Emulation: The Good and The Bad

Emulation can be useful for preserving games that'll likely never see the time of day again. However on the other hand, some people question it's ethics. I'm personally more of a physical copy guy myself however I do think emulation is useful in some ways. 

Would do you guys think?

Essentially what you said - it's great for playing games that will never, ever see a re-release or source (or reverse-engineering project, for that matter), but it just pales compared with a real port.

The problem I have with emulation is how buggy it is and how badly it runs the games. I understand it's very hardware dependant but still, what good is trying to play a PS2 game with skipping and glitches everywhere, not to mention how frustrating setting up controls is. I've yet to find out how to properly use mouse aiming in things like Dolphin or Project64. I'd much rather have a port but unfortunately it's not that easy.

2 hours ago, Nevander said:

The problem I have with emulation is how buggy it is and how badly it runs the games. I understand it's very hardware dependant but still, what good is trying to play a PS2 game with skipping and glitches everywhere, not to mention how frustrating setting up controls is. I've yet to find out how to properly use mouse aiming in things like Dolphin or Project64. I'd much rather have a port but unfortunately it's not that easy.

Why not just plug in a controller and configure the emulator to use it? I got an xbox 360 controller specifically for emulation (and the lego games I have on Steam)

Digital re-releases of those old games have been limited to only a small percentage of the system's library. Nintendo has always had a habit of inflating the "damage" emulation does to them and often they will go after titles they don't even legally own let alone aren't for sale anywhere.

Modern official emulators also tend to be borderline trash, on par with official source ports of PC games, and often running the unofficial port/emulator is better. I don't buy the "it's just not as good as real hardware" excuse as emulators have settings to tinker with, and expecting an onboard Intel chip to run PS2 or later titles is unreasonable anyway. Nor do I care if the sound is 1% different.

The anti-emulation crowd also tends to come off as insufferable more often than not out of snobbery over anything else. I get it- you spent $20K on game carts that you have to own a house big enough for a family of 4 to keep them in. Good for you. I'm not impressed. Getting mad at people for playing the same games for free doesn't make you the better person. And if you think you need praise because you own Action 52 or Barbie to "complete the collection", sorry, but there's a hard line between enjoying video games and hoarding material goods. Buying stuff you will never play to fill a slot doesn't mean you're owed praise. I can't even buy their "ethics" argument as buying used games doesn't give the company a dime either- and in fact the entire push by the industry to kill physical copies and ban used sales has been due to that. So you buying used copies doesn't make you any better than me over what is essentially a non-issue.

My point is, if you're one of the hardcore collectors who has to brag, don't act better than everyone else or come down on anyone else for not being a "collector" because in the end you're less about the games and more about showing off when you're packing your house with junk you don't even want so you can pretend to be an elitist. I don't play games or buy products to impress other people. Also, when the day inevitable comes, someone is probably going to be shoveling your collection to a charity shop or a landfill to get rid of it because they will either think it's worthless or won't want to deal with selling it, and that 'real hardware" inevitably fails. Disc media can degrade or peel off layers, PCBs oxidize, capacitors leak, EPROMs(all those prototypes or rare Asian cartridges collectors hoard and refuse to dump) wipe themselves after so many years... and newer consoles are far less reliable than older ones due to their disc drives, flash storage, more complex builds...

I'm more of a real hardware guy myself, but for the longest time emulation was my only option for playing a lot of the games that I had lost over the years. Nowadays I'm all about the flashcarts and softmods, although I've recently begun dabbling into the FPGA systems. I have the (plastic) Analogue consoles (though I'm buggered if I'm dropping PS5 money on a glorified NES) and I hope to get my hands on a MiSTer in the near future as those systems seem to yield much more accurate results than the likes of Retroarch et al.

I still keep the emu software on hand for practicality's sake, though. For some systems, the emulation is in a fantastic place. WipEout Pulse on PPSSPP running at 4K60 looks on par with the PS4 remaster. Same goes for Burnout 2 on Dolphin.

That said, give me a half-decent Saturn or N64 emulator and I'll have your babies.

It amazes me that certain communities out there think everything to do with emulation including emulators themselves is illegal but it's only the roms which are illegal because they are from copyrighted material.

I respect purist and I like the idea of them preserving endangered history like a museum. However I'm not one of them and prefer Good Old Gaming style digital copies and if any tweaks are made to make it more playable in modern systems, the better.

This video perfectly sums up why emulation is so important. I'm a "real hardware if possible" kind of guy too, but emulation and roms are crucial for preservation.

Ethics aside, without emulators many of the TASes of console games wouldn't exist, and even some speedruns of console games might not have developed as quickly as they did. Let's also not forget things like "crowd-control" features, randomizers, and stuff like the crazy "ALTTP-SuperMetroid mix-up". None of that would exist if emulators didn't exist and/or people didn't somehow manage to datamine ROMs.

Having said that, if you like something you play on an emulator, then maybe also consider getting a physical copy if you can.

