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I don't know if they are. Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was ver
by Noos 7y ago
I don't know if they are. Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was very well. Like you can play Ridge Racer type 4 in emulation, but part of that game's history was the special controller it was bundled with, which let you twist the middle of it to enable analog steering wheel control.
Like you can't emulate Boktai without the solar sensor on it, and also you don't get the sense of how dark the game boy advance's screen is. Or another example is Trace Memory for the Nintendo DS, which made use of the fact that the DS can close like a book (to simulate stamping on an ink pad) or that the screen is reflective when closed at an angle (to cause two screens to reflect into each other to make a single word.)
It works to show a boosted version of the original game, but something like sprite flicker or having to use passwords to continue gets dropped out. Or something like the dreamcast's VMU, which displays info on it as you play or can be used for minigames to boost the character in the main game.
The games kind of get divorced from the hardware and media they were played on, which reduces them some.
- reificator 7y agoSo you're saying that if I emulate I can not only play these older games, but I also don't have to deal with limiting hardware and annoying gimmicks? Count me in!
- aasasd 7y ago> having to use passwords to continue Nothing like writing down forty Japanese hieroglyphs in ‘Captain Tsubasa.’ I don't have a remote knowledge of Japanese of any of Asian languages.
- jonhohle 7y ago> which reduces them some This is absolutely true, however, I favor availability over attempting to recreate the experience perfectly. There is, in fact, no perfect way to recreate the experience because everyone’s experience differs. I played 8- and 16- and even 32-bit systems over RF on a 19” Magnavox, recording gameplay to VHS. Others may have gotten Ridge Racer secondhand and never had the custom controller. A CRT was integral to my experience, but is impractical for most people. I enjoy retro gaming and go through stupid lengths to get classic systems looking good on modern displays. It’s expensive, takes up a ton of space, and requires a depth of knowledge in broadcast standards and signal processing beyond what most are willing to dig into. When I want to sit down and enjoy a favorite game with my kids, Virtual Console, Classic/Mini systems, or emulators (software or hardware) allow us to focus on having fun together. Cycle accurate reproduction doesn’t come into play.
- Narishma 7y agoI have a feeling only a relative handful of games would suffer from emulation the way you describe. Mainly those that came bundled with some kind of proprietary peripheral. The vast majority of games work just fine through emulation.
- tasty_freeze 7y agoAs someone who has spent thousands of hours archiving documents related to certain old computers and writing a few emulators, I have to admit your comment is irritating to me. Of course, emulation is going to lose something compared to the original experience; nobody knows better than the person writing the emulator. But nobody is stepping up to build the exact reproduction that you are holding out for. Even if someone came along and built reproduction controllers and cabinets, would you be willing to spend the money for them? It is far better to capture the ROMs and 90% of the experience than to let it all slip away because of purity issues. Besides, part of the TRS-80 experience was unreliable behavior. I'm quite glad that emulators don't attempt to reproduce it.
- jimmaswell 7y agoHow about a VR game where you play games on these emulators as if you're using their original consoles with a TV/etc appropriate for the time? Get a game off a virtual game shelf and put it in the NES/Atari/etc, maybe even emulating the cartridge not registering at first. Theoretically you could even emulate things like the crooked cartridge trick in N64 games (if you're unfamiliar: https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Nintendo_64_crooked_cartridge https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Nintendo_64_crooked_cartridge )
- CmdrKrool 7y agoIt's being worked on, see EmuVR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqUos4MYmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqUos4MYmc Not to disparage emulators (I use them all the time myself, and would be absolutely on this if I had a VR headset), but there is an amusing bottomlessness to the rabbit hole here, seeing the posters on the walls and so on. Now we only need to emulate having friends, parents that love you, etc...
- IgorPartola 7y agoReady Player One this whole thing?
- scrollaway 7y ago
- Kiro 7y agoI've been a gamer for 30 years and I don't remember a single game where the controller or hardware matter so much that a "Let's Play" wouldn't do it justice.
- kevingadd 7y agoI can think of maybe 2 or 3 games total with a meaningful gimmick that needed specific hardware or control schemes to really "work". Losing it diminishes the game but doesn't completely invalidate it, so it's sad but it's not really the case for the thousands of other games I've played. Better to have the original game archived as an LP, perhaps even an LP that tries to capture the essence of the gimmick for people who can't experience it. I think we're entering a space now where this is a concern for more games though - an LP or emulated gameplay for experimental VR games or games with custom controllers may not live up to the experience at all, which is unfortunate, but not really avoidable. The most easily understood example is 999, a game for the Nintendo DS that utilized the two-screens quirk of the system for narrative purposes. It was later ported to mobile and those versions had to drop the twist since there was no way to express it on other platforms. (To briefly summarize, the two screens represented separate timelines and the DS's constraint of only allowing touch input on one screen meant that whatever you saw on that screen was the only thing you could actively participate in)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neetodavid 7y agoThe article is about the value of youtube lets play videos as secondary documentation. There is no mention of emulation. Some lets play videos feature emulated games but some others capture from original hardware. The article also raises a good point (that I think echos your sentiment) about how lets play videos include some amount of the context that the game was played in. Even with the exact artifact, something is lost when it is transplanted to Now.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago> Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was very well. To a lesser extent, the same goes for cinema, but there's no question that we're preserving cinematic history by continuing to make Citizen Kane available.
- NikkiA 7y agoThe negcon wasn't bundled with RR4 though, at least not always, my copy only came with the RR4 and RR1-60fps remaster.