by Kuriakose Saju
Video games are an expensive affair. I know I’m probably drawing incredibly scathing looks from fellow gamers sieving through the site right now. “It’s a matter of financial planning,” or; “If you’re a serious gamer, you would save up.”
I don’t intend to offend 
anyone but for me, a purebred Mallu from Kerala who’s sweating it out in the Capital, staying on my own, trying to earn a living so as to make rent and fill my stomach with three square Happy Meals from McDonald’s, video games are an expensive affair.
So, taking into account my monetary roadblocks, and being a gaming fan (I AM a gaming fan!), there are three options that I can resort to:
(1) Try and move in with a very rich friend, whose house is littered with every single game console imaginable … and never, ever leave.
(2) Accept my fate as a penniless vagabond trying to make ends meet and switch over to emulators. I can play the latest stuff in a year or two when I have the money to get myself a TV and the cost of an Xbox 360 pales in comparison to the Xbox 1080.
Option two works for me because I love the older titles. It’s a glorious age when gaming was a much easier affair and you could sit for hours in front of your TV, helping a podgy Italian bring peace to a world filled with magic mushrooms and talking dinosaurs. It’s not that I am not amazed by the lifelike graphics and compelling storylines that today’s titles boast of. I am most certainly in awe of them. It’s just that, even now, I am not opposed to the idea of spending hours on a Super Nintendo or a Sega Genesis. Which is why I consider emulators godsend.
Given that obtaining the latest GTA title of the net is just a matter of waiting for the pirated download to finish, getting access to emulator software for off-the-market gaming consoles isn’t exactly brain surgery. You just have to know where to look. The internet being such a resourceful tool, you can emulate pretty much anything, starting with the Atari, the great granddaddy of video games, all the way to a PS 2. And that’s an extensive list of titles to choose from. All you have to do is google the word ‘emulator’ and see the wonderful world of classic gaming open in the form of 34,000,000 search results. Most sites that offer emulator software also have an extensive list of game titles, categorised alphabetically and console-wise. I usually use rom-hustler.net, which, till recently, offered even premium titles free of cost.
Of course, given the copyright restrictions and so on, premium titles have now been officially taken off the web site but it stills offer helpful tips and tricks to gain access to your favourite yesteryear characters.
The best part about emulators is the limited space they take up. The heaviest N64 title, in my experience, was 24 MB. That’s it!
Playstation titles are a bit heavier at just about 100 MB. That’s still one-fortieth of the average game today. Higher-end consoles, like the N64, PSX and PS 2, require a decent RAM and a good video card, preferably a specimen from the ATI or NVidia series, while the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis run on pretty much anything. Pick up a couple of gamepads from a nearby toy shop for about three hundred rupees a piece and you’re good to go!
Currently, I have a Nintendo, a Super Nintendo, an N64, a Sega Genesis and a Playstation, all running on my Win XP system. I have also managed to scrape up approximately 3000 titles which means non-stop unadulterated, classic video gaming fun for at least a year.
I’d advise all my fellow gamers to try a trip back to their gaming roots. Trust me, people, it’s worth it.
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