How to Play Retro Games (SNES & More) on Your Computer

Tommy is back with more frugal entertainment tips.  If you missed his previous guest posts about cutting cable and building his own DVR, you can check them out here and here.



I recently downloaded a couple of games from the Nintendo Virtual Console store for my Wii. I was
disappointed by the fact that their aspect ratios had been altered so that they were not effective
emulators of the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo games I had played. The Super Mario Bros. 3 game even had a glitch that would turn the far right side of the screen green.

This inspired me to find a better way to enjoy my retro games. That’s when I remember a period in 8th grade when my friends and I discovered Emulators and ROMs. Emulators allow you to create a classic video game console (Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega, etc.) on your computer. ROMs are the game files that you can play on the emulators.

For this discussion I’ll focus on how I setup a Super Nintendo emulator on my home theatre computer, the same basic steps can be used to setup an emulator for any other system as well. I chose www.coolrom.com as my source for both emulators and ROMs because of their huge database. They have emulators for Atari all the way up through the original Xbox. On the Cool ROM site you just place your cursor over Emulators and chose whichever system you want. For Super Nintendo they have four emulators ranked by popularity, after reading several reviews I determined that Snes9x was the emulator I wanted to use. Click on the “Download Now” link. Once you’ve completed the downloaded and extracted the files out of the .zip file. Try to double click snes9x.exe if you get this error you will need to install the latest version of Microsoft Direct X.

The latest version of DirectX can be found here (as of this writing): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/
download/details.aspx?id=35

Once your DirectX is up to date go back to http://www.coolrom.com/roms/snes/ and pick up the games you want to play.

When you open your first game you may notice that the aspect ratio is funky, for some reason the
Snes9x emulator defaults to a 7:8 aspect ratio instead of the original 4:3 ratio. If you click Video ->
Display Configuration the box below will pop up:

The settings above are the ones I’ve found most useful. For “Output Method” Direct 3D doesn’t work on my wife’s computer so I use DirectDraw without issue. You can play with the Output Image Processing to get some different effects, personally I found them somewhat distracting and settled on just leaving it set as none. For “Fullscreen Display Settings” you’ll want to match your computers settings. If you don’t know your settings and you are running Windows 7 or 8 right click on your desktop and click Screen Resolution, that will give you the ratio and the advanced settings will tell you if it is at 59 or 60hz. If you have multiple monitors set the fullscreen settings to match whichever monitor you will be playing the emulator on.

I also advise that you check the Joypad settings under Input -> Input Configuration, this will tell you what keyboard buttons are set to perform the Super Nintendo controller functions. Below are the default settings:

Since very few people have played Super Nintendo using a keyboard you may find it preferable to
hookup a gamepad to your computer and play like old times. Here are several options for accomplishing this goal:

1. For purists with soldering skills this project allows you to covert your old SNES controller into
one you can use with your computer/Xbox 360/PS3: http://lifehacker.com/5973071/turn-an-
snes-gamepad-into-a-usb-game-controller-you-can-use-with-your-pc-xbox-360-or-ps3
2. There are also cheap knock offs (but be warned you may get what you pay for): http://
www.amazon.com/Classic-USB-Super-Nintendo-Controller-PC/dp/B002JAU20W
3. Logitech has some good quality and reasonably priced game pads:
a. Wired: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-940-000110-Gamepad-F310/dp/
B003VAHYQY/ref=sr_1_3?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1359241905&sr=1-
3&keywords=Logitech+Joypad
b. Wireless: http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-940-000117-Wireless-Gamepad-F710/dp/
B0041RR0TW/ref=pd_sim_vg_7
4. Wired Xbox or Xbox 360 controller, you can search the web for the correct driver that turns your
wired controller into a game pad for your PC.
5. Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for PC: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-
Xbox-Wireless-Controller-Windows/dp/B004QRKWKQ/ref=sr_1_2?
s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1359242056&sr=1-2&keywords=xbox+360+controller+for+pc

Option 5 is what I went for, it is the exact same controller as the ones you buy for the Xbox 360 except it comes with a wireless adapter for your computer. The reason I went for this expensive option was that I wanted to be able to play multiplayer games without having to buy additional controllers, since I already had two Xbox 360 controllers I just have to sync them with my computer instead of my Xbox 360 and voilà I have two controllers to play Super Nintendo games on. Unfortunately Microsoft no longer sells the wireless adapter separately so you either have to purchase an additional controller or buy one of the third party wireless adapters that seem to have mixed reviews.

