A video game console emulator is a type of
emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally placed i ...
's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass the limitations of the original hardware, such as broader controller compatibility,
timescale control, greater performance, clearer quality, easier access to memory modifications (like
GameShark), one-click cheat codes, and unlocking of gameplay features. Emulators are also a useful tool in the development process of
homebrew
Homebrewing mainly refers to small-scale, non-commercial manufacture of a drink, typically beer.
Homebrew or home brew may also refer to:
Computing
* Homebrew Computer Club
* Homebrew (package manager), for macOS and Linux
* Homebrew (video game ...
demos
Demos may refer to:
Computing
* DEMOS, a Soviet Unix-like operating system
* DEMOS (ISP), the first internet service provider in the USSR
* Demos Commander, an Orthodox File Manager for Unix-like systems
* plural for Demo (computer programming)
...
and the creation of new games for older, discontinued, or rare consoles.
The code and data of a game are typically supplied to the emulator by means of a
ROM file
A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequentl ...
(a copy of game cartridge data) or an
ISO image
An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...
(a copy of optical media), which are created by either specialized tools for game cartridges, or regular optical drives reading the data. Most games retain their
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
despite the increasing time-span of the original system and products' discontinuation; this leaves regular consumers and emulation enthusiasts to resort to obtaining games freely across various internet sites rather than legitimately purchasing and
ripping the contents (although for optical media, this is not uncommon for legitimate owners). As an alternative, specialized adapters such as the
Retrode
The Retrode is a USB adapter for legacy video games that enabled the use of game cartridges and controllers with emulators. Technically, the Retrode could be considered a ROM dumper in that it could create a copy of the cartridge content. Unlike ...
allow emulators to directly access the data on game cartridges without needing to copy it into a ROM image first.
History
By the mid-1990s,
personal computers had progressed to the point where it was technically feasible to replicate the behavior of some of the earliest consoles entirely through software, and the first unauthorized, non-commercial console emulators began to appear. These early programs were often incomplete, only partially emulating a given system, resulting in
defects. Few manufacturers published technical specifications for their hardware, which left programmers to deduce the exact workings of a console through
reverse engineering
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
.
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
's consoles tended to be the most commonly studied, for example the most advanced early emulators reproduced the workings of the
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
, the
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...
, and the
Game Boy
The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...
. The first such recognized emulator was released around 1996, being one of the prototype projects that eventually merged into the
SNES9X product.
Programs like Marat Fayzullin's iNES, VirtualGameBoy, Pasofami (NES), Super Pasofami (SNES), and VSMC (SNES) were the most popular console emulators of this era. A curiosity was also
Yuji Naka
, credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game programmer, video game designer, designer and video game producer, producer. He is the former head of the Sega studio Sonic Team, where he was the lead programmer of the original ''Sonic t ...
's unreleased NES emulator for the
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
, possibly marking the first instance of a software emulator running on a console.
Additionally, as the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
gained wider availability, distribution of both emulator software and ROM images became more common, helping to popularize emulators.
Legal attention was drawn to emulations with the release of
UltraHLE
UltraHLE is a discontinued emulator for the Nintendo 64. Emulating the Nintendo 64 (which was only 3 years old at the time) made it the first of the N64 emulators to run commercial titles at a playable frame rate on the hardware of the time, and ...
, an emulator for the
Nintendo 64 released in 1999 while the Nintendo 64 was still Nintendo's primary console - its next console, the
GameCube
The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the Wii ...
, would not be released until 2001. UltraHLE was the first emulator to be released for a current console, and it was seen to have some effect on Nintendo 64 sales, though to what degree compared with diminishing sales on the aging consoles was not clear. Nintendo pursued legal action to stop the emulator project, and while the original authors ceased development, the project continued by others who had gotten the source code. Since then, Nintendo has generally taken the lead in actions against emulation projects or distributions of emulated games from their consoles compared to other console or arcade manufacturers.
