Grey area legality be damned, but I love emulation. Ever since late 1996 when a friend on the #CrystalTokyo channel on dal.net IRC sent me a copy of the Final Fantasy 2 rom and a working Super Virtual Magicom executable, I’ve been hooked. Being able to play RPGs that we westerners were never meant to see is a thrill that never gets old, and I have such fond memories of playing them. Seiken Densetsu 3, Lennus 2, Magic Knight Ray Earth (SNES), 7th Saga 2, God Medicine…so many spectacular JRPGs passed us by and the community at sites such as RomHacking.net have gone to great lengths to rectify this injustice.
The problem? Unless you want to get a cart dumper and start rewriting roms, you can’t really play import carts with their patches applied on actual hardware.
That changes now, thanks to the latest beta firmware being made available to the RetroN 5 multi-console. thanks to this update, the machine now has IPS patch support, letting users play imported carts in English, on their TV, with no finagling required.
The firmware also includes various other new additions, such as the ability to add in new sprites and levels as well.
If you want to test this (beta) driver, which I assume will have a few bugs that need to be ironed out, you can go here.
As for me, I’ll be crying in the corner because I sold all my 8/16 bit games two years ago for a few thousand bucks.
*Fires up SNES9x*