14 hours ago, Nevander said:

The problem I have with emulation is how buggy it is and how badly it runs the games. I understand it's very hardware dependant but still, what good is trying to play a PS2 game with skipping and glitches everywhere, not to mention how frustrating setting up controls is. I've yet to find out how to properly use mouse aiming in things like Dolphin or Project64. I'd much rather have a port but unfortunately it's not that easy.

Unless you're trying to play an obscure title, PCSX2 plays pretty much anything, and depending on the game you can play it on a potato (Kingdom Hearts 1 played just fine on my dual core Pentium Toshiba from 2010). I've completed many whole games on it. Yeah, there are graphical glitches and sometimes there are audio issues but it's still the best way to play PS2 if you don't have any other way.

I like emulation. First emu I ran into was Nesticle back in like, 99 maybe? Then I had JNES, ZSNES and Gens. As a kid I could not really tell the difference, but as an adult who has built many RetroPie stations I notice many inconsistencies that does not plague the games on real hardware (input lag being the biggest). I understand that it's important to preserve these games and consoles that will be lost to time. Nintendo and others are getting better at making classic games available but compared to the emulation community, the margin is incredibly wide. Plus, without emulation, I would have never discovered many arcade games and some gems on the NES and SNES, and the incredible ROM hacks (Final Fantasy Restored, FF3 NES English translation, Super Metroid Redesign, to name a few) that exist.

Real consoles all day long, but emulation is cool too, and with more devs striving for accuracy it's only going to get better.

I have quite a few emulators on my PC and PSP and I also collect things but I cannot abide those elitists who say things like "Games are better experienced on the original hardware using original controllers". I remember back in the day using my GameBoy, although while fun and at the time we didn't know better it was sometimes a hassle if you were running out of battery, or you were in a room without much light, and it's much better now using my PSP to play those games due to the superior screen of the PSP.

I often use emulation for games that never released in Europe, games that'll likely never be re-released or games that are simply way out of my price range to buy. 

If I like a game enough, I consider buying a physical copy of it if it's under £20. (never spend more than £20 on a game unless it's something truly worthy of the money you're about to spend, no point in spending £300 on Rule of Rose when you can get over 20 games off that if you're smart with money)

if I hadn't emulated Wild Guns on SNES, chances are I would have never bought Wild Guns Reloaded. Same goes with the Super Robot Wars series and Xenogears

If I enjoy it, only then will I consider buying a physical copy of it. I don't emulate games from the 2010's, only 1970's-2000's as those have been out for years and are all basically second hand now.

Also it's good for playing games you wouldn't spend more than £5 on like Bubsy 3D.

Far as I can tell, a lot of people who emulate games - arguably the majority of them - completely neglect the fact that emulation is theoretically illegal unless you own the original system and a copy of the original game. Which is why I do my best to limit my own emulating to the games I own. Of course, therein lies quite a major loophole, as there's no way of enforcing that policy. It's pretty much entirely up to the individual whether they choose to follow it or not.

That said, I do understand people choosing to emulate games they don't own in some cases, especially if the prices are ludicrously high on the second-hand market. Even with my strict self-imposed policy when it comes to emulation, I am willing to make exceptions once in a while. Example: I've been wanting to play Castlevania: SotN for a good while, but the prices I keep seeing on eBay for a copy of it are way too high for my wallet to handle, so emulating it is looking like an option.

1 hour ago, MFG38 said:

That said, I do understand people choosing to emulate games they don't own in some cases, especially if the prices are ludicrously high on the second-hand market. Even with my strict self-imposed policy when it comes to emulation, I am willing to make exceptions once in a while. Example: I've been wanting to play Castlevania: SotN for a good while, but the prices I keep seeing on eBay for a copy of it are way too high for my wallet to handle, so emulating it is looking like an option.

Ditto.

It's the same for piracy in general for me. And honestly I think people expecting others to spend a lot of money on games that aren't commercially available anymore "bEcAuSe iT's iLlEgAl OtHeRwIsE" are just insane. I don't care if that makes me less "squeaky clean" in the view, I am never going to spend unreasonable amounts of money on such products.

5 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Far as I can tell, a lot of people who emulate games - arguably the majority of them - completely neglect the fact that emulation is theoretically illegal unless you own the original system and a copy of the original game.

Some games have copyright protection where you have to actually make a back up of the game yourself, which is fine if the game is on a CD-ROM or DVD, but not so easy to do if the game is older and comes on a cartridge.

I do sometimes download more modern games on PC, but that's just to see how the game runs on my system, and if the game performs well then I'll buy a copy of it, usually on Steam but I do like physical copies of games too.

Everything that's on Nintendo consoles is just better on PC with emulators. Looking forward to the inevitable Switch emulator.

The PS1 and PSP emulators are very good too and better than playing on original hardware.

On 3/7/2020 at 8:53 AM, MFG38 said:

Far as I can tell, a lot of people who emulate games - arguably the majority of them - completely neglect the fact that emulation is theoretically illegal unless you own the original system and a copy of the original game. Which is why I do my best to limit my own emulating to the games I own. Of course, therein lies quite a major loophole, as there's no way of enforcing that policy. It's pretty much entirely up to the individual whether they choose to follow it or not.

