How to Play Console Games on a Laptop

Download an emulator for the console you wish to play games from. Emulators are software that mimic the hardware setup of another computer or console. Finding the best emulator for the console you wish to simulate is not an exact science: Download and install several, and try them out to see which one works best for your laptop. There are many websites and communities dedicated to developing and sharing emulation software. One of the most comprehensive can be found in the Resources section. This site also ranks emulator software by ease of use and compatibility, so you can see which programs other users have had the best results from. For ease of use, install your emulators to a central directory on your laptop's hard drive, marked "Emulation."

Download ROM files for your emulator. While emulators simulate the hardware of a given console, ROM files are the software replica of the code from console cartridges or discs. Again, many websites exist that provide catalogs of ROM files for various consoles. One of the most comprehensive sites for ROMs is provided in the Resources section; you may find others more to your liking, depending on the console you seek to emulate. When you have found ROM files for some games you are interested in playing, save them to a directory in the Emulation folder on your laptop.

Start the emulator of your choice and load a game. Some emulators allow you to navigate to ROM files anywhere on your laptop, while others ask you to specify a central location for ROMs and provide an onscreen database of all available games in this location. Once you have loaded a game, check your emulator's menu for customization options: you can specify parameters such as the keyboard layout you wish to use to mimic the console's control pad, and how complex you want the graphics emulation to be.