Complete Beginner

[Monsta1973]

Hello All

 

I am a complete beginner on here, if someone can show me how to start,   i want to download an emulator onto my laptop to play  Sega, Atari, Amiga old titles possibly some more but just need some general help in downloading and getting the system up and running.

 

If it too complex then i may have to leave it, but i think i should be ok.

 

Do you pay for the downloads per game etc... or is there a set monthly cost , all help is really appreicated.

Thanks in advance.

[HitmanHart]

Monsta:

It's not hard at all.  Not certain this is the exact place, but I'm happy to share a couple of "get started" pieces of advice.

1) from a legal standpoint, you have to own the game data ("ROMs").  But once you own the game, there's a few good places online to find them if you do a search engine query for the game name and "rom".  

2) it's important to get the right ROM for the emulator you're using.  Gamedata for one system likely won't work in another

3) An easy one to get started with is MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator).  Lots of good info out there

4) download and install (often just unzip) the emulator, then put the ROMs you have in the ROMs folder in the MAME install folder.  

Other emulators are pretty much the same.

Things like Launchbox are front ends, but there are also some front ends out there that are built-in with emulators.  There's plus-and-minus to that.  For myself, I much prefer setting up the front end myself and using the emulators as configured individually, but that's because I'm a tweaker.

Just know that there's no harm in experimenting.  Don't give up, you can't "break" anything by experimenting, and you'll get the hang of it before you know it.

-HitmanHart