Your stance on emulation

As collectors of obscure, rare and unreleased video games and consoles, what are your feelings on emulation?

Personally I am pro-emulation/preservation, I'm currently waiting for a Bandai Pippin @mark to be delivered from China so the bios roms can be dumped, preserved and hopefully emulated in MESS.

Do you hate the lack of exclusivity when rare games in your collection are dumped? Do you actively refuse to dump your games? Do you think dumps of obscure, rare and unreleased games or console bios's harm the collecting scene and bring down eBay prices?

Or on the flip-side, do you like the idea of emulation and preservation of games that will die of bit-rot? Would or have you ever allowed your rare games and consoles to be dumped?

 

I am a pro-emulator/conserver when it comes to my point of view.

 

It depends. Emulation is one thing, preservation another, and sharing is illegal.

 

I strongly believe that because emulators as software are entirely legal as long as they are written upon reverse engineered information (no trade secrets) and don't misuse copyrighted code's licenses, emulation is not what hurts the industry or even the "rare game scene", it's the people or the "scene" that does.

The excuse for piracy in the name of "preservation" or "educational purposes" is bullshit since there exists only one worker bee to every few thousand leeches, the worker bees in my experience are also the ones who go about things legally. Everyone is entitled to free (license) software, and since many emulators exist for free, it's one's own right to play their personally backed up games on emulators *provided they have the means to do so themselves.*

The problem comes in when people do not have the ability to backup their own software or they take advantage of the industries inability to police people from illegally downloading games they do not own. If people want to legally archive ("just in case the the media becomes subject to bitrot") their games for their own personal purposes, there's no harm in that because it doesn't affect anybody else. There is legally no difference however between a ROM kiddie and being a preservation supporter as there shouldn't be.

After copyrights expire from 70 odd years without being exercised, the situation can be reevaluated and trust me, when that time comes, all media will not be damaged and little to no media will be lost to time.

I've backed up my personal collection, worked on hardware to aid me in backing up the software and have worked on my own emulators to understand the consoles I'm enamored with; everything I have done is for my own personal use and will stay that way. Just because I like emulation doesn't mean I support Robin Hooding the masses games for any cause.

 

I feel there is a difference between emulation of old consoles and emulation of newer, next generation consoles. For example, I would call, let's say, emulation of a Super A'can "preservation" while emulation of a PS3 is "warez."

I am not the "usual" collector, but I tend to collect rare media and old dev hardware instead of just games. I would love to see some of those items possibly preserved instead of losing its history (etc, dumping of BIOS from obscure consoles & dev units).

 

Man, you are opening a can of worms with this one... get ready for a flame war to erupt here.

Anyway, yes, I support emulation, simply because there are games I would never have played otherwise. Some things are too damn expensive, or too hard to find, or just otherwise unavailible.

That being said, I prefer to always take the original media on the original system when possible, I don't download games when I can buy them.

 

deepest coldness. but i like mame etc. to use it as a big interactive library of the whole videogame history. but never for having fun to play those games seriously as an emulation.

 

it should be said however, that many of my sorry-ass friends would have never played classics on SNES and NES if they didn't have a *friend* to tell them about what to do. Some have since become old-school fanatics and big-time nintendo fans.

 

This.

I've bought many games simply because I played them on an emulator and enjoyed them. However, I am not going to pay an obscene amount of money for some games, simply because I do not feel they are worth it (~$25 is pretty decent for an older game in my opinion).

Plus, emulation is pretty convenient. I've never gotten the chance to play Zelda: OOT all the way through, and I'll be damned if I'm bringing my N64 to college next month. I'd rather play with sharper graphics on my laptop.

 

I think systems that are considered "dead" (I.e. - Nothing new is coming out, have been out of the market for 10 years, highly unlikely to be found in working order), and their software should be available in emulated form:

1) As long as this is made for free, and neither the hardware emulation nor the rom content is EVER sold - so emulation should never, EVER be a business.

2) As long as the holders of the original copyright are dead companies or the games emulated are long out of print

3) As long as it is made not to profit but to satiate the curiosity of those who might never come across some good, old, nostalgic, curious or rare games.

Emulation will never come close to the real thing, but to some it's the only option. With games that were never sold in your region and/or games that are out of print more than ten years ago, and as long as you don't pay or get paid for the information, there really isn't much of an unethical situation going on.

Sharing of roms or ISOs of current generation, or last generation software, however, should be regarded as piracy, not emulation. Completely different things, in my opinion.

