My thoughts on emulation is that it is an absolute necessity in order to preserve the history of gaming. However, it will also probably always be a grey area regarding copyright. Especially with emulation of current gen I find it not okay, since the original creator still earns money with it. But if a game or console is not sold anymore? Nobody loses money from me using an emulator to play Chrono Trigger with save states and increased game speed to make the farming and boss fights easier.
Chrono Trigger is still being sold actually, so probably not the best example. That said, I still have my original PS1 Chrono Trigger disc that I haven’t played on original hardware (or even my still-hooked-up PS3) for a while because I legally dumped it and play it with a much higher emulated disc read speed. As much as Nintendo has made explicit statements to the contrary, it is legal in most countries to back up your own games and do with them what you will.
Notably, the Steam version is a port of the iOS version, making it a HUGE step down from the DS version, which combined the anime cutscenes from the PS1 version with an absolute wealth of new systems and features.
I used emulation to show a bunch of old PS1, PS2, and original Xbox games I had when I was younger to my partner. It was a fun evening, and they actually enjoyed most of them. They didn’t really get into gaming until the Wii, so it was nice to see their reactions to some of the older stuff.
But I agree with the other comments here, it should really only be used for preservation or things you can’t purchase from retail anymore.
True I would not recommend linking romsites here. Though I do find using k3b to extract roms off of phyisical discs I own to be useful when trying to emulate them.
I got back into emulation recently with one of those handheld emulators (like Retroid, but a different brand). It’s mind blowing to me to play old Gameboy or GBA games on there because it feels just like playing on the genuine article, except the screen is like 3x better and backlit and all that. Plus all the games are just right there at your fingertips!
I don’t find myself using it as much as I should. I think retro games just don’t interest me as much as modern ones. I think they are cool and worth playing, I just find it hard to let go of the conveniences of modern gaming.
I am not sure if ps2 is considered retro yet but I find that era to be a good compromise between classic games and the convenience of modern control schemes. the only gameboy games I remember playing was mario and pokemon though I preferred the original 8bit mario games. I also recently found out about a week ago that pcsx2 has its own gameplay record feature which made this video easier than my previous one to make due to not having to use a screen recorder.
I love Emulation since it can be on completely different ends of the spectrum. On the one hand you have ROM collections on modern system, like Capcom Arcade Stadium, or TMNT Cowabunga Collection.
On another you have complete reverse engineering project like PCSX-Reloaded, and community developed emulators with retail games are based on, all open sourced and technically legal, so long as you have the hardware, and tools to back the ROMs, BIOS’s, and other material required.
Then you have the complete black market, where the ROMs are illegally obtained, the BIOS’s are just downloaded from a random server, and the emulators are paying to get access to the latest retail games patches like Yuzu.
All 3 of these interact and play off of each other, like arcade collections using MAME, being able to extract the ROMs from collections to use in emulators, and Nintendo using someone else’s ROM dump of their own game for Wiiware. That it’s just interesting that emulation works at all.
I personally love it, and try my best to get my ROMs, ISO, and BIOS’s without resorting to downloading it.
It is a pretty wide spectrum as an example I would consider abandonware its own thing in-between downloading and physical backups. Also the funny thing about Yuzu is they would have legally been fine if they used common sense and avoided linking to any roms and just recommended people use their own. There is Suyu which is a fork of Yuzu that wants to avoid the same mistakes Yuzu made.
I do emulation since early 2000s (since I have a PC) and its one of the best things not only in gaming, but in computing and technology in general!
If you are new to emulation, then I recommend to use standalone emulators first. There are emulators for single systems, like Snes9x for SNES and others are multi-system emulators, like Mesen or Ares that can play many console systems.
Following is a bit more advanced:
RetroArch: My favorite is RetroArch, but that is not recommended if you are just new to emulation and want a simple emulator to access a few games without configuring too much.
MAME and FinalBurn: Arcade emulation with MAME in example can also be tedious, because that works a bit different than a normal console emulator.
