My three year old has become a game addict. I know. . .all the statistics and parenting classes would not approve if they saw the depths this child will endure to do some gaming. Some families are heavily into sports, others are engulfed in fishing or outdoor sports, while our family loves computers. The Internet and games to be more precise. The problem lies in the fickle mentality of a three year old. An online browser game can be challenging and tiring to a young end-user. The rants of "I want a Batman game," or "I need a DIFFERENT game," are constantly being demanded.
How do you satisfy a young gamer who is looking for at least 10 different games in 30 minutes? Download an emulator! Emulators are available everywhere for any type of console. I prefer the using a console emulator for Nintendo (NES) but you can find a mirad of different emulators. 1000s of ROMS are available for download on the Internet.
In this example, I will show you how to find an NES emulator, download, install and run Super Mario for it.
1 – Download Jnes, a popular NES emulator for Windows.
2 – Save the download to your computer. After it has finished downloading, run the installer. Take the defaults on the install.
3 – Next, you will need to find a rom to play. Romnation.net is very reliable and easy to find good free roms. Another option is to do an Internet search for "NES Roms." Be careful, as many of these sites have a lot of ads and hidden download links.
4 – Once you have found a Rom to download, save the file into a directory on your computer that you can easily find. I created a folder called Roms on my C: drive, and then created additional folders for each emulator. If you have multiple emulators, its important to organize the roms by emulator type.
5 – Open Jnes. Go to File – Open and select the folder where you stored the downloaded rom.
6 – Play! There are options to change your inputs on the keyboard, or to configure a joystick or game controller.
The added bonus to downloading emulators & roms – you get to revisit all those old games for yourself! You can find a lot of different systems’ emulators online; start with romnation.net and give it a go.