 

That said, I do understand people choosing to emulate games they don't own in some cases, especially if the prices are ludicrously high on the second-hand market. Even with my strict self-imposed policy when it comes to emulation, I am willing to make exceptions once in a while. Example: I've been wanting to play Castlevania: SotN for a good while, but the prices I keep seeing on eBay for a copy of it are way too high for my wallet to handle, so emulating it is looking like an option.

That's what I do, I really only emulate stuff unless it's way out my limits. (e.g region locked or ludicrously expensive)

The original Wild Guns is a game I adore but it's so expensive that it would take me months in order to afford i.

Couple thoughts 

1. Emulators are not illegal and there is no ethical issues using them.

2. Some games/systems are just better emulated. Some games even run better emulated and you can use what ever controller of your liking so that is nice
3. Sharing and downloading roms is where the legality issues are

4. Making your own backups is NOT illegal if it's for private use only
5. Downloading copyrighted material that is not available anymore may or may not be legal even if you already paid for it. It is currently still a grey area even tho archival or private backup purposes of material you already own would make ethically a pretty strong case for it. 

The case of Bleem! , a commercially sold emulator might be an interesting read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!

Also different countries have different laws for creating backups, downloading roms and other stuff so there is no definite answer for the legality of things.

So my thoughts are based on where i live and nothing else

20 hours ago, Yourfacedotcom said:

inevitable Switch emulator

Yuzu? Though it's still relatively bare-bones at this point, and mostly serves as a proof-of-concept.

This video also perfectly explains my view on the legality of emulators. If you have some time to spare, watch it.

When it comes to older stuff, life's too short to worry about the legality angle. Emulate and have a good time without thinking about it. If having a piece of plastic in your possession makes you feel better, then by all means go for it. Just remember that piece of plastic isn't going to give two craps about you when you're dead and buried.

Lots of things are illegal, yet people do them every day. Jaywalking. Switching highway lanes without using a turn signal. Having private sex a way your state doesn't want you to. The list goes on.

I do make it a point to support the modern games industry and do not pirate modern stuff. I even still purchase the occasional PS3 and Xbox 360 download, along with the occasional Wii U Virtual Console title, for instance. If it's still available for sale, new, via its original platform, I will support it. If it's not, then it's free game for me. Software emulation, real hardware flash carts, optical drive emulator replacements for real classic console disc drives, whatever--I'm all over it.

Buying tons of retro games that are mostly going to sit on my shelf is a waste of money, and at this point in my life, is pretty irresponsible. Some will try to justify staying away from emulation because of the, "I feel warm 'n fuzzy when I'm playing legally" thing, but at the end of the day it just doesn't matter. Just play however works best for you. If you feel guilty when you emulate, you really shouldn't.

22 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Yuzu?

22 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

This video also perfectly explains my view on the legality of emulators. If you have some time to spare, watch it.

Topic aside, I really like Mr. Linden's programming skills.

On 3/8/2020 at 7:06 AM, TheNoob_Gamer said:

Yuzu? Though it's still relatively bare-bones at this point, and mostly serves as a proof-of-concept.

 

 

Sure, that's fine I can wait. I've got hundreds of games I still want to play on other systems and PC. Besides Nintendo lied about Metroid Prime 4 being in development at launch, SMT V is like still another 2 years away from a US release and there is no F-Zero in sight. I can wait to play them on PC in better resolution and for free.

EDIT: Oh I don't give a rats ass about the "legality" of emulation. I will support games from devs that I enjoy with my money.

Companies are well within their right to take legal action against rom distributors, however that doesn't mean that they can't be abusive with that right. Nintendo in particular seems like they're intent on keeping one hell of a vice grip on their old property as if downloading roms would drive them out of business. Just because they have the right doesn't mean they're not pinching pennies like a bitch.

Also, downloading a game from a developer that doesn't enforce their right of action is still technically illegal, but if they don't care about doing anything about it, you shouldn't either. If you ask me, copyright laws in general need to be modernized, and there needs to be better legislation regarding orphan works.

I don't think anyone should be attacked for merely downloading roms either. People need to stop looking at the law as if it is a paragon of morals, and realize that it is a social contract meant to keep society in order. A very important role that should be respected, but not what you should base your ethical standards on, not exactly anyway. The law is a reflection of our collective moral, not the other way around.

So in sum: Don't let anyone look down on you for downloading roms, and don't give anyone or any company the high moral ground just because they have the right to something.

14 minutes ago, HorrorMovieGuy said:

People need to stop looking at the law as if it is a paragon of morals, and realize that it is a social contract meant to keep society in order. A very important role that should be respected, but not what you should base your ethical standards on, not exactly anyway. The law is a reflection of our collective moral, not the other way around.

Finally someone gets this...

Most games I play on variety of emulators were ether never release in the US or they are too rare and expensive to buy.  

Imagine my surprise a couple of decades ago when I discover that Parodius Da! was release in Europe but not in the US ;_;