How to get your game pad to work in Snes9x:
1. Install the game pad (using software/drivers provided by the manufacturer)
2. Make sure your controller is plugged in (wired) or turned on (wireless)
3. Open the Input Configuration screen in Snes9x
4. Use your mouse to click in the “Up” filed, the background of the cell will turn green
5. Use the button on your game pad that you want to use as the up button, once it is recognized
you will automatically be moved to the next button
6. Continue until you have mapped all the desired buttons
7. Hit “OK” and enjoy playing your games with a joy pad!

Legal Disclaimer: You are legally allowed to have a backup copy of any game you own so you should only download games that you already own. Nintendo has taken the position that even if you own their game already you shouldn’t download the ROM, this has never gone to court and if you are simply playing a copy of a game you already own they would not be able to claim any legal damages. Aside from the used game market the only way to legally get original copies of these game is through the virtual console stores, in the  case of Super Nintendo there are 92 games available on the virtual console and 1,503 games available on www.coolrom.com

I hope you enjoyed this article. Between this and free DVR article hopefully you see that cutting cable doesn’t mean cutting out tons of entertainment. Please let me know what experiences you have with this emulator and others. Also let me know if you have suggestions for other free or cheap ways to entertain myself and others!

Winter CSA Week 11

The winter CSA season is coming to an end soon and to be honest, we will be happy to have a bit of a break.  Our counter has been piled high with winter squash for weeks and our vegetable drawers in the fridge are full of beets, parsnips, and rutabagas.  Though we love getting the onions, garlic, and greens, we have been having a really hard time working through all the root vegetables and squash.  On our way home from the farm after picking up this most recent load we were contemplating signing up for a share for every other week for next winter.

We will see though. At the start of this season we were talking about how much we were craving squash, so the long break might change our minds.

Winter CSA Week 10

This week's box was a little smaller than normal, which was just fine with us.  We got another bag of dried fava beans, lots of little potatoes, a small head of cabbage, celeriac, and a red kuri squash.  We should be able to eat most of these things fairly quickly, that is if we can find a way to eat potatoes with virtually every meal.  We are already planning on making more potato skins, mashed potatoes to eat with some salmon we bought at the fish market, and fries or chips with hamburgers.

Braised Short Ribs: A Solstice Treat

A couple of years ago HH and I started a tradition of celebrating the winter solstice, which falls on December 21st or 22nd.  Usually this means that we open our gifts to each other and make an especially nice dinner to enjoy.  This year HH was adamant that we try braised short ribs and mashed potatoes.  Since I was in the middle of a two-week winter break, I had plenty of time to prepare the meal which needed to be started in the afternoon in order to be ready by dinnertime. 

After looking at 10+ recipes online I settled on this one, mostly because it was only a one-day process, we had all the ingredients needed, and it would use up some of the CSA veggies that we hadn't been able to put to use yet.  Instead of carrots and celery, I substituted parsnips and celeriac which are very similar in taste and texture. 

I had never used short ribs before, so when I opened the package I wasn't sure what to expect.  The beef is from a cow that my parents purchased at their local county fair and was butchered nearby as well.  The cuts were much fattier than I expected, and I don't know if that's normal or not. 

 

The first step was to cut the ribs into chunks and sear the outside over high heat until everything was nice and brown.  This took multiple batches because they couldn't all fit in the dutch oven at once. 