This rise in popularity opened the door to foreign video games, and exposed North American gamers to Nintendo's censorship policies. This rapid growth in the development of emulators in turn fed the growth of the
ROM hacking and
fan-translation. The release of projects such as RPGe's
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
translation of ''
Final Fantasy V
is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square in 1992. It is the fifth main installment of the ''Final Fantasy'' series. The game first appeared only in Japan on Nintendo's Super Famicom (known internationally as the Su ...
'' drew even more users into the emulation scene. Additionally, the development of some emulators has contributed to improved resources for
homebrew
Homebrewing mainly refers to small-scale, non-commercial manufacture of a drink, typically beer.
Homebrew or home brew may also refer to:
Computing
* Homebrew Computer Club
* Homebrew (package manager), for macOS and Linux
* Homebrew (video game ...
software development for certain consoles, such as was the case with VisualBoyAdvance, a
Game Boy Advance emulator that was noted by author Casey O'Donnell as having contributed to the development of tools for the console that were seen as superior to even those provided by Nintendo, so much so that even some licensed game developers used the tools to develop games for the console.
Methods
Emulators can be designed in three ways: purely operating in software which is the most common form such as
MAME using ROM images; purely operating in hardware such as the
ColecoVision's adapter to accept
Atari VCS
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
cartridges.
An emulator is created typically through
reverse engineering
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
of the hardware information as to avoid any possible conflicts with non-public intellectual property. Some information may be made public for developers on the hardware's specifications which can be used to start efforts on emulation but there are often layers of information that remain as trade secrets such as encryption details. Operating code stored in the hardware's
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
may be
disassembled
"Avengers Disassembled" is a 2004 crossover storyline published by Marvel Comics involving the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Spider-Man and Thor. The beginning of Brian Michael Bendis's ''Avengers'' run, it depicts the destructi ...
to be analyzed in a
clean room design
Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. Clean-room design is usefu ...
, with one person performing the disassembling and another person, separately, documenting the function of the code. Once enough information of how the hardware interprets the game software, an emulation on the target hardware can then be constructed.
Emulation developers typically avoid any information that may come from untraceable sources to avoid contaminating the clean room nature of their project. For example, in 2020, a
large trove of information related to Nintendo's consoles was leaked, and teams working on Nintendo console emulators such as the
Dolphin
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...
emulator for GameCube and Wii stated they were staying far away from the leaked information to avoid tainting their project.
Once an emulator is written, it then requires a copy of the game software to be obtained, a step that may have legal consequences. Typically, this requires the user to make a copy of the contents of the ROM cartridge to computer files or images that can be read by the emulator, a process known as "dumping" the contents of the ROM. A similar concept applies to other proprietary formats, such as for
PlayStation
is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...
CD games. While not required for emulation of the earliest arcade or home console, most emulators also require a dump of the hardware's BIOS, which could vary with distribution region and hardware revisions. In some cases, emulators allow for the application of ROM
patches which update the ROM or BIOS dump to fix incompatibilities with newer platforms or change aspects of the game itself. The emulator subsequently uses the BIOS dump to mimic the hardware while the ROM dump (with any patches) is used to replicate the game software.
Perspectives
Outside of official usage, emulation has generally been seen negatively by video game console manufacturers and game developers. The largest concern is nature of
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
related to ROM images of games, typically distributed freely and without hardware restrictions. While this directly impacts potential sales of emulated games and thus the publishers and developers, the nature of the
value chain
A value chain is a progression of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product (i.e., good and/or service) to the end customer. The concept comes through business management and was firs ...
of the industry can lead to potential financial harm to console makers.
Further, emulation challenges the industry's use of the
razorblade model for console games, where consoles are sold near cost and revenue instead obtained from licenses on game sales. With console emulation being developed even while consoles are still on the market, console manufacturers are forced to continue to innovate, bring more games for their systems to market, and move quickly onto new technology to continue their business model.
