some newbie questions

hey everyone,

i'm new to the world of n64 emulation and i was fortunate enough to stumble upon this forum. i was hoping that someone would be kind enough to answer a few questions i have so that i can better understand how everything works =]

first i'll give you a little background on my situation; i've recently flown the nest, sort of speak, but left my beloved n64 and games at my parents [over 500 miles away]. after wasting a few hours watching speed runs on youtube, my need for n64 action kicked in and i just had to play them for myself. so i downloaded project 64 along with a copy of blast corps hoping to regress to my youth.

however, i found that the graphics for the world map to be off and wondered if it was the rom or my computer that was the cause, so i googled it and wound up here. i spent a few more hours reading away on here and wikipedia in hope to understand this cool medium more, but i still have a few questions that are puzzling me...

1] how exactly does somebody make a rom image of an n64 game?
from what i can gather they are pretty much just copying the code straight out, which means in theory that the rom is exactly the same as original game. it is then the emulators job to best simulate an n64 to make it appear as intended. so am i right to assume that its just the emulators that aren't exact in producing an accurate copy, or is it a problem with the roms, or maybe both? this leads me into my next question

2] if the technology improves, will the rom version of, for example, body harvest now work properly... or would i have to download a new version of that rom?
well i have read that this game currently doesn't work properly (the character only moves one way, or something) so i never bothered to download it. however were i to download it now, would that same rom work if someone was to create a compatible plug-in for the game?

3] why do people keep bad rom files in a game's zip folder?
it confuses as to why there are copies of a bad imaged rom, when there is a perferctly good one located in the same folder. is there a reason for this?

well thats it for now, i would really appreaciate it if someone could answers my questions as i'm very keen to learn more.

- dan

thanks for such a speedy and insightful response agozer. it's greatly appreaciated and i'm finding the whole process so intriguing.

i feel the best way to learn about something is to 'disect' it and look at the pieces inside. could you advise a good tool for doing so? idealy i'm looking to find out how all the music and sound effects work for ocarina of time =]

thanks for the further reading, i'll check that out now. i realise that it was a bit of a noobish question to ask, but then everyone has to start somewhere.

i do know a fair bit about programming, though not enough to probe a whole rom and know what to look for. i'll play the safe option and start with 'hacking' snes games for now, and hopefully progress from there.

i find it fascinating that they can compile all the music, sfx, graphics, then all the ai and code needed to bind everything together into such a small file