 

(playable) Emulation of PS2, XBOX or gamecube, not to mention 360, ps3 or wii, are impossible, so by definition, it is not emulation.

 

I love emulation and fully support it. I have a LARGE collection of vintage games for nes, snes, genisis, ect... and I love having them all at my finger tips on my xbox to play whenever I want without having to hook up a system. It also helps because you dont have to go run down another old console or controller if something breaks as newer consoles have much higher production numbers then those of past.

Also I just got emulation of those systems running on my PSP that im getting for chirstmas. I am STOKED. I have waited many a year to be able to have MegaMan 2 on the go whenever I need a fix.

And since its on sonys PSP I now fully support it. I have already bought all MegaMan games on PSP as well as 5 or 6 others

I think its a important point for collectors and old school fans alike. My father even plays my xbox and is impressed that I have all my games on there ^^

 

Someone mentioned it's illegal to share, is it illegal to share save states?

As for ROMs, personally everyone's own business is their own, and I ain't gonna waste my time hating a guy for having a rom of a rare game I bought. It's whatever, you know. Me, I find roms conventional as a way of "testing" gameplay before I decide if it's worth buying. Some games I know I want to buy so I don't bother with the ROM. Others are on the fence and it's a quick way to "sample" it. I can't tell you how many games I've bought after I tried the rom.

Does it affect price? No. The true collectors/die-hard's will still want the physical cartridge in their possession, and rare games like R2 (Rendering Ranger, Super Famicom) will always command a pretty penny. I paid $90 for it cart only. Does knowing the fact some other gamers can play like I do for free bug me? No, because that would be a waste of emotion and time on my part. You do what you gotta do, but I believe in owning the real thing personally.

 

I don't totally hate emulation. It's of course far from the real thing, but on the other hand it's good for preservation. Imagine all those Tape or Disk-based games like for the C64, X68000, FDS, and whatever are going to destroy themselves over the years. There must be some kind of backup possibility.
Still, the undumped games I have (just one in fact, heh) are still undumped. I want to dump it for myself though, too see how that works and to preservate it, in case the cart gets destroyed somehow.

Real thing > Emulation! But preservation is useful too..

 

I highly doubt that it's illegal to share save states. I've seen many emulation sites where they have archives of saves states but still consider non-PD roms illegal.

 

like most here seems to be I'm pro emulation for the preservation of old consoles. Thought personally I can't really stand playing on a emulator sitting in front of a 17" monitor with a keyboard and screaming fans from the PSU and what not destroys the gaming experience imho.

 

i'm favorable, and in my opinion it doesn't steal anything from collectors that in 90% of the cases never play the games they own. collectors usually takes the pleasure in their collection and not in the gameplay of what they collect.

so i guess you can call me "pirate friendly"... i love emulation for it was what made me deep in videogames ,and what made me buy the original carts of games i loved. i condone even some form of piracy (i have some "backups" around) i.e. i have games i tried once and never played again; all the games i liked, i went to buy them.

tought i can't see any bad coming from emulating games from console that are no longer sold

 

My stance would be a praying mantice:lol:

 

I'm no technical wiz, but I once heard a guy laugh at the thought of playing on a keyboard. He mentioned something like "In this day and age you can play a rom with a controller... in fact you can even d/l the rom into your snes system with the right equipment."

 

I'm pro emulation, I've been able to program many systems that I didn't have access to, at the time. I've since purchased most of them.

I also don't buy systems based on rarity. I either buy out of curiousity, nostalgia, or just to play the games. Most of the time I buy in an attempt to see if I can program a homebrew game for the system.

I strongly support buying a legal version of a game, using services such as GameTap.

Seeing the Pippin (and PPC Macs) emulated in MESS would be nice.

The rarest games I have are for the Super A'Can, and I would dump them myself if I could desolder the chips or get my eprom programmer connected to the chips.


One thing I've found is that piracy has it's own consequences. Back in the C64 days, being able to easily find cracked games led more to collecting the warez, rather than enjoying playing them. And, in the end I was getting the games to look at the cracktro, and usually wouldn't play the game.

I've purchased all the games I have for the GameCube, XBox, and PS2, and still enjoying playing them. I have no desire to buy 'every' game available, but pick up only the games I think I'll truely play or something that is cheap, and should be fun for a few games.

This could be done with roms also, but the easy access makes it really tough to only download the games you would play.