DOSBox: PC emulators for old systems can play old DOS games, but you need to have an understanding how DOS works in order to be able to use it correctly. Because some games require setups in DOS and such. You can also install old Windows versions like Win98 to play Windows games. But you really need to install and handle Windows like a real operating system, and install each game as well.
I mostly only emulate playstation games.(pcsx and pcsx2) I did try an NES emulator for a romhack which was nice. Recently I tried Aethersx which is a fork of pcsx2 but for android. A lot has changed since a few years ago I remember pcsx2 lagging alot but now it runs pretty smooth.
Playstation 2 is already solid, that’s for sure. Since my new PC from last year, I am also able to emulate Playstation 3 (some claim even the Steam Deck is capable of doing so, but I’m not sure how good). And PSP emulator runs on most computers nowadays. We even enter in emulating a Playstation 4, but off course this is in early stages at the moment.
So yeah, there is lot of Playstation food for the coming years for you. :D Its really exciting. I still need to figure out PS Vita, and didn’t get into it yet. The original Playstation is still my biggest Sony love I have and probably right behind my favorite console, the SNES.
Romhacks are also huge part of why I love the emulation scene. If you allow me to plug an article I wrote, with lot of Romhacks and Mods for NES as a recommendation. There is so much cool stuff out there: …game.blog/…/nes-mods-and-romhacks-collection/
Someone even ported the original NES Super Mario Bros to SNES, and then modified that to add in a Super Mario Maker style editor; on the SNES! I can’t link it here if you are interested, unfortunately I only know a prepatched ROM source for it. And that is not something this community / place allows to link.
When I heard of ps4 emulation I thought it was amazing since I still have not tried emulating ps3 but I remember it use to be only for high end machines. I also assume ps5 emulation will be a thing eventually but I think it will be a while. I am curious how psx3 runs compared to psx2 since pcsx2 lagged when I first used it years ago. But now its runs about the same as the ps1 version. I imagine ps3 is probably more complicated to emulate than ps4 due to the architecture though.
Exactly (referring to more complicated), you are right about the architecture. The PS3 is that complicated, not even Sony themselves have a working emulator for their catalog of games in Playstation monthly subscriptions. Sony emulates PS1 and 2, and PS3 is only streaming and PS4 games are directly compatible with PS5. That’s because PS4 and 5 are similar in the architecture and basically a PC (obviously there is more to it, but CPU is similar).
And that’s why the most advanced PS4 emulator, ChadPS4 … I mean ShadPS4 (the community makes jokes and calls it Chad), doesn’t actually emulate the CPU entirely! Because its similar to a PC CPU, it can use lot of instructions directly. There are other PS4 emulators who try to emulate it entirely, like a traditional emulator.
As for PS3, it is still not in a state like PS2 emulator. Some games work fine and I can play lot of them in full speed without major or any issues. It’s under heavy development still. Some games still are totally unplayable. And depending on how heavy a game is, it can be really demanding on the current modern PCs (I know its a vague statement, its hard to make exact statement for situations like these). I think its still a few years away from how the PS2 performs right now. And then the question if anyone wants to port the emulator to a different architecture… phew!
Crimzon Clover’s really fun. It’s similar to Dodonpachi. Another good one is Ikaruga. It has an interesting mechanic we’re you switch colors to absorb bullets.
Avoid Sine Mora and other “euroshmups”, they just suck to play.
Sine Mora is not for everyone, but those who like it (like I do) really like it. The gameplay revolves around the time mechanic and so does the really messed up story. The audio-visual presentation is great too.
There are several people who do not like it though, as it is a bit outside the box and is quite story-heavy.
I just started Astro Bot a couple days ago. I’m completely hooked, it’s so much fun. Looking forward to the new Zelda as well.
And started a co-op run of Baldur’s Gate 3 with a friend who hasn’t finished it yet. I can’t get enough of that game. Got into the modding scene recently too.
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