LETTERS
WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...
> Retro rewind
> 8K reveries
> Virtual realities
New laptop, old-school gaming
Hello Maximum PC. I’m a long time reader of the mag in its many forms over the years, and as that may suggest, I’m also a bit on the older side. I used to be a big gamer—we’re talking DOS and the 16-bit era—but I’ve fallen out of love with keeping up with hardware demands, and all the online 'live service' stuff just doesn’t appeal to me.
But I still like to play the odd game from time to time, and even recently bought an Xbox-style controller to pair with my Dell XPS work laptop. Part of the inspiration was a friend who has told me about game emulation, and the ability to play Super Nintendo and Amiga 500 games on PC. I’d never heard of this before and it sounds great! How does it work? Can I get this sort of thing going on my simple work laptop? I’d love to fire up Monkey Island again and relive some of those great gaming memories.
All the best and keep up the good work.
–John Plop
EDITOR, GUY COCKER,
RESPONDS: John, you are about to go down a very, very fun rabbit hole, and I can’t wait to help you.
Emulators, as the name suggests, use your modern PC hardware to recreate gaming experiences of yesteryear—often thanks to the hard work of individuals who have reverse-engineered game, BIOS, and OS code from old systems.