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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Classic RPGs on your phone

My brother just turned me on to the fact that there are a multitude of console emulators available for Android. I, in turn, have turned two close friends on to this fact, so that we may all share the bliss of replaying our favorite Snes RPGs, decades after our old Super Nintendos have stopped working or been lost in a garage sale.
Many a formative hour of my life was spent huddled with my brothers around a 13-inch TV screen, taking turns playing Final Fantasy 3, Chrono Trigger and Earthbound. As I stumbled my inebriated way through college, I found time to play through a handful of these old classics on an aging Snes that eventually found itself in a trash can after it quit on me. But as I became an adult, the idea of spending 80 hours of my life trying to get every spell, weapon and secret in an RPG started to sound ludicrous. I no longer have the privilege of budgeting free time in those amounts.
But now that I have a decent smartphone, I am able to fill the little cracks of every day dead space (on the toilet, waiting for my lunch in the microwave, waiting in line at the bank) feeling like I'm 11 all over again.
The emulator I'm using is called Snes9x-EX+. Its free and very self explanatory. I download games (called ROMs) from coolroms.com and I use another free app called ZArchiver to unzip them. Its all easy, safe and free.
And only a fellow 90's kid and RPG addict can possibly understand that this simple process has given me an immeasurable amount of happiness. If there were nothing else I loved about the Galaxy Note 2, having Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Earthbound everywhere I go would be enough.

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