Do you think Emulation preserves videogame history?

[FatCobra]

Something I pondered while playing Galaga on MAME:

Emulation preserves videogame history for future generations. Sure, the experience is better if you have the actual cartridge, machine, disc, or whatever, but hardware is mechanical in nature, meaning that it will eventually break, beyond the point of being able to fix it. I'm sure parts for old arcade machines can be hard to come by. And just look at the prices for classic games and systems: there's definitely a demand for them.

I love emulation, not because it's free and I'm a cheap ass, but I get to relive all those old classics I grew up with, and play games I never got the chance to play as a kid (like Chrono Trigger or FF6, yeah I know, poor deprived me ), or even play games that I wouldn't normally have access to. I've never seen a Battle Garegga or Dodonpachi cab here in the states.

Some call emulation a from of warez, while they may be right, what's a bigger crime here, letting good old games fade away, to be forgotten, or copyright infringement?

It applies to PC games as well. I made a rant about copy protection in PC games getting ridiculous. DRM like limited installs just make it harder for the game to last the test of time, much less if I want to play the game again ten years after its release to relive those memories and see how it runs on whatever high-tech computer I'd have. Oh well, that's what the pirate scene is for. Pirates make sure the game works ten years from now.

Also, don't forget DOSBOX.

[Dale]

I think people willing to pirate games(and people willing to try games for no cost) will be around longer then people with the knowledge to fix old consoles or arcade boards. I don't have an abundance of respect for the mame rom dumpers due to their lack of understanding of what makes the game they are emulating actually good, but I respect them for preserving games and hopefully continuing to preserve games long into the future.

[The Coop]

I think that's part of what emulation is. For some, it's about getting a newly released game for free that they'd have to pay for otherwise. For others, it's about making sure things like the GB MagaMan games, and the PC port of Star Control II, aren't lost forever when the original companies loose the code. It's a strange mixed bag that has both good and iffy applications, and I'm glad that it's around despite what the cheapskates try and use it for.

And how could I forget DOSBox? It's the only way I can play about 1/4 of my games now that DOS is officially dead to Microsoft. Hell, I've even written a beginner's guide that's currently on a couple sites.

[evil_ash_xero]

I absolutely think it preserves gaming history. There's a bunch of games I would never heard one thing about if I hadn't played them in Emulators. It's a lot easier, and attractive to just hear about a game and quickly download it and see what you think rather than hunt it down and buy it for big bucks, or not be able to get it at all.

I wouldn't have given a lot of games a chance if not for emulation.

s/m

[Daedalus]

Some call emulation a from of warez, while they may be right, what's a bigger crime here, letting good old games fade away, to be forgotten, or copyright infringement?

Legality does not dictate morality, and copyright law is in serious need of reform. Shortly said, there is no divine mandate stating that you can't imitate something someone else did. Copyright protection was developed so people would have an incentive to make new things, thus benefiting society. But when a company can pimp the same property for 20+ years (Virtual console, anyone?) it actually hurts society, by encouraging companies to live off their old work instead of developing new stuff. (I could go on for ages about this )



Anyways, I agree wholeheartedly with your observations on piracy. Most importantly, it preserves small print-run games and unreleased games of which only a couple copies may have ever existed. I have a great appreciate for all pirates, really. One of my favorite childhood shows "Eek!Stravaganza" has never been released, and would have faded into oblivion if not for the active efforts of toon piracy groups.

I don't have an abundance of respect for the mame rom dumpers due to their lack of understanding of what makes the game they are emulating actually good

Where do you get this from?

I'm glad that it's around despite what the cheapskates try and use it for.

I don't know about you guys, but I know very few people who can afford to buy games yet choose to pirate them anyways.

[Ed Oscuro]

This is why I say emulation will never be complete until they emulate heat transfer and convection in normal operations

*SLAMS FIST ON TABLE*

Something...MUST BE DONE!

[Strider77]

I think emulation is good for this reason. I use it to sample games. I always want a hard copy but as time goes on these will be lost if not archived somehow.

I was talking to a friend and he mentioned that there are more silent B&W movies that have been lost than made since VHS, DVD ect.

Emulation helps keep em around... my thoughts are if a company is not going to make these properties available to purchase, then i have the right to emulate it. They passed on their opportunity to make profit from me.

[Ed Oscuro]

But when a company can pimp the same property for 20+ years (Virtual console, anyone?) it actually hurts society, by encouraging companies to live off their old work instead of developing new stuff. (I could go on for ages about this ;))

Does it?

At some point you run into the Seven Dwarfs scenario, where spiralling costs and expectations of returns for years prompt authors, developers, and other artists to keep a franchise (or even a single game) strong. In the case of games, Team Fortress 2 seems a good example at the moment - in fact tomorrow we're getting the largest content update ever.

