I love it. My unused Wii, WiiU, 3DS, and Vita were all given new life once emulators were installed on them. Plus, I love older games, warts and all. Modern studios do their best to copy them but they certianly don't make 'em like they used to!
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
What are your thoughts on emulation?
- Thread starter oni-link
- Start date
"I love emulation and think it's the best way to play ALL games"
I played BotW on Switch 2 years ago, then again on CEMU last year... Vivid colors, less fog, smooth framerate, high resolution and much much more.
It's a different game.
Also unbreakable weapons because after hundreds of hours of suffering, I needed to get a break (ha !) from this shitty mechanic
Kinda sad that most people will never experience such a gem in its true glory.
I played BotW on Switch 2 years ago, then again on CEMU last year... Vivid colors, less fog, smooth framerate, high resolution and much much more.
It's a different game.
Also unbreakable weapons because after hundreds of hours of suffering, I needed to get a break (ha !) from this shitty mechanic
Kinda sad that most people will never experience such a gem in its true glory.
This but unironically
Love Emulation. Best thing is having all old games available in one place and not having to switch consoles and dig around for games and worry about glitches.
I think it's great for a lot of reasons.
- Preserves games. This includes niche and dead platforms as well as licensed games. The arcade scene alone has helped preserve games that were never re-released or are at risk of rotting hardware.
- Playing at higher resolutions. Getting PS3 and Wii U games to render at 1080p or even seeing games with larger jumps like with the 3DS is incredible and shows how the industry consistently fails to capitalize on HD re-releases.
- Ease of use for game hacking/modding. New textures, rom hacks, and improvements can be made to games and have an ease-of-use factor found with an emulator far more than trying to do all of the applying, patching, transferring, and installing to older, actual hardware. Emulators in this sense give console and handheld games the same level of customizing akin to that of native PC games.
Unless the system is one currently supported on the market, I eventually migrate my library and experience to that of emulation.
- Preserves games. This includes niche and dead platforms as well as licensed games. The arcade scene alone has helped preserve games that were never re-released or are at risk of rotting hardware.
- Playing at higher resolutions. Getting PS3 and Wii U games to render at 1080p or even seeing games with larger jumps like with the 3DS is incredible and shows how the industry consistently fails to capitalize on HD re-releases.
- Ease of use for game hacking/modding. New textures, rom hacks, and improvements can be made to games and have an ease-of-use factor found with an emulator far more than trying to do all of the applying, patching, transferring, and installing to older, actual hardware. Emulators in this sense give console and handheld games the same level of customizing akin to that of native PC games.
Unless the system is one currently supported on the market, I eventually migrate my library and experience to that of emulation.
If I can get a game emulated on consoles like through the virtual console or ps classics I'll go for that otherwise I'm fine with emulators on pc.
The older I get the less hardware I want set up or just laying around. So emulation lets me experience the history of the medium when corporations don't care to
The older I get the less hardware I want set up or just laying around. So emulation lets me experience the history of the medium when corporations don't care to
Emulation is one of the best things that happened to gaming.
Replaying XCX with those visuals last year was amazing
Replaying XCX with those visuals last year was amazing
The only problem I have with emulation is that it makes playing the old classics so easy, it's hard to concentrate on one game at a time.
I love emulation, it's my preferred way to play old games. Some games may be troublesome to run well but when it works they can run better than on the original hardware. Also some cheat features like save states and frame skipping can make some really annoying sections in old games more palatable.
From the standpoint of hobbyist emulators for video game hardware, I think they're cool.
But emulation in general is used all the time in professional fields, e.g. app development with Android emulators, or with virtual machines that allow for quickly and easily starting a replicable sandboxed version of Windows or Linux. But also on the professional level, video game emulation is a thing (e.g. Game Boy and GBA dev kits supposedly shipped with an emulator) and of course there are many released game products such as retro collections that use emulation.
Regarding Nintendo, I'm guessing that you're referring to the rumor that they downloaded their games off the Internet to sell on the Virtual Console. The rumor started because VC games have the same added iNES headers you find with pirated games on the Internet. But the reason Nintendo's games have the iNES header is very likely due to Tomohiro Kawase (the creator of the iNES format) working at Nintendo.
Also, if Nintendo downloaded NES ROMs off the Internet to sell, then they likely would have also downloaded Famicom Disk System games as well, but official Nintendo FDS dumps from the era either use no headers, or a headered format that's different from the format most hobbyist users would dump or pirate.
Here is a great post here on ResetEra from user Krvavi Abadas who thoroughly researched this very question and the work of Tomohiro Kawase (Post #32).
www.resetera.com
But emulation in general is used all the time in professional fields, e.g. app development with Android emulators, or with virtual machines that allow for quickly and easily starting a replicable sandboxed version of Windows or Linux. But also on the professional level, video game emulation is a thing (e.g. Game Boy and GBA dev kits supposedly shipped with an emulator) and of course there are many released game products such as retro collections that use emulation.
