I tried searching for this but I wasn't sure how to search for this really. I have heard people talk about having almost all of the old NES video games on their hard drives and I was wondering how you find something like that. I would kill to have a lot of old games to play on the computer. One I am really after are alot of games from the Nintendo 64 system. Any help is appreciated.

Basically, get a program called an emulator and download the game ROMs. A simple google search should yield results.

Try http://www.freeroms.com

Okay, so I need to get this emulator thing before I can use that website, right?

there's links to emulators on that site.
but: DOWNLOADING ROMS WITHOUT OWNING THE ORIGINAL CARTRIDGE GAME IS ILLEGAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No... I believe if you click on the system you want on the left it should show you an A-Z of ROMs and an emulator to play them on. Most emulators are Windows based, I think. But a few are DOS based. Good luck!

I saw that too but actually all I wanted it for was a couple of games on the N64 system and I actually do have the cartridges in storage somewhere.

whatever. just download away.

http://www.zophar.net

The only site you will ever need for any emulator you could ever want.

I also use romhustler.net and romnation.net.

Sweet!!!

So how safe are these, has anyone ever gotten into trouble for downloading old games?

mario, link and a guy flying the zaxxon ship came to my house and kicked my ass

Meh, I doubt it. I mean, I have a lot of stuff, but I also have a ton of old carts. If you have the cartridges, you're legally entitled to own the ROMs, too. I've been emulating since probably 1997 and I've never had trouble.

nope

great, I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

Because there is really no way for you to give money directly to the publishers for these games anymore, do not feel bad about downloading them. The legality of it is in question, but I have never heard of someone being prosecuted just for downloading Roms. As for N64 you probably want to get a console controller for your computer. You can't really play a lot of the games that require the analog stick with N64 games without one. You also need a pretty decent computer for N64 games to run well on your computer.

Yeah I tried playing "sin and punishment" and it wasn't working too good with the mouse Awesome game though. I love Treasure.

http://www.emuasylum.com is a really well organized site too, and has a lot of obscure stuff. I just started getting into the MAME arcade games, like the old simpsons, TMNT, and X-men side-scrollig beat'em ups. But for some reason I can't get a lot of games to recognize on MAME32, like X-men vs. SF, Ninja Gaiden, and Raystorm. Anybody have working roms of these?

pawn shops

http://www.retrousb.com/ + http://www.freeroms.com/ = your solution

Find a Vietnamese guy and have him hack your Xbox or PS2 and you'll have every game for every system (including Arcade games).

If you're a torrent man, there are torrents out there that'll have like every SNES, NES or Genesis game plus an emulator.

go old school, i have every atari game