After the meat was browned and removed from the pan, I added all of the cut up veggies and spices to the dutch oven and sauteed them for a bit.  Then, I added the meat back in along with nearly an entire bottle of wine cut with some water, and the additional seasonings.  The whole pot was then allowed to cook in the oven for a couple of hours.

 

When the meat was cooked through and the liquid had reduced a bit, everything came out of the oven.  The liquid was transferred to a pan on the stovetop and allowed to reduce to make a thick sauce.  Meanwhile, the ribs were put under the broiler to crisp up along the edges. 

Like I said, the ribs were served with mashed potatoes with the sauce poured on top of everything.  The meat was very tender and juicy, and the sauce was delicious.  Some of the pieces were a little too fatty to easily enjoy, but other than that the food was pretty good for a special occasion meal.

Potato Skins

What's not to like about potato skins?  Crispy taters, bacon, cheese, sour cream, green onions...the recipe reads like a list of my favorite foods.  The little potatoes that we've been getting from the CSA are the perfect size for these, and HH's home cured bacon is a nice homemade touch. 

Like many of our recipes, I used these guidelines from Simply Recipes.  First you bake the potatoes until they are cooked through, then you scoop out the insides leaving just enough to make a sturdy shell.  Put them back in the oven to crisp up (the recipe says to smear them with oil but I skipped that step and they turned out just fine - plenty crispy and maybe not as greasy), top with the cheese and bacon, thrown them back in the oven to melt the cheese, and top with the sour cream and green onions. 

Potato skins make me think of football-watching food, so maybe I'll make them again if we listen to the Superbowl come February.

White Bean and Kale soup

We've made this soup so many times this winter that when I went to make it the last time I searched for the recipe on this very blog.  It was only then that I realized we hadn't posted anything about it so now it is time to fix that oversight.

Neither of us are usually a fan of cooked greens but this soup seems to make kale even more enjoyable than usual (we've also used collard greens with great success).

The recipe is really simple and the leftovers work great for lunch.  We use much less water than the recipe calls for to make it heartier.

We also tried something new by instead of using can or boxed stock/broth we used chicken base. A friend had recommended it and we found some in the bulk section at Winco.  Mixing a teaspoon for every cup of water makes for excellent stock and is much less expensive than buying cans or boxes where you are paying for mostly water.  We now keep a small bag on hand in the refrigerator instead of a case of canned stock in the pantry.

Popovers

One day I was making soup for dinner before HH got home.  It must have been a Friday when I didn't have any afternoon commitments and made it home by around 3:30.  I looked in the freezer and we didn't have any bread around, and bread is pretty much a necessity for me when eating soup.  I looked in HH's baking books for a quick bread recipe that could be made with all the ingredients we already had.  That didn't yield anything useful, so I turned to the interwebs which guided me to a popover recipe that I knew I could make with everything in our kitchen already. 

The recipe had me combine the milk and eggs and letting it sit for half an hour, which was a good time for me to make some squash bars (post to come).  After that, the dry ingredients and melted butter get mixed in to make a thin batter.  I had seen some other recipes that put cheese in the batter, so I threw in the leftover gruyere from the failed root vegetable gratin.

By then, HH came home and was able to snap a picture of me filling the greased muffin tins with the batter.  (You can buy a fancy popover maker, but that seems to be quite the unitasker, and Alton Brown would probably not approve.) 

I really liked how golden brown they were when they came out of the oven.  Though they didn't rise up as much as in the pictures the interwebs had shown me (probably due to my lack of the proper specialty device), you could tell that had risen quite a bit and even had a big hollow hole in the bottom to prove it.  They stuck a little to my pan so if I make them again I will need to do a better job of greasing the sides and bottom of each cup. 

They were really light in texture, and definitely tasted eggy and a little cheesy.  They went pretty well with the soup, and were best when eaten right away.  There were some leftover that we ate in the following days and they became a little rubbery, so next time I might only make half a batch.