Note: A "virtual machine" is an emulation of a computer environment, but most agree that virtual machines should not be seen as "emulators".
Regarding Nintendo, I'm guessing that you're referring to the rumor that they downloaded their games off the Internet to sell on the Virtual Console. The rumor started because VC games have the same added iNES headers you find with pirated games on the Internet. But the reason Nintendo's games have the iNES header is very likely due to Tomohiro Kawase (the creator of the iNES format) working at Nintendo.
Also, if Nintendo downloaded NES ROMs off the Internet to sell, then they likely would have also downloaded Famicom Disk System games as well, but official Nintendo FDS dumps from the era either use no headers, or a headered format that's different from the format most hobbyist users would dump or pirate.
Here is a great post here on ResetEra from user Krvavi Abadas who thoroughly researched this very question and the work of Tomohiro Kawase (Post #32).
Tomohiro Kawase might've been hired by Nintendo to put ROM headers into VC [Updated Dec. 1, 2018]
Update (December 1, 2018): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update (October 12, 2018): and Follow-up 3: https://www.resetera.com/posts/13741800/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...
www.resetera.com
I have a prety extensive old systems/games collection and, as such, prefer to go down that road but I use emulation for convenience purposes when it comes down to disc based systems (because ODEs are rare and hard to come by/very expensive)
I'm more interested in FPGA implementations though as they tend to be far more faithful to the original hardware in the end.
I'm more interested in FPGA implementations though as they tend to be far more faithful to the original hardware in the end.
I mostly use emulation for old games that are ridiculously expensive and not available to purchase digitally. Sometimes I do like to emulate games to replay them in higher resolution.
Edit: If a game is available digitally I'll always buy it, since I am against piracy.
Edit: If a game is available digitally I'll always buy it, since I am against piracy.
It's amazing. Preserves and improves games, in particular japanese ones as companies were clueless regarding PC gaming. Most of them still are but at least more games are being released on PC. And regarding piracy… piracy is a service problem. Put those old japanese games and first party games on PC with decent ports and Steam servers would not be able to cope with all the demand.
Emulation is the only thing that's going to keep these older games playable as the orginal consoles, cartridges and discs break. There's only a certain number of each system and game left and that's only going to dwindle as time goes on.
For that reason, it's important.
I've already moved onto FPGA systems (Super NT and RetroUSB AVS) for my cartridge systems and software emulation for my PS1 games.
A FPGA PlayStation would be amazing.
For that reason, it's important.
I've already moved onto FPGA systems (Super NT and RetroUSB AVS) for my cartridge systems and software emulation for my PS1 games.
A FPGA PlayStation would be amazing.
Emulation is pretty dope. It's fun to tinker around with hacking consoles, dumping your games and running them on PC at higher resolutions, framerates, with extra graphical effects, etc. Seeing certain games like Breath of the Wild running at 4K/60 with extra graphical effects and mods is pretty amazing
Amazing for preservation.
Amazing since backward compatibility in the console space is not the norm.
Amazing to offer a better IQ ( and sometimes fps, textures etc ) than I would get on my console.
I choose my cpu specificaly to improve my experience with Cemu, xenoblade X look sooo good with a better IQ. I actually also stopped playing tokyo mirage sessions on my Wii U at the time just so I could finish it on my computer when it's compatibility on Cemu would get good enough.
Heck I haven't done a new game + ( or touched any of the season pass content ) for xenoblade 2 even thought I loved the game, because I want to save that experience for the day emulation allow me to do it with a clean IQ ( and likely the ability to cheat with the gatcha ).
Amazing since backward compatibility in the console space is not the norm.
Amazing to offer a better IQ ( and sometimes fps, textures etc ) than I would get on my console.
I choose my cpu specificaly to improve my experience with Cemu, xenoblade X look sooo good with a better IQ. I actually also stopped playing tokyo mirage sessions on my Wii U at the time just so I could finish it on my computer when it's compatibility on Cemu would get good enough.
Heck I haven't done a new game + ( or touched any of the season pass content ) for xenoblade 2 even thought I loved the game, because I want to save that experience for the day emulation allow me to do it with a clean IQ ( and likely the ability to cheat with the gatcha ).
I prefer to play on original hardware if possible, but I totally love emulation. Let's preserve as much as we can!
I like emulation, but hate most emulators and the false notion of "everything runs perfect". No it doesn't. Unless we're talking up to 16 bit games only, from then on it's a rocky road of glitches, games that directly won't run, specs out of this world or my favorite: games that people say run perfectly... if you don't play with sound.
Nah, I'll take original hardware and a crt any day. Also sick of seeing business selling arcade cabinets and plug and play controllers with the entire mame, genesis, super nintendo etc romset without any kind of license.
Nah, I'll take original hardware and a crt any day. Also sick of seeing business selling arcade cabinets and plug and play controllers with the entire mame, genesis, super nintendo etc romset without any kind of license.
Absolutely amazing in every way.
