With the introduction of online downloads most gamers, especially young ones with little income, would rather steal games than buy them. Unfortunately I’m the minority – and keep in mind even I don’t have a lockout on emulation – and most people just emulate everything all the time. Sure, if I am already informed and want to own the game for my own reasons then I’ll buy it, but if I just want to show someone what Secret of Mana was like I’m not going to waste a week and $50. I also don’t have to hunt down various brick & mortar used gaming stores and potentially even have to take to eBay and wait a week. This isn’t as valid for those that have a Genesis, but I still feel that’s a small population of gamers. I’m a purist through and through, but if I seem to remember a game like Sparkster being great when I was a kid, I may choose to briefly emulate it instead of spending the $30-$50 of going out and buying a Sega Genesis and the game for an hour of nostalgia. It’s as common as any other media download on the Internet and in most cases it’s just as illegal.
Despite companies fighting emulation, like Sony did with the Bleem! emulator for the Playstation that appeared on Dreamcast and PC, Sony probably saw new software customers as a result and made money off of it.Įmulated games, like digital music, is something any retro gamer has probably done from time to time.
In many cases the emulators themselves are perfectly legal thanks to expired patents and defunct companies, not to mention that modern consoles make their money on purchased software and not hardware. This also allows programmers to create de-makes and hacked versions of games never thought of before – there are versions of Donkey Kong Country on the NES and Left 4 Dead on the SNES that wouldn’t even run on the console’s original hardware but work in emulators.
In many cases the consoles themselves can be improved upon – Playstation emulators can definitely enhance the blocky graphics from the late 90s and the recent Wii emulator, Dolphin, can make Super Mario Galaxy look gorgeous in 720p.
I’m even betting there are 360 and PS3 emulators out there, but they run too sluggish on modern technology to be worthwhile.
It is true that Crysis looks better on PC, but to have a PC try to re-create a Playstation 3 and then try to run the PS3 version of Crysis is just an overuse of resources and requires too much power to be worth it.Įvery console imaginable has been emulated from the Odyssey to the Wii. Recent consoles like the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 strip away the processing power core and have high-end graphical processors, which makes emulation on computers difficult. This all changed starting with the 3D generation, consoles like the Playstation and Saturn and technical specs. Thanks to most consoles having limited hardware due to cost issues, early consoles were capable of being emulated on computers of the day.
In the beginning this was limited to computers because they were the only format capable of re-creating consoles effectively, but lately this has been expanded to portable and home consoles. Emulation is defined as “the act of imitating” and that is precisely what emulation means in terms of video games: different hardware attempting to imitate other hardware. We will discuss what emulation is, reasons why it exists and what ethical and legal choices you may need to make prior to diving in. While my rant was less than ideal, I felt it was time to discuss the often unwritten world of emulation. On our most recent episode of The B-Team Podcast a listener wrote in to ask about whether or not we consider it right to emulate a game that was more than eighteen years old.