There are further concerns related to intellectual property of the console's branding and of games' assets that could be misused, though these are issues less with emulation itself but with how the software is subsequently used.
Alternatively, emulation is seen to enhance
video game preservation
Video game preservation is a form of preservation applied to the video game industry that includes, but is not limited to, digital preservation. Such preservation efforts include archiving development source code and art assets, digital copies of ...
efforts, both in shifting game information from outdated technology into newer, more persistent formats, and providing software or hardware alternates to aged hardware.
Concerns about cost, availability, and longevity of game software and console hardware have also been cited as a reason for supporting the development of emulators.
Some users of emulation also see emulation as means to preserve games from companies that have long-since gone bankrupt or disappeared from the industry's earlier market crash and contractions, and where ownership of the property is unclear. Emulation can also be seen as a means to enhance functionality of the original game that would otherwise not be possible, such as adding in localizations via ROM patches or new features such as
save states.
On November 2021,
Phil Spencer stated that he hoped for video game companies to eventually develop and propagate legal emulation which would allow users to play any game from the past that they already owned a copy of, characterizing it as "a great North Star" for the industry to aim towards in the future.
Legal issues
United States
As computers and
global computer networks continued to advance and become more popular, emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink.
Fifth generation consoles such as
Nintendo 64,
PlayStation
is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a divisi ...
and
sixth generation handhelds, such as the
Game Boy Advance, saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This led to an effort by console manufacturers to stop unofficial emulation, but consistent failures such as ''
Sega v. Accolade
''Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc.'', 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied American intellectual property law to the reverse engineering of computer software. ...
'' 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), ''
Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation'' 203 F.3d 596 (2000), and ''
Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem'' 214 F.3d 1022 (2000),
have had the opposite effect, which has ruled that emulators, developed through clean room design, are legal. The
Librarian of Congress
The Librarian of Congress is the head of the Library of Congress, appointed by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the United States Senate, for a term of ten years. In addition to overseeing the library, the Libra ...
, under the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), has codified these rules as allowed exemptions to bypass technical copyright protections on console hardware.
However, emulator developers cannot incorporate code that may have been embedded within the hardware BIOS, nor ship the BIOS image with their emulators.
Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country-specific
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
and international copyright law under the
Berne Convention. Accordingly, video game publishers and developers have taken legal action against websites that illegally redistribute their copyrighted software, successfully forcing sites to remove their titles or taking down the websites entirely.
Under United States law, obtaining a
dumped copy of the original machine's
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
is legal under the ruling ''
Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.
''Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.'' is a 1992 legal case where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concluded that there was no copyright infringement made by the Game Genie, a video game accessory that ...
'', 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as
fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. To mitigate this however, several emulators for platforms such as
Game Boy Advance are capable of running without a BIOS file, using
high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy.
Impersonation by malware
Due to their popularity, emulators have also been a target of online scams in the form of
trojan horse
The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...
programs designed to mimic the appearance of a legitimate emulator, which are then promoted through
spam
Spam may refer to:
* Spam (food), a canned pork meat product
* Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages
** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages
** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ( ...
, on
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
and elsewhere. Some scams, such as the purported "PCSX4" emulator, have even gone so far as to setting up a fake
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
repository, presumably for added trustworthiness especially to those unfamiliar with
open-source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
development.
The
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...
has since issued an advisory warning users to avoid downloading such software, in response to reports of a purported
Nintendo Switch
The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...
emulator released by various websites as a front for a survey scam.
Official use
Due to the high demand of playing old games on modern systems, consoles have begun incorporating emulation technology. The most notable of these is
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
's
Virtual Console
A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Unix ...
. Originally released for the
Wii
The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...
, but present on the
3DS
The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo. It was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generatio ...
and
Wii U
The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.
The W ...
, ''Virtual Console'' uses software emulation to allow the purchasing and playing of games for old systems on this modern hardware. Though not all games are available, the Virtual Console has a large collection of games spanning a wide variety of consoles. The Virtual Console's library of past games currently consists of titles originating from the
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...