Just think of the amount of things that probably wouldn't exist today without emulation:
Just think of the amount of things that probably wouldn't exist today without emulation:
- Game preservation. Makes it possible to experience games that are no longer available, or at least not for any decent price.
- Makes it possible to play arcade games that would normally only be playable on huge, clunky cabinets (thinking of racing games), which no almost no one has room for.
- Makes it possible to extract sprites and backgrounds for various uses. (Think of all those Newgrounds videos!)
- The ability to use emulation settings (enable/disable backgrounds) and hacks made it possible to dissect games to find out tons of secret/unused/etc. trivia about them.
- TAS speedruns.
- Made it possible to easily extract and produce unofficial soundtrack compilations. If you're listening to the soundtrack of a game on YouTube, it's most likely thanks to emulation, because very few people would go through the trouble of recording from actual hardware.
- Rom hacks leading to brand new experiences or improvements.
- Unofficial translations.
- Made it possible to beat games I never would have otherwise (Hello, Battletoads!).
- Many others I'm probably forgetting!
I like it but for some reason my brain only sees it as a novelty. I don't think Ive ever completed an emulated game.
Another thing Im picky about are games not being widescreen and blurry images. Especially dialogue boxes in rpgs or any kind of menu. The new high res character and background models clash really bad with blurry as fuck dialogue box and other 2d images. Id like to replay stuff like Xenosaga or Shadow Hearts but lack of widescreen and blurry ass text and menus really puts a damper on things.
Another thing Im picky about are games not being widescreen and blurry images. Especially dialogue boxes in rpgs or any kind of menu. The new high res character and background models clash really bad with blurry as fuck dialogue box and other 2d images. Id like to replay stuff like Xenosaga or Shadow Hearts but lack of widescreen and blurry ass text and menus really puts a damper on things.
I will typically only emulate games that didn't have an official western release or games that I own but no longer desire to play on their original hardware. I'd rather pay the devs if possible if I am going to play their game.
I usually try to play on my original consoles if possible. I had my good ol' childhood NES nodded with the Hi-Def NES kit from Kevtris, and my SNES with the RGB mod with component cables from Retrovision, and a Retrotink2X.
But I'm fine with emulation when no other options are possible.
But I'm fine with emulation when no other options are possible.
There's really no contest.
On an emulation setup you can
- Reduce input latency to CRT levels even on a modern HD display,
- You can improve visual quality well beyond what the original hardware could ever do
- You can add accessibility options like real time text to speech and translation
- You can run 3D games at high resolutions
- There are original controller clones and in many cases you can outright connect original controllers
And you can do this all from a single box without needing to dedicate shelf space to old consoles
On an emulation setup you can
- Reduce input latency to CRT levels even on a modern HD display,
- You can improve visual quality well beyond what the original hardware could ever do
- You can add accessibility options like real time text to speech and translation
- You can run 3D games at high resolutions
- There are original controller clones and in many cases you can outright connect original controllers
And you can do this all from a single box without needing to dedicate shelf space to old consoles
It's nothing less than the single best thing to happen to videogames.
I almost resent playing PS4 games now because they don't automatically have rewind, save states, user configurable shaders and all sorts of other visual and QOL options.
Ironically, retro gaming often seems more cutting edge than modern games because of the power and functionality of emulators.
I almost resent playing PS4 games now because they don't automatically have rewind, save states, user configurable shaders and all sorts of other visual and QOL options.
Ironically, retro gaming often seems more cutting edge than modern games because of the power and functionality of emulators.
Love it for old games. Wish there was a legit way to get old roms for cheap. Rom sites are probably worse than porn sites for infecting your computer with some shit.
Very ambivalent towards it for an active console though. Would rather people buy it on the hardware though I understand not everyone who is into this stuff is pirating games.
Very ambivalent towards it for an active console though. Would rather people buy it on the hardware though I understand not everyone who is into this stuff is pirating games.
Generally, I would rather use original hardware. Emulators can have inaccuracies. Every time something weird happens in an emulated game, I end up wondering if it was actually like that, or if the emulator screwed something up. On real hardware, I don't wonder. The real hardware always does what the real hardware does.
There are exceptions, like bsnes, which is practically flawless.
That being said, I applaud emulation on principle, and I consider it a necessary step toward the future. And it's getting better all the time.
Shoutouts to the Dolphin team for constantly being impressive.
There are exceptions, like bsnes, which is practically flawless.
That being said, I applaud emulation on principle, and I consider it a necessary step toward the future. And it's getting better all the time.
Shoutouts to the Dolphin team for constantly being impressive.
One day I tried cleaning my battletoads cart for like 15 minutes, took it apart, cleaned it, reassembled it, and the light was still flashing red. The NES had a nice and tight replacement connector in the system.
hello emulation
I saw that the other day, looks cool AF. I have some extra buttons - I may try making one of those after I finish my arcade emu setup
hello emulation
I saw that the other day, looks cool AF. I have some extra buttons - I may try making one of those after I finish my arcade emu setup