Do you use Emulation software?

lwu81 · March 5, 2002

Hi I'm a student writing a paper on the evolution and history of emulation. I wanted to get a perspective from both the developers and users of emulation software. these questions are intended for a user, and shouldn't take too long.

1. What emulation systems and games do you own?

2. Which is your favorite and why?

3. Did you also play these games on the original systems?

4. Do you play emulated games that you never played on the real console systems before?

5. What do you feel you derive from the emulators?

6. How do the emulators compare to the “real deal”?

7. Do you feel emulation is harmful in anyway?

8. Why do you use an emulator?

9. How did you find your emulator and emulated games?

Mindfield · March 6, 2002

quote:

Originally posted by Lori:

Hi I'm a student writing a paper on the evolution and history of emulation. I wanted to get a perspective from both the developers and users of emulation software. these questions are intended for a user, and shouldn't take too long.

1. What emulation systems and games do you own?

Um ... it may make for a shorter list if I mention those I don't have or use: Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and any system post-1994. (Jaguar excluded) I don't go in much for systems that are still around, even if they're only hanging by a thread. :-)

quote:

2. Which is your favorite and why?

Wow... that's tough. It's a tie between the Atari systems: 2600, 8-bit, and ST. Why? Because I've owned all of 'em, and this is my only recourse to relive those glory days. :-)

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3. Did you also play these games on the original systems?

I have owned an Atari 2600, numerous models of ATari 8-bit, and several Atari ST models, as well as a Colecovision back in the day. I've played games on all of these, of course, pretty well every game console and computer released in North America. Foriegn machines (Spectrum, BBC, Amstrad, Enterprise, etc.) I never got to use until I got full swing into emulation.

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4. Do you play emulated games that you never played on the real console systems before?

All the time. It's part of the fun of emulation: Getting to see and play all those classic systems you were never able to, and compare them with those you did on an objective level. Discovering the disparate technologies of the day, and many of the similarities, was fascinating. Moreso was digging deeper into things like the demo scene to see how far the real hackers could push that technology, to see what they could make it do that perhaps its designers never even imagined possible. I call it nostalgia-by-proxy ... reliving days I never lived to begin with through those that did, and which existed, to my complete lack of awareness, alongside all the technology I grew up with. With the emulators of the systems I did own, it's like being able to go back to those days, but having access to all the things I didn't in reality.

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5. What do you feel you derive from the emulators?

A number of things.

- Nostalgia, for those emulators that let me work with the systems I owned and worked with back in the day.

- Education. Learning about all the different technologies that existed alongside mine, but which I never knew about due to its lack of availability on this continent. It gives me a broader sense of where technology game from, how we've arrived at the point in technology that we are at now, a better understanding of where its roots lie. By having access to all of it, I get to understand everything more cohesively than the progressive but piecemeal history lesson I got as I lived it.

- An understanding of the culture behind the technology. Each machine gained its own following. Everyone had their own reasons for choosing the platform that they did. Whether it was a decision based on what best suited the person from the selection that was available, or one based on a patient and reasoned comparison of the technology that was available, or even a biased decision made because the person had friends who owned the same brand. Paralell to that is the attitudes and technological mores of the period. Growing up, I lived through and participated in the IBM vs. Apple vs. Atari vs. Commodore wars, which existed as long as these machines did, and proliferated through online bulletin boards. But these existed here because those were the machines that were widely available here. In Europe, there were mostly similar choices, but many other choices were avilable too: BBC Micro, Acorn, Sinclair, Enterprise, D-i-c-k Smyth (I had to hyphenate that because this message board censors out any naughty words like Dic--er, you know), and a whole slew of others tempted buyers with boasts of one flavour or another, and they all enjoyed their own brand of popularity for various periods of time. And they, too, had their own holier-than-thou wars. On the Sinclair Spectrum, for example, you'll see demo coders often taking the piss out of Atari and Commodore -- something I found amusing, perhaps because tehcnologically, the Spectrum was lacking by comparison. (It was still a great machine in its own right, don't get me wrong, and had a very large and loyal user base clustered largely in the UK) All of this makes for an interesting education into the different technologies and the people that used them.

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6. How do the emulators compare to the “real deal”?

Nothing compares to the real deal because you can't replicate the look and feel of the real deal on a PC or Mac. Functionally, emulators work with varying degrees of accuracy and compatibility. Many are almost entirely compatible. Some are a little lacking. RealSpec for example, a Sinclair Spectrum emulator, is billed by its authors as the most accurate Spectrum emulator on the face of the Earth, emulating the Speccy to virtual perfection. And it's no false boast, either. Moreover, though I find such features superfluous and detracting from the purpose of emulation, RealSpec tries to improve on the original design, allowing for stereo sound separation and video enhancements. Then there's PCAE and Z26, the two top Atari 2600 emulators. These, too, are almost perfect in their emulation of Atari's king of the consoles. On the other hand, you've got emulators like UltraHLE, a Nintendo emulator, and ePSXe, a PlayStation/PSOne emulator, both of which use high-level emulation, and which are problematic and difficult to configure at the best of times, and whose emulation, while good, is a long way from perfect.

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7. Do you feel emulation is harmful in anyway?

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Only insofar as it can cause severe dry-mouth and stomach pains as a result of being so addictive you forget to eat and drink. :-) Okay, seriously, classic emulators -- emulators of long-dead systems -- are in no way harmful as far as I'm concerned. There are many intellectual property squatters who will insist with their last breath that it violates their potential for profits if they ever decide to re-release any of the games. As far as I'm concerned that's a load of bunk: Retro-packs like Activision Classics packs and Namco Classics, are like "Best Of" CDs: You may own every bloody CD by an artist, but you'll still buy that Best Of CD, won't you? Emulation is like that -- and I'm just as guilty of it. I have virtually every emulator for every system and every game and program for them all, arcade included, yet I still salivate and yank out my wallet every time a new retro compilation hits the shelves. I think most of us do. We're nutters that way. :-)

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8. Why do you use an emulator?

See Q5.

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9. How did you find your emulator and emulated games?

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About the closest approximation of an answer I can give you is this: Everywhere. Okay, no, not literally everywhere, but there are literally dozens of popular, well-known websites that deal with emulation, and hundreds of lesser-known small-time websites about it. There are also loads of newsgroups on Usenet, both for discussion and for distributing emulators and files for them. Though it may not be popular enough to catch the notice of major newspapers, or be considered a big enough market for it to be made profitable on a commercial level, it's nevertheless popular enough to attract hundreds of thousands of people all over the 'net, and the numbers just keep growing as more and more pople learn, mostly through word of mouth or web searches, about the wonders of emulation.

[ 03-06-2002: Message edited by: Mindfield ]