"Play Video Games on a Student Budget"
By Wil Chinchilla

Date of Publication: November 13, 2006

As we move along in our stressful academic careers we all have different types of stress relievers. College students all over the nation (and the world) playing video games for many reasons: either to rock out on Guitar Hero, work out with Dance Dance Revolution, or to use an on-the-go portable gaming device to beat a friend at Madden. There is a factor that exploits college gamers and that is money, and lots of it. With cutting-edge, next generation technology coming in full force next month, games and systems' prices are skyrocketing to ridiculous prices.

Not every person can buy the latest technology, or the newest games. That's hopefully where I can help. There is free software in addition to the requisite retail hardware around the internet to help download games to the device of your choice. Mainly there is much software for one's PC, or personal computer, but it also exists for the various gaming consoles.

The hardware ranges from chips needed to be placed inside your entertainment console, to just a simple cartridge or memory card. The software is almost always 100% free, which is the money saver. There are programs on the internet called emulators. Basically, emulators are like the game console on your PC, PDA, or cell phone. All over the web you can find emulators for many older systems such as Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari, or Sega, as well as the recent systems such as Xbox 360 or the Nintendo DS. 

Now that you have an emulator installed on your PC, you can play games. The games online are called "roms," and they are essentially the information from the games. Instead of using a cartridge or disc, the rom easily plays on your emulated equipment. The roms are strictly information and the emulators are necessary in order to play games. The hardware mainly comes from Japan and Europe, and it is quite rare to find American hardware. The hardware varies from a simple USB cable or cartridge to a very complicated method that includes tampering with your system (at your own risk). Where you go from here is up to what the gamer is looking for. Since college students are always on the go I have searched online and mainly focused on the handheld items. There are methods in which you can obtain this software and hardware. Here are some focused topics that might help.

Nintendo DS
You will have to shell out a lot of cash to get free DS games. The roms are free, but hard to find. The hardware is essential to saving you money because ultimately you will not be spending money on the games. The best hardware out there right now for the DS is the Passcard 3 Bundle and the M3 Lite. This allows DS to become a multimedia piece of equipmentand play roms (called NDS roms) as well as Gameboy Advance roms on the system itself (via a flashcard slot). It ranges from $110- $150 (you should not pay more than that) which is a load of savings when you take into consideration that you normally spend $30-$50 dollars on a DS game. For an example of how the Passcard 3 works you can check www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFYWOXfUseQ.

Playstation Portable
The PSP has by far the easiest method to save money. Not only will you fi nd emulators for past systems, you will find newly released roms online that are free. The PSP connection to your PC is the ticket to saving you money. The information put on your PSP goes to your Memory Stick so the only hardware necessary for the Playstation is an upgrade to at least a 1GB Memory stick (it's worth it).

PDA
I still use a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) and have started finding that there are methods in making your PDA a kick-ass piece of technology. The best emulator out there for the PDA is the Phoenix emulator. It lets you play Gameboy games. For the newer PDAs there is a Super Nintendo emulator, but the processor is not at its prime so game play is slow, but still fun.

Mobile Phones
More and more independent developers are making emulators out there. From what I have found there are emulators for any QWERTY phone, or any phone that runs Windows on their phones (those are called smart phones), or any phone that runs Java such as Nextel. There are mainly Gameboy and Gameboy Color roms available. There also a Nintendo emulator that runs on Java.  

With all of this information you should Google, Wikipedia, youtube, and myspace it as much as you can to gather more information. Here are some links to get you started on your money saving entertainment: www.freeroms.com, www.coolrom.com, www.dgemu.com (registration required), and www.digg.com. Game on! ¦