When the game shipped it was already much better than TF Classic, and support for that merely came in the form of maps (and possibly they rolled out one new game type, I dunno).

I think that rolling all your resources into graphics will be looked at as a fad of the '90s, '00s, and maybe part of the next decade. At some point there will be diminishing returns and no "wow factor" to speak of, so they'll have to do something stunningly new - or do something old well.

I agree with the point about copyright law not being a dictate from heaven, but sometimes giving advantage to the few is the only way to properly reward their efforts. Authors, for example, mostly struggle or hold down a second job. Reducing the length of the copyright protection too far could hurt them in their careers, and removing it entirely - well, that brings to mind the "brutish, nasty, and short" description of the lives of those who live without rules, and according only to natural law.

One of my favorite childhood shows "Eek!Stravaganza" has never been released, and would have faded into oblivion if not for the active efforts of toon piracy groups.

Heh, I remember that name.

I think Strider's example about B&W film is slightly more accurate, but in any case, it also need be considered that for every project released, there are more that made it through a conceptual stage and had a complete pilot released, but were never given a proper release after failing in test markets (sitcoms of the '90s is a good example of this).

It's possible that companies at some point will start releasing some of their "blooper" and other crazy materials that up to now are known only by a handful of people who worked in secret on them and have since forgotten, having moved onto more prosperous franchises.

It seems to me like this is a doable, if messy, proposition for film.

Games are another matter; there are certainly lots of games out there in various forms of pre-production state, but most of them require a lot of work to bring to fruition. Maybe sometime in the far future, who knows.

[D]

In theory it should/could be the exact same thing. If your pc is displaying the same resolution, the same speed (sometimes 55Hz) and with less lag than the original arcade hardware it should not make a big difference.
Installing mame on a pc and running some roms will indeed never be the same experience.
Tired of all the copyright discussions. Look no rom begging/discussing illegal stuff on this board, but we don't have to put one another on a guilt trip. Let's just never talk about it, so this forum stays save.

[P_HAT]

emulation =| piracy

[moozooh]

A somewhat easy global solution could be to enforce a public domain release of any finished (i.e., not continually updated, although that might be up for debate) software in some way. For instance, after 6-7 years since its initial public release.

Preservation could be ensured by mandatorily sending a copy of the application data (both source and compiled; one set for each version) to independent non-profit organizations founded for that exact purpose, similar to archive.org. That will also help in recovering lost sourcecodes and alike.

[PROMETHEUS]

Sure, the experience is better if you have the actual cartridge, machine, disc, or whatever

?

[jpj]

i'm not too keen on it, mainly (same with most stuff on the internet) due to a lack of quality control. and while some people might think copyright law is archaic or whatever, i don't think they really see that through. the trouble with emulation and rom dumping is that it also leads to bootlegging, and in turn, putting hard-working people out of business.

take the capcom hardware. it took a long time for cps2 to be emulated, but i see that as a good thing, because it happened long after cps2 was in production, so it didn't hurt capcom financially. and being able to phoenix the cps2 boards today is great, but bootleg cps2 kits floating around on the market are the nasty side effect. but then take cps3... cps3 encryption has been cracked. but where are the phoenixed cps3 boards? no-one's bothered doing that yet - the goal is obviously for people to play an imitated version for free on their PC. so in this instance, emulation has not preserved arcade gaming.

the most annoying parts of the whole emu discussion is all the nerdy one-up-manship that ensues. obviously nothing in life is worse than being accused of having an inferior version of a game, right? mame for me is trying to play a 15-year-old toaplan game with no sound, on my laptop's 12" TFT display, in yoko, with a keyboard... i'm sure it's possible to get certain games looking (and playing) well on mame, but you would need to spend some money getting an adequate setup.

i can understand strider's point about try-before-you-buy. but i disagree with this idea that people have "the right" to play something. that's entirely wrong. the copyright holders can choose who, where, when, and how they sell their product. if something is unavailable to you, whether that be by price, location, terms & conditions, that doesn't give you a "right" to steal it? expand that principle to other products...

i wish more of the emulation/rom dumping scene was genuinely about preserving history.

[Lordstar]

everones comments are geared to the arcade games but what about the snes and megadive games? Live arcade make good money off the programs you can download the roms for free from various sites. what say you to this?

