Roots of Video Games

I can surely tell you love to play video games, right? How do I know that? Come on, who doesn't love it nowadays? We are at the pinnacle of constant video game evolution. We are in a position to play any game from many different platforms at any given time, and we are not just talking about games now; we are talking about THE games. The effort, budget, scrips, marketing, music, and production behind today's games are just out of this planet; it is a new universe of emotions and experiences.

However, you should never forget where you came from, nor where this world of magic is also coming from. The roots are vital, and understanding those is understanding everything. So, let's not forget about the beginning of things and enjoy the past. To do that, all you need is one thing: Mednafen.

"My Emulator Doesn't Need A Frickin' Excellent Name"

In the past, you needed the actual physical system to play good old-times games, and if you wanted to play a lot of systems at one site, you needed a lot of home video game consoles. Not so far in the past, you had emulators. And, of course, emulation is fantastic. Right? It makes it possible for old code to run on new machines, meaning your favorite old games are still alive and accessible. But again, if you wanted to play a lot of different games, you ended up in need to work with a lot of different emulators, implying different interfaces and changes in commands and visuals, among other annoying things, as different old systems need different new emulators with no all-in-one solution to this problem at sight.

But evolution works in more than one way, forwards and backward, and everything gets together at some point. That is how you now have Mednafen to satisfy your need to return to the good old days and play the classics from the past. An acronym for "My Emulator Doesn't Need A Frickin' Excellent Name," the tool is an OpenGL and SDL portable multi-system free software wrapper that bundles various original and third-party emulation cores into a single package.

The new old

Formerly known as Nintencer and driven by command-line input, the tool can simultaneously remap hotkey functions and virtual system inputs to a keyboard, a joystick, or both. You will also find it great to know that save states, among more features, is supported, besides the usual screen snapshots with just pressing a button. It can also record audiovisual videos in the QuickTime file format.

Supporting a LOT of different retro video game systems, including the most popular ones, this cross-platform emulator is no joke, and it will be your new way to revive the old. About configurations, it might be a bit tricky at first. Still, Windows users will find their configuration file in Mednafen's directory, expressing anything you might want to change about the program. Here is a list of the systems that are supported:

• Apple II/II+
• Atari Lynx
• Neo Geo Pocket (Color)
• WonderSwan
• GameBoy (Color)
• GameBoy Advance
• Nintendo Entertainment System
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom
• Virtual Boy
• PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 (CD)
• SuperGrafx
• PC-FX
• Sega Game Gear
• Sega Genesis/Megadrive
• Sega Master System
• Sega Saturn (experimental, x86_64 only)
• Sony PlayStation

Did you say rewinding?

You should know by now that Mednafen brings some of the most efficient bits and bobs of other emulators under a single roof. However, the most fantastic feature here is almost certainly the ability to rewind any game you are playing at the touch of a button. You read it just fine; you will be in total control while playing, as the tool stores the last several intervals of the emulated console's RAM precisely as though it were creating a save state every half-second for you to be the God of time in there.

Love for the classics

You will love this program because it is simple and still works well. You will not get tired of the versatility nor the adaptability of the tool as you go from Nintendo to PlayStation in just one second. So, if you are into old games but hate collecting emulators, you have just found what you wanted, as this is a program you MUST check out.