Posts Tagged ‘emulation’
Podcast: Emulation, Version 2.0
When Fred first started Gaming History 101, he was quite opposed to emulation and of course the piracy that comes with it. Now, five years later, things are a bit different for a several reasons. Since Jam got stuck trying to get home from holiday, Fred flies solo to discuss his new take on emulation, why he feels this way, and most importantly his list of the best emulators to use when playing almost any game from your past.
The referenced GDC 2016 talk that Frank Cifaldi gave can be found here.
Now I Love Emulation and Here’s Why
In the past I have had quite strong opinions about emulation, going so far as to say I prefer not to use it. My basis was clear in the article, but to sum up I don’t like the screen tearing and framerate issues that often happen with emulation, I hate not using a console’s native controller and the potential of input lag, and of course my ongoing aggression toward piracy. Since I boldly declared my stance almost four years ago (yep, we celebrate our fourth anniversary in October), a lot has changed. First of all, many of our readers and listeners have brought to my attention circumstances involving distribution, bootleg, and socioeconomic factors that force them into utilizing emulation, which as a middle class American I don’t have much experience with. In addition, rarity has become a big reason why I see the value in emulation (or flash carts/burned discs on original hardware, which is the same thing to me). I don’t think that people who want to experience Snatcher, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Michigan: Report from Hell, and so many others should pay a random dude hundreds of dollars that the publishers and developers will never see for this “privilege.” Those transactions are for the collector, who wants the tangible item, but for the player I think access should be made available and if the business of games does not support this then skating the line of the law is a personal decision each player can make. Also my experience on Twitch lately has been hilarious because I tend to play on actual hardware and I appear to be one of the few, so my choice to avoid emulation is more of an old man theory than a crusade against piracy and authenticity.
MGC 2015: Pinball’s Future is Emulation
Depending on who you ask, perhaps pinball shouldn’t even be on this site. It’s not a video game at all and in truth the only thing pinball even has in common to video games is that they both tended to occupy one another in arcades, bowling alleys, bars, and various other popular locations of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. This doesn’t mean that you can’t appreciate both and thanks to some great physics engines and crafty programming games like Zen Pinball/Pinball FX and Pinball Arcade exist and do a nice job of bringing that thrill home. But it isn’t pinball. No friends, those of us who love pinball and played the games growing up would not consider T2 on Pinball Arcade to be the same as sitting in front of the cold steel original pinball machine with the gun handle for a launcher. At the same time a T2 pinball machine runs you around $2,000-$3,000 and that doesn’t even factor in getting to and into your place of residence, so the relatively cheap $10 price for the table on console is a better option for most of us. If you buy the actual pinball machine you’ll probably enjoy the game for less than six months before it needs service of some kind – assuming it was in perfect working order when you purchased it, which is almost never the case. Even if you have a pristine new Stern pinball machine that gets professionally set up, routine maintenance and cleaning is part of the role that any pinball owner has, whether it’s handled by the owner personally or they have a professional come out for routine service. That’s why pinball is a much larger investment than arcade machines: you have to know how to care for an afford to maintain it. Not only that, but the machines are specific so you can’t just drop a T2′s guts into a Funhouse machine without a lot of time, effort, and basically rebuilding it. All of these factors are why pinball emulation may be the best option for the average pinball enthusiast that’s ready to pony up that initial investment, but doesn’t want all the hassle of actually owning a pinball machine.
New Retro Arcade, The Emulator Frontend We Wanted Game Room To Be
A new development has come from the folks at Digital Cyber Cherries called New Retro Arcade that utilizes Unreal Engine 4 and a bunch of assets to simulate an actual arcade for your MAME emulation. This program is what we all probably hoped the Xbox 360’s Game Room was going to be but never was. You can browse your arcade, complete with random lights, sounds, and crazy carpeting, and play whatever you like. Built into the program are random arcade activities like darts and bowling, but the real draw is picking up that SNES controller, Gameboy sitting about, or walking up an arcade cabinet and playing the game. You can see in the video below that of the authenticity retained by this program, scanlines and rounded edges are a welcome part of it. The demo has it running on a GTX 780 TI, but it clearly doesn’t seem to need that power, however the average Windows XP MAME machine is probably not going to have the chops to run it. It’s a good start, but I’m going to want to test it myself and I can’t see it replacing my MAME machine as my go-to for arcade emulation, but if I get some sort of VR helmet in the future it does appear be an enticing recreation. Clicking on the company name above will take you to the site to get this free download.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blE43U3PTGQ]I Love My MAME Cab
Man do I love my MAME cab. In the culture of emulation, I’m not too keen on the concept. I understand that emulation is necessary and that it has been an essential tool in not only archiving these great works of the past but also in allowing me to play import and fan translated games I otherwise never would have experienced. Still, I think that more often than not emulation gives way to piracy. If I want to go get Super Mario Bros 3 on NES, I’ve got a slew of choices: I can buy the original hardware and game, I can emulate illegally, or I can purchase legal emulated versions (Virtual Console). In most of those scenarios I opt to purchase the tangible hardware/game – but this is not always the case as I have never purchased a Turbografx-16 CD console to play the handful of favorites like Rondo of Blood and instead “settled” for emulated, legal, Virtual Console and PSN versions. On the arcade front the story is a bit different. Not only do I have to pony up large sums of money for the hardware/software – in this case being a working cabinet and PCB board – but I also have to make space, transportation arrangements, power consumption, safety, and in many cases repairs. It’s one thing to buy a PS1 game from Kentucky, have it shipped to you, resurface it if necessary, and then enjoy it. For a good working Salamander cab I may have to pay $500-$1,000 upfront on eBay, drive to Kentucky with a large truck, move the whole thing over 1,000 miles without damaging it and paying for gas/transport, move it into my house, and then most likely degauss a monitor, replace some wires, re-solder some button connections, and if I’m lucky I can play that single game for about 30 minutes before it’s time for my A.D.D. brain to move onto the next new thing.
Podcast: Emulation – Breaking the Law
This episode we have Derek from the Playground Podcast on to discuss the oh so controversial topic of video game emulation. Instead of describing what it is, which can be found here, we instead discuss our memories, stories, and wonderful benefits of a topic that has been shadowed by piracy.
Gaming History 101 