What is an Emulator?
Emulation software allows your PC to run games or software designed for old consoles & computers or different operating systems, many of the emulators for more recent hardware, such as the Playstation 3 will be in development stages and may only play some games/demos. Lists of what works and what doesnt are often available on the emulators websites. Emulators for older systems, such as the Playstation 1, Megadrive or SNES are well developed and will work with most games.
How does it work?
Once you have installed the emulation software, usually available for free download from the developers website, (For a selection of the best 
See Emulation Apps) you will need to have some ROMs, these are files containing the digital code for the games. Roms are available on torrent sites, and occasionally to download from the emulator site. ROMs for older systems are small files and are often packaged together so that many can be downloaded at once. Torrent search engines often contain links to torrents containing hundreds of games (See 
Torrent Guide or 
Torrent Search).
Is it legal?
Most of the games will be copyrighted so it's unlikely to be legal. Oddball thinks that the companies who made some of the older systems are probably not making significant money from them anymore and are therfore not losing many sales from it so no big loss, on the other hand he doubts Sony see it that way. Oddball is not a lawyer.
To find out more aboute console emulation or to find a more complete list of emulation software we highly recommend The Emulator Zone.
Here are a selection of sites we have exchanged links with, whilst we do not feel they fit within the pages of our main site, we have looked at all of them and many will be worth a look, so why not browse through. If you are interested in exchanging links with us then why not get in touch - contact@oddball-links.com
What are Torrents?
BitTorrent is a file sharing protocol designed to effectively share temporarily very popular files - for example when a new blockbuster movie or popular music album is released. After an initial seeding period the download speed increases in proportion to the number of users downloading the same file. When you are downloading something through BitTorrent, you share the parts of the file that you already have with other users whilst you download. All file transfers are coordinated by central computer known as a "tracker", many of these are free to use public trackers, there are also private trackers which you have to sign up for and there are also premium trackers which charge a monthly fee for faster download speeds or premium/specialised content.
How is it done?
You wil need a BitTorrent client (See Torrent Apps) once you have this installed you can use a torrent search engine (See Torrent Search) to find software/movies/albums/ebooks and anything else you're interested in. Click on the the links to download, some torrents will be more active than others, the more seeds (people who have the complete file) and the less leachers (people who only have part of the file) the more active the torrent and the quicker the download will be. It is important that you allow torrents to upload to other users after you have finished downloading so that you can maintain a good ratio of uploaded content to downloaded content. If you dont share content after downloading many trackers will penalise you with slower download speeds.
Problems
If you have a firewall you may have to configure it to allow your bittorrent client to work properly.
Sometimes trackers stop working. If this happens you will not be able to start downloading (though some torrent clients support direct peer downloads once you have begun downloading to overcome this).
If there are no seeds and no complete versions of the file spread amongst the leachers then you will not be able to download the file, look at the health of torrents before downloading to avoid this. this will happen with less popular content that is no longer active.
Warning: Is it Legal?
It is illegal in most countries to download and share copyright content. Much of the content listed on torrent search engines falls into this category. Having said that there is nothing illegal about torrents and many files distributed are legitimate (e.g. Demos, Trials, independent films/music, open license software/freeware and so on).. We Highly recommend the use of privacy software such as Peer Guardian.
How do you.....?
We are looking to build up a comprehensive range of guides to help you with almost anything you want help with. So if there is something in particular you would like a guide for or even if you just have a simple question then contact us and we will do our best to provide the answer you're looking for.
Why haven't you got a link to...
We are adding new links all the time but appreciate your help in finding the best stuff on the web, if you have a suggetion then please suggest a link and we will add it as soon as possible.
I clicked on a link/game and it didn't work
We regularly review all of our links to pick up on any that have broken or moved. If you have found a link which doesn't work then please click the 'Report Broken Link' button in the links dropdown box to let us know and we will try to fix the link or find an alternative.
If it is a game you are having trouble with then please bear in mind that many of the games on our site require the latest version of Flash (Get Flash Now). If you have the latest version of flash then please let us know if you find a game that doesn't work.
Oddball Web Search
The Oddball web search is still in development, it searches using the Google API so you will get the same results you would through google UK, we plan to rebuild it in the near future to incorporate country selection, image search, clearer and more customisable results and to draw results from any of the top search engines.... watch this space.
Why doesnt the site work properly?
We are constantly trying to improve the site and it should all work if you have the latest version of your prefferred browser and the latest version of flash. If you meet these requirements and are still having problems then please contact us with details of the browser you are using and what the problem is, we appreciate your feedback and will do our best to find a solution.
Site Development
We have many changes planned for the Oddball Links website and welcome any Site Suggestions you have. Here is a list of changes currently planned in roughly the order they will be implemented:
User Ratings - Power to the people, we will be adding a feature to allow you to rate links, games and software so that you can tell us what you think.
Results Sorting - Additional sorting functionality to list results by oddball/user rating, name or type.
Cookies and sign in - Viva la revolution - This will allow users to sign in and customise the home page to suit them.
Guides rebuild - We will be changing our info page to show more detailed guides more elegantly and provide more links and info related to the topic.
Oddball Web Search rebuld - New search options and you will be able to customise how it works.
...
This site is and will remain a work in progress, we hope you will choose it as your homepage and see it as a portal to the best the world wide web has to offer. If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve our site then please let us know.
We constantly trawl the net for the best that's out there. But with your help we can make the site even better. If you you've found something worth linking to then please let us know.
