.gamershome-a.blogspot.com), but that one was more an experimental blog and I also knew that the blog was going to fail, since my topic was a lot too broad and there were way better sites like IGN and Gamespot. Anyway, this blog is about emulators. Maybe somethings about roms and upcoming games. I know that you could probably go to the actual emulators site, look at their FAQ, or download multiple emulators to see if they work or other time consuming acts, but it's probably easier to just come here, read the entry on what you're looking for, ask any questions you have about the actual emulator and get an answer from me or some other web Samaritan.
Also, if you want me to go straight to a specific type of emulator for a console that I actually use, then please comment, somewhere or on the bottom of the page with the comment widget since I'm going in a random order in how I post these different types of emulators.

Emu games