Gifts for Retro Gamers Retro gamers are easy to buy for once you know the categories: something to play with, something to play on, or something genuinely new to play. This guide collects the gift shapes that land well for NES fans, from stocking-fillers to the big box. A better controller (the safest gift) Almost…
Back Up Your NES Saves, States and Library Game files can be re-dumped from your cartridges. Controllers can be re-bought. The one irreplaceable part of an emulation setup is the progress inside it: the save battery file from a long RPG, the save states from a hard platformer, the configuration you tuned over months. Backing…
The Best Ways to Play NES on a Modern TV Modern TVs are unkind to 1980s consoles: composite inputs are disappearing, and the inputs that remain add processing lag. There are three realistic routes to NES games on a big screen, and the right one depends on whether you own original hardware, how much you…
Best Retro Handhelds for NES Games NES games were designed for a TV, but they travel well: short levels, instant restarts, modest battery demands. A modern retro handheld plus your own game library (dumped from your cartridges) is the most convenient way to play them away from a desk. What to check before buying Screen….
Best Controllers for NES Emulation An NES game is only ever eight buttons, two of which you hold constantly. That simplicity means the controller is the experience: a mushy d-pad turns precise platforming into luck. Here is what actually matters when buying a pad for Nestopia UE, and the routes most players take. What to…
NES Homebrew Worth Playing The NES never stopped receiving new games; it just changed who makes them. Independent developers now design, fund and ship brand-new NES titles, sold as cartridges that run on original hardware and as files that run in emulators like Nestopia UE. These are the easiest recommendations in retro gaming: new games,…
NES Homebrew and ROM Hacks: The Legal Landscape New NES software is being written today, and old games are being modified by fans. The scene is creative and mostly well-intentioned — but “homebrew”, “ROM hack”, “patch” and “ROM download” mean very different things legally, and mixing them up is how players end up on the…
Famicom Disk System Games: What They Are and How They Work In 1986 Nintendo released the Famicom Disk System (FDS) in Japan: a floppy-disk add-on that sat under the Famicom and played games on proprietary rewritable disks instead of cartridges. It never launched for the NES in the West, which is why many players meet…
How to Dump Your Own NES Cartridges Every emulator guide, including ours, repeats the same rule: play game files you have the right to use. The cleanest way to honour that rule is to create the file yourself from a cartridge you own. That process is called dumping, and for NES cartridges it is straightforward…