Winter CSA Week 9

With the cold temperatures we've had the last few days I'm not expecting to see too many more greens in our CSA for the rest of the season, but that is OK.  Our counter is still piled high with leftovers from the CSA from previous weeks.

This week we received a leek, buttercup squash, red onions, garlic, potatoes, and rutabaga   One of the rutabaga was as big as LJ's head.

Friday Fail: Root Vegetable Gratin

Our second Friday Fail features some root vegetables that we were desperate to get cleared out of the fridge to make room for a new batch.  It turned out to be about the whitest dish I have ever made, as well as the blandest. 

I remember eating potato gratin as a child, and generally liked it.  Probably because it had massive amounts of cream, butter, and cheese.  And potatoes.  All very good things, in my opinion.  So I thought that mixing the dish up with some additional vegetables would make a nice dish that made good use of our winter CSA veggies. 

I used thinly sliced potatoes, celeriac, rutabaga, parsnips, and leeks for the bulk of the dish.  The recipe (I somehow have misplaced it!) called for quickly boiling the veggies before adding them to the baking dish. 

Meanwhile, garlic got sauteed in butter before heavy cream and some spices were added into the mixture.  After the liquid had come to a simmer, it got poured on the vegetables in the dish with a topping of gruyere cheese, bought specially for this dish, and parmesan. 

After baking for about an hour, the dish was supposed to be done.  I poked the vegetables with a fork and they were tender enough, and the cheese was browned enough, so I pulled it out of the oven. 

Unfortunately, the liquid mixture remained very liquidy and didn't really absorb into the veggies or thicken up like I thought it would.  It generally tasted pretty bland, with the exception of getting a bite with a lot of cheese.  It wasn't inedible, but it wasn't very pleasant to eat either.  I think there needed to be more spice and a way for the sauce to thicken up a bit.  Looking back through all the similar recipes I could find, none of them do anything differently to the sauce than what I did, so I'm not sure what went wrong.  Unfortunately, I had made a pretty large amount of this stuff, and most of it went to waste because we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it again.  If anyone has suggestions or has eaten a truly delicious root vegetable gratin, I am not opposed to trying it again at some point, but until then we will be finding other ways to clear out our fridge. 

Winter CSA Week 8

Only one leek?!? That was my first reaction, but to be honest I'm glad not to be overwhelmed by the number of leeks for another week in a row.

These are all things we have seen before.  Acorn squash, potatoes, onions, tokyo bekana, and a bag of mixed braising greens.  The greens have been a nice addition to soups and stir fries.

Cheesy Eggs Benedict: A Holiday Tradition

I can't remember when this tradition started, but I hope it's one that continues for a long time.  After opening presents on Christmas morning, getting multiple refills of coffee, and keeping our stomachs from growling by grazing on holiday sweets, we eat a delicious breakfast of cheesy eggs benedict.  It's like eggs benedict, but better (my apologies to the breakfast purists out there).  Instead of a classic hollandaise sauce it's topped with a cheese sauce, because, well, cheese!  And instead of poached eggs it's fried eggs, because I don't know why.  All I know is that the result is delicious and I always eat way more than I should. 

This year, HH and I weren't able to travel back home because he only had Christmas day off so I made sure we had all the ingredients to make it ourselves.  I even braved going grocery shopping on Christmas Eve, which is something I will avoid in the future.

We started out by frying up some grand champion ham that we already had on hand.  

Then I got the cheese sauce cooking.  I'm not sure how my mom usually makes it, but we mixed some Velveeta (which I bought for the first time since college), Tillamook sharp cheddar, and half & half with pepper, ground mustard, cayenne, and paprika. 

While the english muffins were toasting I fried up the eggs.  When everything was ready, all that was left was to assemble the dish and stuff it into my face, going back for more sauce as needed. 

Now we just need to figure out what to do with all that extra Velveeta.  And wait another year to indulge again.