thoughts on emulation

[Sephex]

Another thing I want to say about emulation that I know I've mentioned before but forgot to be: it's essentially the only viable method we have to preserve older titles.

Major companies simply don't have enough interest in properly preserving their games for the future (see every HD release of relatively recent games where they didn't have final source code to work from, documentation was trout, backups had to be found that were half ruined, etc. for examples of what I mean and keep in mind those are largely PS2 games made in the last 15 years), no physical media will last forever. Some, even more recent CD based games, are at our past the end of their expected lives. If it weren't for peoples efforts in emulation I have no doubt we wouldn't have nearly as many games available in ROM or iso form and even fewer ways to play them.

You know I've never really thought about that but it's a good point. There would probably be several games at this point that no one could play at all if not for emulation.

To sort of add to this, I sometimes emulate simply because it is easier. Hey, I'm running my personal laptop through my HDTV most of the time. I can click a couple of times and have a game running no problem with controller support. It's a lot quicker than digging out my NES. And even if I did, I don't trust game with battery back up for saves at this point. Yes, I know you can change the battery, but really, I'm not going to do that.