Nestopia: Old School Gaming For Your Mac
Often in the Mac vs. PC debates, one of the strongest points on the pro-PC side is that you can’t play games on a Mac. I’m here to tell you that isn’t entirely true.
I’ve always been a fan of the old school console games, especially the NES. Before I made the switch to using a Mac about a year and a half ago, I used to enjoy playing different console emulators on my PC and reliving my youth through games like Super Mario Brothers, Contra, Tecmo Bowl and others.
So after my first couple of months as a Mac user, I went on the search for an emulator for the mac and found Nestopia. Nestopia is an open source cross-platform NES emulator, that was ported to OS X. I was using an older Mac and luckily, Nestopia only requires a minimum of 600mhz to run emulation at full speed.
Nestopia can play pretty much any NES roms out there and I downloaded most all of the roms corresponding to the game cartridges I owned and played as a child. Nestopia is great on the road on my Macbook. It’s great to play games on long trips or bus rides to pass the time. As far as gameplay, besides the smaller screen, it seems like I have an NES tucked away somewhere. As soon as you hear some of the sounds of these 8-bit classics, you’ll be glad you downloaded it.
One of the first things you should do after downloading the emulator and roms is to configure your keyboard. This can be accomplished by going to the “Joysticks” tab in preferences. There is also an option to download emulator enhancer to configure USB joysticks and gamepads to really relive the experience
Another feature for classic gamers is that you can enter game genie codes into Nestopia for cheats and hints. If you don’t have any codes, you can find a directory by game at gamegenie.com. Best of all Nestopia is completely free, highly-recommended and available here. Game on!
If your into playing roms on your PC, you simply have to get a usb to whatever controller device. Being able to play with the original controller, really kicks the nostalgia factor another notch.
BAM!
Really worth the small investment if you ask me.
Yeah I got a cheesy USB joystick that looks like a PS2 pad for $10 that works the charm.
I’ve still got a working NES, two controllers, all my games and even the gun.
It would still be pretty cool to be able to play SMB3 on my Mac though, as my SMB3 cart wore out.
Um, where did you find a working copy of SMB 3? :/
deja vu all over again. great coverage!
too bad I’m too young to have nastalgia of this, though really wish my iBook could handle running sixtyforce (N64 emulator) now that would bring back memories of banjo-kazooie, super mario 64, mario kart 64, etc.
Hey Guys – get an original NES, SNES, Genesis controller modified with USB connector here: http://retrousb.com/ – works natively in OS X without drivers. I’ve gotten 2 NES and 2 SNES controllers from them so far. We have a Mac mini connected to our living room TV with all of the consoles and RemoteBuddy installed to launch any game with the Apple remote
Jerry, that is a kick ass setup! I totally want to do that now.
Awesome Jerry. Sounds like a cool setup. $34 bucks for a retro controller that’ll run on my mac. I’ve gotta get one.
[...] you can’t get enough console action, you might also want to check out Michael’s Nestopia Review. « SIMBL: The Application [...]
It worked fine for a few days, but now the program quits two seconds after launching a ROM (for anything you try). No support is offered for the application, so I’m rather dissapointed.
[...] outdated and offers proper support for games can be a pain in the ass. Had it not been for MacApper’s article on Nestopia I probably would have never even bothered trying. I’ve downloaded and played with [...]
i’m using nestopia too and loving it. HOWEVER, i cannot figure out how to implement cheat codes or game genie….can anyone help me out??? (i have the latest version on a mac – 1.3.6)
Is there a full screen NES emulator for OS X? Running it in a 300×200 window is pretty lame.
So I love the set up and bought one of the controllers from Retrozone but can’t get it to set up right. I downloaded the emulator it says you need to configure the gamepad but don’t know what to do with it. It is a “.bundle” application and my Mac doesn’t know what to do with that. Any advice? How do I open and install that?
where is a good place to get the roms?
I usually get mine from http://www.coolrom.com/roms/nes/ but if you just do a google search for NES roms, they should all work
[...] enjoy playing different console emulators on my PC and reliving my youth through games source: Nestopia: Old School Gaming For Your Mac, MacApper | Mac Apps, Reviews, Previews, Interviews, [...]
i have recently downloaded this emulator. However, when i choose to run it, it does not properly appear on my screen. It opens the open file menu. Do i have to download a file unzipping software program or something like that? thank you.
I’m trying to run it on my Macbook Pro, but the keyboard won’t work. I’ve tried configuring it in a bunch of different ways, but I can’t seem to get anything to work out.
I used to have this running great on my old mac but the emulator enhancer, I don’t remember how to install it :/
I miss full screen and controller use.
I have a wireless XBOX 360 controller and a USB reciever, which works great with my SNES Emu. Is my controller compatible with Nestopia?
Nestopia is great, but having to purchase the emulation enhancer via the shareware agreement is the major deal-breaker for me. Are there any other freeware NES emulators that can actually use the controller?
thank you