games: Snes Emulation
I never had a Snes back in the day, so it’s rather nice to have a look through some of the old classics - Zelda, Yoshi’s Island and the awesome Turrican. Just make sure you own the originals!
-Katharine
comments
February 14th, 2008 - 1:24pm
ZSNES is pronounced Zed snes, so that one is right, sorry. Darn Canadians and their strange ways.
February 14th, 2008 - 7:27pm
Yet once again, one excellent review, Congrats to Katharine and Team for an excellent webisode.
Hmm I think I’m becoming an addict to Flip TV 
February 15th, 2008 - 12:18am
I’d been an avid ROM-head in the past, but gave it up once I “grew up”, might have to take a look at these games again.
Feel sorry for you not getting to enjoy the real Snes as a kiddie, because it’s worth the investment to find one, even now.
^_^
February 15th, 2008 - 8:20am
Love the reviews Katharine, you do a wonderful job being concise yet entertaining and informative.
Please keep up the great reviews.
February 15th, 2008 - 11:11am
I love your show. Keep up the great work. I think you should review Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the Nintendo DS. It’s great game. It combines solving puzzles and engaging storyline. It has an awesome design to it.
February 15th, 2008 - 6:54pm
Nice vid.
Sometimes companies’ attitudes towards emulation can be pretty mind-boggling, as you pointed out with Nintendo. I simply cannot fathom why companies don’t just release their great games of the past as abandonware when they obviously aren’t going to re-release them. LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games is another great example for that, btw. I would love to replay all those great adventures, but LucasArts isn’t releasing a proper compilation nor are they giving them up as abandonware for all their fans to enjoy, so there’s no way for me to play them again. 
Same goes, of course, for all those great games released for consoles and platforms that just aren’t available anymore.
February 16th, 2008 - 10:11am
Calm down, Eumai, not everyone can be as sophisticated as us North Americans. 
Anyway, ZSNES is truly the ultimate PC SNES emulator. Insanely high compatibility, smooth controls, and wide range of video and audio options make it the one to beat.
I’m not sure if you remember the ol’ Genesis (Megadrive), but if you’ve ever been interested in that emulation scene, Kega Fusion is the best Windows emulator for the Megadrive, and even emulates Sega CD (Mega CD) and 32X if you’ve got the bios for those systems, as well as Master System and Game Gear. Any fan of pre-Saturn Sega would do well to check it out.
February 16th, 2008 - 10:14am
In your loads and loads of free time you should check out the SNES (snez? really?) game Earthbound — it’s sarcastic and meta and you’d love it.
February 16th, 2008 - 12:39pm
Hi there, love the show, would be great to see what you think of Audiosurf (recently launched on Steam), especially after the enthusiastically positive Rez review. Its a superb little title that allows you to delve a little differently into your existing music library.
Cheers!
Ray.
February 17th, 2008 - 3:58pm
I had a Megadrive back in the day so nostalgia only applies to Sega for me. But when you do get a decent emulator and try some of the classics out their as worthy as any decent flash game for half an hours fun when your GPUs broke.
Its also interesting to see how much flash and java games draw from games on the early Nintendo consoles.
You give the kind of reviews that we haven’t really seen before on stuff that matters, i like it a lot! Been reading your recent columns in Custom PC too, keep up the good work!
February 17th, 2008 - 7:31pm
Hello Katharine, I just wanted to say that I enjoy watching youre podcast on my Halo 3 Zune .I was wondering if you have ever played the KISS psycho circus the nightmare child pc game?Also, I wanted to tell you that youre doing a great job and you are soooo cute !!!! later, tom
February 18th, 2008 - 5:24am
Deano - thanks for the tip, that looks like a really great game. Unfortunately it’s TBA in Europe atm, but I’ll try to get my hands on it.
Thanks for the feedback guys, glad you’re still enjoying the show, apologies for killing you Eumal, I hope you recover in good time
February 18th, 2008 - 11:03am
@ Matches
Company’s arent going to release all of their old games for free because there is still a market for them. They might not be on sale at the moment but who is to say they wont be again in the future? Things like the virtual console and downloading retro games on PSN and XBL are big business. At the end of the day there is absolutely no difference at all between downloading copyrited ROMs and downloading a cracked copy of Crysis.
