Right from the 80s, a Nintendo Entertainment System in Firefox

Whether you had the first Nintendo Entertainment System or not, FireNES, a Firefox extension developed by Argentinian site FireNES.com.ar, will put all the fun and nostalgia of the 80s video gaming right inside your favorite browser.

FireNES provides a pretty simple interface to vNES, a Java NES emulator that is automatically downloaded and started from the web. A sidebar provides a comprehensive list of virtually all NES game ROMs available on the web, a popular list, and a list of your favorites for quicker access.

The whole experience is a snap: the Java applet loaded very fast as did all the games I tried. Some of them don’t work but still you can play Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, Double Dragon, Castlevania, and others, in their original forms.

Whether it’s legal or not to use FireNES may depend on your country. At the very least it is a good way to try before you buy some title in the Wii’s Virtual Console Store.