Few things are as satisfying as playing a round of Contra, Battletoads, Double Dragon, or TMNT II with friends. Some NES games reach their peak quality in cooperative mode, and thanks to the magic of emulation, we now have resources at our fingertips like NES Party, an NES emulator to play online, based on the popular fceux.
Endless battles in Contra, insults for Double Dragon 3 and its final boss, six androids arguing at the top of their lungs over two gamepads, mothers and fathers losing their minds... good times. Many NES titles are perfectly enjoyable alone, but there are specific cases that enter a different category when played with two people.
The question is: how do we reproduce that now? The original hardware is increasingly difficult to obtain, but we shouldn't lose sight of the NES Classic (along with its endless clones), and there's always the possibility of emulating the console. The problem is that there's a certain bug going around that wants to complicate our lives, and the best way to avoid it is to look for online solutions. That's when NES Party steps in.
NES Emulator to Play Online
NES Party is a development of Kosmi, a portal that also lets us enjoy movies, series, and board games online with friends. Once you create a private room, NES Party will ask you to load the ROM image manually, always in .nes format. The emulator is based on fceux, one of the most popular options for playing this console on PC. The emulation starts with the sound muted (something quite common), but a simple click will be enough to activate it.
NES Party comes preconfigured for the keyboard: arrow keys, Z and X as buttons, Shift and Enter for Select and Start. However, you can configure a gamepad if you wish. The only downside is that you must load the game first: With the ROM running, a small window will appear reporting "Controller 1" with a wrench icon next to it. To reassign the controls, you'll need to click on each option, and then press the gamepad button you want. Apparently there is no Turbo support, so some games will be even harder.
Personally, I haven't detected serious problems, but it's obvious that NES Party doesn't work perfectly. Between natural latency and local connectivity issues, some sessions may not be entirely good, but you should definitely give it a try with this NES emulator to play online with friends.
Official site: Click here