I personally have downloaded hundreds of ROMs but I’m not under any illusion that what I’m doing is morally OK or legal. I know its wrong and that it’s theft and I’m not going to kid myself into thinking it isnt the way a lot of people seem to be.
February 18th, 2008 - 2:46pm
Hey Katharine, I’ve had some experience with SNES emulation myself and my absolute favourite game was Chrono Trigger. It was way ahead of its time (excuse the lame pun) and it never had a release in the UK so it’s a perfect candidate for retro emulation. If you have time give it a go!
February 20th, 2008 - 3:42am
Norbit
Agreed, I’m under no illusions of the legality of downloading ROMs, save for the stuff I’ve got carts for (Nintendo can suck these if they think I’m going to re-buy all that crap again). However, I do make it a point to hunt for the carts as well if I don’t have them. No matter what, there’s simply no replacement for playing the real thing on a TV.
February 20th, 2008 - 6:57am
Thanks for all the game recommends guys…
Voodooray - I read about Audiosurf a while back and thought it looked awesome. I’ll give it a bash when I can get to it and even if it doesn’t get fitted in to the full review schedule as we’re posting fewer this month, I’ll post my thoughts in the Rez page. It will be interesting to see how the beat synchronization with ‘any mp3′ works. It didn’t on E4.
tom s williams - alas, I didn’t play KISS Psycho Circus. I think I was a little young when it came out. It looks hilarious though and i’ll keep my eyes peeled for a bargain bin copy.
February 20th, 2008 - 9:03pm
@Norbit:
I think you misunderstood me: I’m not even hinting at something like “downloading copyrighted old games is better than downloading new copyrighted games”. I was just saying that I simply don’t get why companies don’t release old games as abandonware for their fans to make it legal.
But I guess you make a good point with the XBLA and PSN releases of old games, hadn’t thought of that. Probably it’s just me as a gamer wishing for a more fan-friendly policy every now and then.
Btw: I’d even buy a proper compilation of those great LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games adventures, although I had them all when they were released and probably might still be able to dig up some of them.
February 21st, 2008 - 6:14am
Katherine:
Snappy, concise, and well-written; it’s the first time I’ve I heard “de rigueur” used in a videogame review. You certainly have a future in journalism. FWIW, since my boys have a Wii and DS, I do have to do a little previewing to weed out the Xbox 360 titles. And I’d try to convince MiroGuide to drop the “geekalicious” tag - it’s a distraction to your obvious talents.
February 21st, 2008 - 10:01am
Matches - re the LucasArts games. Back in November Gabe Newell said he wanted to get every PC game ever made onto Steam including LucasArts stuff
.
Check it out: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=617. It’s a lot of text so ctrl f ‘Lucasarts’ if you don’t want to wade through.
February 22nd, 2008 - 7:28am
@Katharine: Thanks for the link, really interesting interview. If they really manage to get the good old graphic adventures on Steam I’d be really happy. Gabe seems really ambitious to bring back old games, so there’s some hope.
Also, Capcom selling old ROMs on CD is interesting. Thx for mentioning that.
March 23rd, 2008 - 3:11am
Nice tip on the emulation katherine. This review just takes me back to the time of the 16 bit eras. To be honest to myself, I prefer the games back then compared to today - a lot more challenging and feel proud of actually completing the game.
Really liked super mario world on the SNES, zelda was the greatest and who could forget the amazing street fighter 2 turbo.
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This is killing me. SNES stands for Super Nintendo Entertainment System - pronounced S-N-E-S, Snes9x stands for Super nes (along with the year the build came out), an emulator that was inspired by nesticle for the NES. It is like me saying I live in Causa (California, USA). SNES is a simple acronym. There is a reason each letter is capitalized. It was in all the commercials. ZSNES is all capitalized because it is pronounced Z-S-N-E-S.