[jonny5]

i support emulation of older stuff and stuff that is no longer actively marketed in order to preserve this stuff for the future...but i disagree with emulation of newer stuffs, cuz its basically helping to kill that which we love....

for example, naomi GDroms have been cracked and are now emulated....not all but quite a few titles are working....this is a bad thing IMO

why not wait until the stuff is harder to find and outdated before you make it freely available to people.....why go to the arcade if you can play it on your computer...why buy the hardware when you dont need it.....

this is not helping to preserve anything...it is decreasing the likelihood of future arcade releases....cuz if there isnt money to0 be made, the developers will dry up and cease to be

just my opinion

[Frederik]

I think the actual preservation of games is indeed more important than the "play games for free"-part. I enjoy MAME a lot for the latter part, of course, and preserving games obviously has to mean that you are preserving them for the sake of getting to actually PLAY them.

And I think that in on the piracy side MAME is a lot more less bad than, say, a DS emulator, which clearly is intended for people who are not only too cheap to buy games, but not even want to buy a DS. (Yeah, I know, I don´t get it either.)

Take the "Ketsui getting emulated" dicussion for instance - I´d love to play that game as much as a lot of other people, but I know that people start pressuring the MAME Dev (or whoever is in charge) to emulate newer games it might be crossing into piracy territory too much, especially since a 360 port is coming up. Yeah yeah, playing old games on MAME is piracy too, but it is certainly different from ripping PSP ISOs. I´d find it more important that even after ten or twenty years there still will be a way to play these old arcade games.

Also, don't forget DOSBOX.

I´m so happy that even nowadays I´m still welcome to Ken´s Labyrinth
DOSBOX is hot stuff, and I was really happy when I found out about this. It´s opening the gates to thousands of old titles and programs that are are either next to or completely impossible to run nowadays.

[Lordstar]

but all too often you find GDrom Discs without chips and the prices of the discs and chip is going up and up. many people will get a chance to play some of the JP titles and arguabley the best incarnation of Puzzle bobble (azu manga daioh)

the only place which is really still keeping rows and rows of GDrom based games is Japan. There not short of home ports either so really the fact that they keep paying to play these older games is the fact there on arcades. I doubt home copying GDroms will really have an effect on the sales since they dont sell them anymore. even if at this late stage some one puts a mame pc in a cabinet and charges money for it as I would htink the sales of an arcade pcb/gdrom/whatever happens within the first few months of it being released.

[moozooh]

I wouldn't care one bit about the secondary market because it doesn't make profit for the developer. Moreover, the developers' profit ends basically as soon as they sell their product to the distributor.

What emulation does contribute to is the decline of arcade halls' popularity. But its share in the contribution is nowhere close to that of an ordinary home console.

I should also note that Nintendo's handhelds have been the only kind of consoles that got faithfully emulated during its generation. All the other systems I know of have only received a stable and compatible emulator after years of being discontinued. Some still haven't, even.

[Lordstar]

Take the "Ketsui getting emulated" dicussion for instance - I´d love to play that game as much as a lot of other people, but I know that people start pressuring the MAME Dev (or whoever is in charge) to emulate newer games it might be crossing into piracy territory too much,

The person who is actualy doing this is really not that focused. last time i heard he had not even started on the dump. and this is what. . a year? two years we have been waiting for this to start?

I personaly only take on work which i can get out a timley manner or I just politley tell the person to come back when im not busy. taking on work and then not doing it is really not cool at all. You could argue that the guy does not get paid and he is all doing us a favor. Well maybe if he actually got round to it I would be greatful.

[Ex-Cyber]

the trouble with emulation and rom dumping is that it also leads to bootlegging

What's interesting is that it's often been the other way around, with bootleg sets being the only ones that actually run because bootleggers produced a board without protection schemes (I've heard that some of these bootleg sets have been used in authorized emulators because the original protection code was lost). Perhaps more importantly for the "history preservation" aspect, for many people the bootleg versions were the only ones available in their country/region, and as such are as much a part of gaming history as the originals.

if something is unavailable to you, whether that be by price, location, terms & conditions, that doesn't give you a "right" to steal it? expand that principle to other products...

This can actually be a very interesting exercise, provided that you draw an accurate analogy and honestly think about the implications. It raises some tough questions about the concept of property in general.

[evil_ash_xero]

everones comments are geared to the arcade games but what about the snes and megadive games? Live arcade make good money off the programs you can download the roms for free from various sites. what say you to this?

Well, I would have never been able to play Pulseman or Little Ralph if not for emulation, since I can't get those titles in the U.S.(Little Ralph with a little trickery though). So, I went ahead and bought the hard copies, since I liked 'em so much.

I'm not shedding tears over some phantom money these companies are losing, over games that aren't released in the U.S.(see above) or not released at all(old Cave games).

If a lot of these titles were more available, we'd have more of an argument.

But there's a lot of sides to this coversation.

So, which is done more? Emulation of old Mega Drive, Snes games, that could possibly be hurting XBLA and VC sales, or downloading and burning of NEW games?