,
Super NES,
Game Boy
The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...
,
Game Boy Color
The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...
,
Nintendo 64,
Game Boy Advance,
Nintendo DS
The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...
, and Wii, as well as
Sega
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
's
Master System
The is an 8-bit
third-generation home video game console manufactured by Sega. It was originally a remodeled export version of the Sega Mark III, the third iteration of the SG-1000 series of consoles, which was released in Japan in 1985 and ...
and
Genesis/Mega Drive,
NEC
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It prov ...
's
TurboGrafx-16, and
SNK
is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. It is the successor to the company Shin Nihon Kikaku and presently owns the SNK video game brand and the Neo Geo video game platform. SNK's predecessor Shin Nihon Kikaku was founded in 1978 ...
's
Neo Geo. The service for the Wii also includes games for platforms that were known only in select regions, such as the
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
(Europe and North America) and
MSX
MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...
(Japan),
as well as Virtual Console Arcade, which allows players to download video
arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
s. Virtual Console titles have been downloaded over ten million times.
Each game is distributed with a dedicated emulator tweaked to run the game as well as possible. However, it lacks the enhancements that unofficial emulators provide, and many titles are still unavailable.
Until the 4.0.0 firmware update, the
Nintendo Switch
The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...
system software contained an embedded NES emulator, referred to internally as "flog", running the game ''
Golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
'' (with
motion controller support using
Joy-Con). The
Easter egg was believed to be a tribute to former Nintendo president
Satoru Iwata
was a Japanese businessman, video game programmer, video game designer, and producer. He was the fourth President (corporate title), president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015. He was a major contr ...
, who died in 2015: the game was only accessible on July 11 (the date of his death), ''Golf'' was programmed by Iwata, and the game was activated by performing a gesture that Iwata had famously used during Nintendo's video presentations. It was suggested that the inclusion of ''Golf'' was intended as a digital form of
omamori—a traditional form of Japanese
amulet
An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word amuletum, which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects ...
s intended to provide luck or protection. As part of its
Nintendo Switch Online
Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) is an online subscription service for the Nintendo Switch video game console. Nintendo Switch Online features include online multiplayer, cloud saving, voice chat via a smartphone app, access to a library of Ninten ...
subscription service, Nintendo subsequently released an app featuring an on-demand library of NES and SNES titles updated regularly. The app features similar features to Virtual Console titles, including save states, as well as a pixel scaler mode and an effect that simulates
CRT television
A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...
displays.
Due to differences in hardware, the
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...
is not natively backwards compatible with original
Xbox
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the na ...
games. However, Microsoft achieved
backwards compatibility with popular titles through an emulator. On June 15, 2015, Microsoft announced the Xbox One would be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 through Emulation. In June 2017, they announced Xbox original titles would also be available for backwards compatibility through emulation, but because the Xbox original runs on the
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
architecture, CPU emulation is unnecessary, greatly improving performance. The
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...
uses software emulation to play original PlayStation titles, and the PlayStation Store sells games that run through an emulator within the machine. In the original Japanese and North American 60GB models, original PS2 hardware is present to run titles; however all PAL models, and later models released in Japan and North America removed some PS2 hardware components, replacing it with software emulation working alongside the video hardware to achieve partial hardware/software emulation.
In later releases, backwards compatibility with PS2 titles was completely removed along with the PS2 graphics chip, and eventually Sony released PS2 titles with software emulation on the
PlayStation Store.
Commercial developers have also used emulation as a means to repackage and reissue older games on newer consoles in retail releases. For example, Sega has created several collections of ''
Sonic the Hedgehog
is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers mo ...
'' games. Before the ''Virtual Console'', Nintendo also used this tactic, such as
Game Boy Advance re-releases of
NES
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...
titles in the
Classic NES Series.
