Games Consoles and Emulators

Please note this is very much a work in progress page. The headings will all become links in time.

M.A.M.E. Arcade games
Arcade Game Quiz
Building a MAME cocktail cabinet
Nintendo 64 Emulator
Sega Megadrive / Genesis Emulator
Nintendo Gameboy Emulator
AdvanceMenu
Modding Nintendo Game Boy Advance sp
Modding Nintendo Gamecube
Modding Nintendo DS Lite

MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) allows you run original arcade machine ROMs on your PC. These aren't cheap copies of all your old favourites - they're the exact originals. Whether you were into Space Invaders, Phoenix, Bubble Bobble, Street Fighter or any of several thousand other available games they're all available for free.

Here are some screen shots of just a few of the games. See how many you remember.

Defender		Escape...
The Real Ghostbusters		X-men
Sonic		Super Burger Time
Phoenix		Puckman Pokemon

Crazy Balloon is one I remember with affection. When I was in the Sixth Form I had a Saturday job in the kitchens at Littlewoods. The cocktail machine (table top cabinet) in the canteen got changed every couple of months or so and there was always a queue of similar aged lads as me. I poured a fair few 10p pieces into this machine, but never saw this game anywhere else again.

Scramble, Defender, Phoenix, Gorf, Track and Field, Battle Zone and Start Wars remind me of my student days, when the idea of being able to play these sort of games on a home PC (let along a very outdated one) was not even a dream.

Why mod a GBA?
You can play copies of any GBA games* or run other software such as mp3 players or e-book readers. A cart can hold multiple games.

What do you need?
A flash cart and linker cable
Some GBA ROMs
Client software
A PC

You may also choose to use GBAlls which is great for organizing your ROMs and VisualBoyAdvance which is a great little GBA emulator, so you can run those ROMs on your PC.

Where do you get it?
Check out Diveno, White Dog, Bald Bouncer and many more for the cart.
Try gbaroms or search bit torrents for "GBA roms".

About our config
We have a 256Mb EZFlash Advance. That's 32MB. This was state of the art when we got it Christmas 2004, but things have moved on since then. See Modding a DS Lite.
GBA games are pretty small. 16MB is the largest size, so you can see that downloading these ROMs is pretty painless. There are about 2400 official GBA releases and a bunch more which are homebrew.

Well, it's not really modding. You just need a flash cart, a PC and some ROMs.

Modding a Nintendo DS Lite (M3/passkey3)

Why mod a DS?
This is a real step up from the GBA. Here, not only can you play your copies of DS games*, GBA games and other legacy console's games, but the console acts as a PDA, mp3 player, movie player, calendar and more. You can even surf the Internet.
A cart can hold multiple games, and as the M3 series takes CF, SD or microSD memory the sky's your limit when it comes to capacity.

What do you need?
A flash cart. This goes in the GBA port on the front of the console. It holds the memory card and therefor any data, such as games or movies. We have an M3 Lite MicroSD cart
A Passkey. This tells the DS to play DS games from the GBA cart.
Some data in the form of DS ROMs, GBA ROMS, mp3s, movies, pictures, eBooks or a combination.
A memory card. Some carts have this in built, but then you're restricted to how much you can use. We have a 1GB microSD in ours.
A flash card reader.
Client software - although this isn't strictly required
A PC

Where do you get it?
Check out Diveno, White Dog, Bald Bouncer and many more for the cart.
Try gbaroms or search bit torrents for "GBA roms".

About our config
We have a 256Mb EZFlash Advance. That's 32MB. This was state of the art when we got it Christmas 2004, but things have moved on since then. See Modding a DS Lite.
GBA games are pretty small. 16MB is the largest size, so you can see that downloading these ROMs is pretty painless. There are about 2400 official GBA releases and a bunch more which are homebrew.

Well, it's not really modding. You just need a flash cart, a PC and some ROMs.

* SidAndBob do not condone the use of illegal software, that would be terrible.

This page is going to really be about emulators like MAME and modding Nintendo Gamecubes, GBA sp and DS.

If you're interested in games consoles for kids, there will be plenty of information here.

I'm not interested in whiners telling me that console x is better than console y. Get a life. If you're under 12 you get a Nintendo, if you're older than 16 you get an xbox and everyone in the middle goes Playstation.