check me out

You're&nbsp; either gonna think I am the dopest shit around for this, or it's sheer nerd-dom will amaze you.<img src="http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r134/aclauer/mario.jpg"><br>No big deal, you may be saying to yourself, just a little mario bros. Nostalgic, maybe, but nerdy, never. Well, if you'll look closely at the top of the screen you'll see the standard windows menu bar. Thats right, I'm playing mario on my computer. I got what is called an emulator, which contains the entire Nintendo Entertainment System in a standalone executable of about 745Kb. That's less than a song. After that it only takes a bit of hunting to get what are called 'roms', essentially the information contained in a game cartridge. Those files are about 40-50 Kb. Amazingly small by today's standards. But wait, there's more. Maybe I should explain why I'm doing this. I have a computer in my bedroom with a lovely flat screen monitor on which I sometimes watch downloaded movies. Ultimately my goal is to make this machine a media center. I have a TV tuner that I shall be installing as soon as I can talk Dan into letting me split the cable line and wire it into my room. I also have a dvr (actually in the same machine as the tuner). I installed XBMC, also known as Xbox media center. That's a media center originally designed for modded xboxes to hold media files and such and manage and play them from a single interface. As is usual with software people have upgraded it and tweaked it until it is now available on all formats including linux and mac. People have written plugins for it that will also manage your emulators, should you so desire. I do. <br><img src="http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r134/aclauer/marioland.jpg"><br>I also downloaded a Super Nintendo emulator, as you can see from the Super Mario Land screenshot above. I will get to Nintendo 64 soon, as well as sega genesis (strictly for Sonic the Hedgehog), and I have also got an original atari emulator, but I haven't downloaded any games for that yet. In case you are interested in doing this yourself, know that the game roms are actually copyright protected and can be hard to find. But not that hard. Oh, and one more thing. I bought this:<br><img src="http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r134/aclauer/snes_usb_controller.jpg"><br><br>Looks like a regular Super nintendo controller, right? Look closely. That's a usb connector on the end. <br><br>Commence Worshiping Me.<br>