Other uses
Although the primary purpose of emulation is to make older video-games execute on newer systems, there are several advantages inherent in the extra flexibility of software emulation that were not possible on the original systems.
ROM hacking and modification
Disk image
A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...
loading is a necessity for most console emulators, as most computing devices do not have the hardware required to run older console games directly from the physical game media itself. Even with optical media system emulators such as the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, attempting to run games from the actual disc may cause problems such as hangs and malfunction as PC optical drives are not designed to spin discs the way those consoles do. This, however, has led to the advantage of it being far easier to modify the actual game's files contained within the game ROMs. Amateur
programmer
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
s and gaming enthusiasts have produced
translations of foreign games, rewritten dialogue within a game, applied fixes to
bugs
Bugs may refer to:
* Plural of bug
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters
* Bugs Bunny, a character
* Bugs Meany, a character in the ''Encyclopedia Brown'' books
Films
* ''Bugs'' (2003 film), a science-fiction-horror film
* ''Bugs ...
that were present in the original game, as well as updating old sports games with modern rosters. It is even possible to use high-resolution texture pack upgrades for 3-D games and sometimes 2-D if available and possible.
Enhanced technical features
Software that emulates a console can be improved with additional capabilities that the original system did not have. These include Enhanced graphical capabilities, such as
spatial anti-aliasing, upscaling of the
framebuffer resolution to match high definition and even higher display resolutions, as well as
anisotropic filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering (abbreviated AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces of computer graphics that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the t ...
(texture sharpening).
Emulation software may offer improved audio capabilities (e.g. decreased latency and better audio interpolation), enhanced
save states (which allow the user to save a game at any point for debugging or re-try) and decreased boot and loading times. Some emulators feature an option to "quickly" boot a game, bypassing the console manufacturer's original splash screens.
Furthermore, emulation software may offer online
multiplayer
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
functionality and the ability to speed up and slow down the emulation speed. This allows the user to fast-forward through unwanted cutscenes for example, or the ability to disable the framelimiter entirely (useful for benchmarking purposes).
Bypassing regional lockouts
Some consoles have a regional lockout, preventing the user from being able to play games outside of the designated game region. This can be considered a nuisance for console gamers as some games feature seemingly inexplicable localization differences between regions, such as differences in the time requirements for driving missions and license tests on ''Gran Turismo 4'', and the PAL version of ''
Final Fantasy X
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth main entry in the ''Final Fantasy'' series. Originally released in 2001 for PlayStation 2, the game was re-released as ''Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster'' for PlayStat ...
'' which added more ingame skills, changes to some bosses, and even more bosses, Dark Aeons, that weren't available in the American NTSC release of the game.
Although it is usually possible to modify the consoles themselves to bypass regional lockouts, console modifications can cause problems with screens not being displayed correctly and games running too fast or slow, due to the fact that the console itself may not be designed to output to the correct format for the game. These problems can be overcome on emulators, as they are usually designed with their own output modules, which can run both NTSC and PAL games without issue.
Cheating and widescreen functionality
Many emulators, for example
Snes9x,
make it far easier to load console-based cheats, without requiring potentially expensive proprietary hardware devices such as those used by GameShark and
Action Replay. Freeware tools allow codes given by such programs to be converted into code that can be read directly by the emulator's built-in cheating system, and even allow cheats to be toggled from the menu. The debugging tools featured in many emulators also aid gamers in creating their own such cheats.
Similar systems can also be used to enable Widescreen Hacks for certain games, allowing the user to play games which were not originally intended for widescreen, without having to worry about aspect ratio distortion on widescreen monitors.
See also
*
List of video game console emulators
The following is a list of notable video game console emulators.
Arcade
* Visual Pinball
Atari
; Atari 2600
* Stella (emulator), Stella
Nintendo
Home consoles
; Nintendo Entertainment System
* FCEUX
* NESticle
* Nestopia
; Super Nintendo ...
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Video Game Console Emulator
Computer and video game platform emulators