4 ms·

Emulation is a fascinating topic on many dimensions. One that I find particularly interesting is that it seems like more primitive systems are exponentially mor

by GuiA 7y ago

Emulation is a fascinating topic on many dimensions. One that I find particularly interesting is that it seems like more primitive systems are exponentially more "sharable" than small ones - I can fit a NES emulator with the entire NES library in a hundred megabytes or so. The entire library of the PS3 would be many many terabytes, and not only do we not even have good PS3 emulation, it's unclear if we'll never get it. While any programmer can code a functional NES emulator in a weekend, it is not the case for these more sophisticated platforms. I wouldn't be surprised that, if humanity is still around and computing a few hundred years from now, people will still be playing SNES ROMs. PS5 games though might be entirely forgotten (especially given online components, endless patches, etc.). The corollary of that is that if you want your software to be preserved by history, your best bet is probably to package it as a NES/SNES/GBA ROM or something like that.

tenebrisalietum 7y ago
Every Atari game ever made is right around a gig. When CDs became game media, content size exploded, since it was cheap. > While any programmer can code a functional NES emulator in a weekend, it is not the case for these more sophisticated platforms. Any programmer can code an NROM-compatible NES emulator in a weekend that will play Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and a few other 8K or 16K games. The plethora of mappers that exists for NES turn the NES into a complex platform even if you don't account for perfect graphic and sound accuracy. PS3 is harder to emulate because it had that Cell BE, but PS4 and XBone have gone the way of arcade hardware - it's all basically a PC now, and will probably remain so simply because it's cheaper to have one real platform. Emulation in the future may disappear because it won't matter--it's all a PC anyway so you might as well just play the PC version of the game, and if none exists, you're going to port it, not emulate.
- deleted 7y ago
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by GuiA 7y ago

tenebrisalietum 7y ago

Every Atari game ever made is right around a gig. When CDs became game media, content size exploded, since it was cheap. > While any programmer can code a functional NES emulator in a weekend, it is not the case for these more sophisticated platforms. Any programmer can code an NROM-compatible NES emulator in a weekend that will play Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and a few other 8K or 16K games. The plethora of mappers that exists for NES turn the NES into a complex platform even if you don't account for perfect graphic and sound accuracy. PS3 is harder to emulate because it had that Cell BE, but PS4 and XBone have gone the way of arcade hardware - it's all basically a PC now, and will probably remain so simply because it's cheaper to have one real platform. Emulation in the future may disappear because it won't matter--it's all a PC anyway so you might as well just play the PC version of the game, and if none exists, you're going to port it, not emulate.

deleted 7y ago
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