I could see the latter being more harmful, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are. I'm the only person I know around here that emulates or has a chipped system. So, I don't think this widespread scurge is quite as bad as they make it out ot be.

s/m

[evil_ash_xero]

i support emulation of older stuff and stuff that is no longer actively marketed in order to preserve this stuff for the future...but i disagree with emulation of newer stuffs, cuz its basically helping to kill that which we love....

for example, naomi GDroms have been cracked and are now emulated....not all but quite a few titles are working....this is a bad thing IMO

why not wait until the stuff is harder to find and outdated before you make it freely available to people.....why go to the arcade if you can play it on your computer...why buy the hardware when you dont need it.....

this is not helping to preserve anything...it is decreasing the likelihood of future arcade releases....cuz if there isnt money to0 be made, the developers will dry up and cease to be

just my opinion

There are no arcades, man.

[KindGrind]

Pretty much don't care about emulation, to be honest. I've always liked to play the original carts/discs. I think blowing in a cart (fwiw) has some kind of magic/nostalgia to it that is of course unmatched when you play on a PC/the VC.

[sven666]

no, it lets you download and play games for free.

if it wasent for emulation arcadegaming (and shmups) would most likeley have been completely dead by now.
and if it wasent for the piracy part the preservation part would have been dead aswell.

[Lordstar]

no, it lets you download and play games for free.

if it wasent for emulation arcadegaming (and shmups) would most likeley have been completely dead by now.
and if it wasent for the piracy part the preservation part would have been dead aswell.

lol if it was not for mame and the like i doubt virtual console would be selling the old titles like they do now

[Shatterhand]

i support emulation of older stuff and stuff that is no longer actively marketed in order to preserve this stuff for the future...but i disagree with emulation of newer stuffs, cuz its basically helping to kill that which we love....

for example, naomi GDroms have been cracked and are now emulated....not all but quite a few titles are working....this is a bad thing IMO

why not wait until the stuff is harder to find and outdated before you make it freely available to people.....why go to the arcade if you can play it on your computer...why buy the hardware when you dont need it.....

this is not helping to preserve anything...it is decreasing the likelihood of future arcade releases....cuz if there isnt money to0 be made, the developers will dry up and cease to be

just my opinion

There are no arcades, man.

I actually play at local arcades games that have perfect home versions or are emulated, just so I can get some different competition.

[Necronom]

Emulation not only preserves videogame history but also spreads the knowledge about games from the 8 and 16 bit eras. Lots of indie developers learn gamedesign by studying MANY old games. It's like going to the library when studying at university.
Besides, during the 90s many in the industry wouldn't even think about preserving old games because to them games were just business - just make the money and then move on to the next one. Emu coders and rom dumpers basically took on a job that the industry refused to do.
And yeah, as already mentioned xbla and vc are commercial reactions to this whole mame/emu thing.

[Super X Gamma]

when someone releases an on-demand video game service that allows me to either own the game for a nominal fee or play it whenever I want to i.e. "renting" AND SUPPORTS EVERY GAME OUT THERE IN FULL WORKING ORDER and not just 50 or so, then I will gladly pay for it.

until then, stfu legal teams. I would gladly pay, but I am not given the opportunity to, just fined heavily when caught.

[The Coop]

emulation =| piracy

That's the thing. It can be a part of it when what's being dumped is brand new, or still sold by its creator because it's only a year or two old.

As an example, a number of years ago, a lot of people on OCR were looking forward to Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. Now, by this time, there were working GBA emulators, and there were a lot of comments saying that so and so would just emulate it once it came out. When the game was finally released in the US, the US version of the game was on-line for download within a couple hours. It became a case of emulation being a part of piracy, because the means to play those GBA games without the actual system was readily available. All you had to do was wait a few hours to get a brand new game for free, and having a free system to play it on... both of which were still actively sold by their creators. So as a result, the line between emulation and piracy was blurred.

Now we all know the emulators themselves aren't illegal, unless they're using code from the system itself. And I'm not suggesting that emulating the Genesis is the same thing. But when the emulator is for a system that's still alive and well, it can lead to issues that wouldn't exist if it were dead. I'm all for emulation of arcade games that have been around for while and are no longer sold by their respective companies, or for systems that have gone the way of the dodo and no longer getting "official" releases. It's when emulation crosses the line from dead boards/systems, to still viable ones, that things get a bit hairy IMO.

[Aru-san]

MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

It is not our intention to infringe on any copyrights or patents on the original games. All of MAME's source code is either our own or freely available. To operate, the emulator requires images of the original ROMs, CDs, or hard disks from the arcade machines, which must be provided by the user. No portions of the original game code are included in the executable.

I'm not surprised no one reads (or even mentions) the terms of use on the most widely used emulator that they're using.