Ok, so by now you know that I’ve been playing some SNES games on the Macbook Mini. It’s definitely been fun, but the qwerty control method was just way too goofy for me. I needed a control pad — it was driving me nuts!
I’ve had a few in the past, but they were always cheap-ish affairs that… well, sucked. I then pondered whether or not it was possible to plug my wireless Xbox 360 controller into the Macbook Mini (mbm) for some light gaming, but it turns out that the wire that comes w/ that controller is for power only, and transmits no data whatsoever :(
After *very little* research, I discovered that there are indeed two options for using the 360’s controller on a Mac.
As it turns out, John lent me one, I installed the driver and it worked immediately! The only thing I had to do was open the Snes9X Controller Configuration section and then match up the SNES controls to the buttons on the controller and I was done!
Games work SO MUCH BETTER! It’s truly amazing. If you’ve got the gear and the curiousity, I highly recommend giving it a try :)
Snes9x is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator that lets you play Super NES games on your computer (Mac & PC). The emulator itself is legal, and if you own an original cartridge of the SNES game, then it’s apparently ok to have a copy of the program in a file on your computer, known as a ROM.
Snes9X has been around for ages, & I’ve toyed around w/ it for a grand total of about 15 minutes in the past. As entertaining as it was, there were always newer/different games to be had. My recent aquisition of the Macbook Mini (mbm) led me to reconsider Snes9X since the netbook isn’t powerful enough to play any modern games.
The first thing I realized was that the 10″ screen on netbooks is pretty well suited to playing 16bit SNES games. When I last tried SNES games on my other monitors, today’s monstrous resolutions make the blocky graphics start to look really ridiculous. They’re still as charming and innocent as you remember them, but it’s just not fair. After I smiled and laughed and tried out a few titles (Yoshi’s Island!), I immediately settled back into some Chrono Trigger. I’ve finished probably 30 hours of it on the DS, but my DS is currently on loan performing Animal Crossing duty for my woman, so I decided to start fresh.
After playing about an hour or so of Chrono Trigger, I realized I was hooked. The experience of playing SNES on the mbm is really satisfying! It’s a little tough playing twitch-based games on a qwerty keyboard, but the graphics, sound and emulation are perfect. Next up… a controller.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the US launch of Sega’s Dreamcast. Bitmob’s commemorating the anniversary w/ some nice coverage of the console with some great content.
If you’ve never heard of Bitmob, that’s because it’s Dan “Shoe” Hsu’s new project after having left EGM. Give him a shot — he’s a great writer.
I’m totally loving Street Fighter 4. It’s going to take me a while to get used to the SF fighting style (I still find myself using Tekken-like moves), but I like it.
I like enough to be lusting after fighting sticks. Lucky for me they’re all sold out!
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