Video game console emulator

Not to be confused with Terminal emulator.

A video game console emulator is a program that allows a computer or modern console (cross-console emulation) to emulate a different video game console's behavior. Emulators are most often used to play older video games on personal computers and modern video game consoles, but they are also used to play games translated into other languages or to modify (or hack) existing games. Emulators are also a useful tool in the development process of homebrewed demos and new games for older systems.

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, and often riddled with defects. Few manufacturers published technical specifications for their hardware, leaving it to amateur programmers and developers to deduce the exact workings of a console through reverse engineering. Nintendo's consoles tended to be the most commonly studied, for example the most advanced early emulators reproduced the workings of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and the Game Boy (GB). Programs like Marat Fayzullin's iNES (which emulated the NES), VirtualGameBoy (GB), Pasofami (NES), Super Pasofami (SNES), and VSMC (SNES) were the most popular console emulators of this era. A curiosity was also Yuji Naka's unreleased NES emulator for the Mega Drive, possible marking the first instance of a software emulator running on a console.^{[citation needed]}

The rise in popularity of console emulation 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 community. The release of projects such as RPGe's English language translation of Final Fantasy V drew even more users into the emulation scene.

Legal issues

United States

As computers and global computer networks continued to advance and 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 the Nintendo 64, the Sony PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance, saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This has led to a more concerted effort by console manufacturers to crack down on unofficial emulation. Both country specific copyright and patent law and international copyright law under the Berne Convention protect copying and reproducing of subject matter with copyright protection.^[1]

Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. 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.

Other Places

Legal Use of Emulation

Not all emulation is of a questionable nature – consoles have legally used the technology to allow the playing of previous generation games.

Due to differences in hardware, the Xbox 360 is not natively backwards compatible with original Xbox games. However, Microsoft achieved backwards compatibility with popular titles through an emulator. The PlayStation 3 uses physical PlayStation hardware to play original PlayStation titles. In US 60GB models original PS2 graphics and CPU hardware are present to run PS2 titles, however the PAL and later US models removed the PS2 CPU, 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, which could not be emulated through software alone.

Commercial developers have used emulation as a means to repackage and reissue older games on newer consoles. Square Enix has re-released several Final Fantasy titles on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS while Sega has created collections of Sonic the Hedgehog games. Likely the most notable example of commercial emulation is Nintendo's Virtual Console, which comes packaged with their seventh-generation system, the Wii. Virtual Console emulates various titles for the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the US), NEC's TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine in Japan) and Turbo CD, SNK's Neo Geo, the Commodore 64 (In Europe and America), the MSX (In Japan), and select arcade games.

The Game Boy Advance re-releases of NES titles in the Classic NES Series line were emulated.

Other uses

One advantage to ROM images is the potential for ROM hacking. Amateur programmers and gaming enthusiasts have produced translations of foreign games, rewritten dialogue within a game, applied fixes to bugs that were present in the original game, as well as updating old sports games with modern rosters. Software that emulates a console can be improved with additional capabilities that the original system did not have, such as Spatial anti-aliasing, running in High Definition video resolutions, anisotropic filtering (texture sharpening), audio interpolation, save states, online multiplayer options or the incorporation of cheat cartridge functionality.

Notes

• Wen, Howard (1999-06-04). "Why emulators make video-game makers quake". Salon. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/06/04/emulators/print.html. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
• Carless, Simon. "Playing Classic Games". Gaming Hacks. O'Reilly. pp. 1–67. ISBN 0596007140. 
• "Legal Information (Copyrights, Emulators, ROMs, etc.)". Nintendo of America, Inc.. 2007. http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
• Kauffman, Jeremiah (2000-07-24). "Abandonwarez: the pros outweigh the cons". Adventure Classic Gaming. http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/features/160/. Retrieved 2007-07-12. 
• "US Code 17,1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems". Cornell University. 2008. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00001201----000-.html. Retrieved 2008-11-22. 
• "The Entertainment Software Association - Anti-Piracy FAQ". The Entertainment Software Association. http://www.theesa.com/policy/antipiracy_faq.asp. 

References

1. ^ see Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc. 574 F.Supp. 999, aff'd, 704 F.2d 1009 (9th Cir 1982) (holding the computer ROM of Pac Man to be a sufficient fixation for purposes of copyright law even though the game changes each time played.) and Article 2 of the Berne Convention

See also

• Emulator
• List of video game console emulators