The legality of emulating games has always been a grey area. The law currently states that owning emulators and ROMS is not illegal but contrasting laws and opinions cast uncertainty over what you actually can and can’t do.
Nick Fernandez writes, "After decades of questionable practices around emulation, a chance conversation with a retro game store owner changed my views forever."
This is a great article and it's what many in the retro community feel.
I still play on original hardware if I have nostalgia for those systems I have my nes, mega drive, PS1, n64, PS2 connected through a retrotink 2x to a OLED Bravia and I'm happy with the image. Sometimes it's not even the games but the sound of a PS1 laser firing that makes the experience the changing cart or disc it's cathartic
If I don't have nostalgia for the system like SNES, Saturn, Dreamcast I'll emulate and maybe use a Bluetooth knock off controller or NSO controller to feel sort of genuine like the SNES NSO gamepad is awesome.
I also use ever drives for the cart based systems I own a few classics I love like super Mario Bros games, sonics etc but retro gaming is expensive so everdrive gives me that full library like emulation but I have the right gamepad in my hand because some systems just don't feel right unless you have the right controller mainly the N64.
But I'm under no illusion I'll have my retro systems forever all the console will inevitably die and that where emulation becomes vital. Its great for preservation and it helps make these old games accessible to younger generations who may wonder where their favourite franchises started and expose them to new things like games from the 8 and 16 bit era which still hold up really well.
I enjoy articles like this. It's actual game journalism. I would love to read more about the context of the store and the owner one day.
I started out completely against downloading emulators and roms. I considered it stealing.
However, recently, with companies like Ubisoft and others, telling me I don’t own my digital only game, and even the physical games that I do own are incomplete on physical media, some with nothing more than an executable file, on disc so that I have to download the entire game anyway. I have since changed my opinion on the subject. If game publishers don’t care about me, trying to do the right thing, then I’m not going to care about them. The industry brought this upon themselves.
At this time, emulation is the number one way to ensure game preservation. Even Sony and Nintendo is using this method officially to make older games playable on their consoles.
If my emulation were to go away then there is a chance the retro gaming market is likely fall into an even smaller niche since the newer generation of gamers will not even know those games existed.
The team behind EmuDeck is launching their first hardware product in the form of small retro emulation mini PCs.
...hmm, pretty much anyone can make their own out of a raspberry pi. I use it on my steam deck and soon my ps vita.
If you are a serious gamer and want the best outside of OG hardware then I'd strongly suggest a Mister FPGA. Hardware emulation is the way forward.
I like it. I don’t have the time to figure out DuckStation. This is great. I like that it’s an emulated Dreamcast design
Due to the Cell processor that powered the system, PlayStation 3 emulation on the PlayStation 5 could be held back by important technical limitations
All that processor ever really served was to make game development harder for most people. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Your right, well up. Till the point they realised how to program it and then it became a monster, they way it off loads tasks to spus and they way it manages this is astounding, I wish they had just upgraded it for ps4 gave it more ram to its disposal as it would truely have been a monster, instead we got an under powered AMD chip and some of the guys here we very disappointed indeed. For a cost point of view it made PS4 more affordable but from a development point of view, we already had the development tools and software
I remember most 3rd party titles being the runt of the litter when it came to ports that generation.
EA made a few bad ports in the opening months of the release. compare 1st party titles. go ahead. do it. oh you cant. not even the same league.
Ignore because they’re arguably widely recognised as one of, if not the best source in the industry… great logic. Well done.
They offer surface level analysis, its like that Tv overlay that displays the framerate, they absolutely have 0 clue with anything development related, or anything behind the scenes, and more often than not, they’re a propaganda machine.
The irony being they clearly do know and they continuously prove that they know.. Relentlessly. If these comments aren’t sarcasm then they’re a sure fire way to make yourself look a bit stupid.
I think they're among the best in the business when it comes to frame by frame analysis, but they often speak on topics where they're not more informed than any other interested and passionate amateur. Quite often it's painful watching their show when they state things like facts when they're in fact wrong, and knowing that most of their viewers will assume they're 100% correct about everything they say. I still enjoy them though, especially the retro stuff.
For those who say DF doesn't know what they are doing...Gotta give us a hard example not a generalized statement.
Sony beggers raging at DF because Sony can't feed them enough remakes and old generation content to keep them happy. Yikes!
DF... the same people convinced PS5 and Xbox Series consoles couldn't do raytracing? The same people who didn't consider PS4 Pro was running AC7 better than Xbox One X due to PS4 Pro's CPU rapid packed math feature while I was telling them to look into it? The same people that are still confused about the PS5's capabilities against XSX's despite all the information being handed to them on a silver platter by Mark Cerny which some smarter gamers with some programming experience have been telling them since the road to PS5 talk was done? Those people?
Yeah, I think I'll continue to pass on any superficial opinion-based observations they make about game developement, too.
I’d like to see someone explain why you’re getting downvotes. You’re correct. If software is running on native (original) hardware, then it’s not being emulated. If it is being emulated, then it’s not running on native hardware. “Native emulation” seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.
DF doesn't know what "native support" means... it doesn't seem like you know either. Native support can mean emulation, but meaning the original hardware is not required, but it also means no downloads. "Native support" means that nothing additional is required to run the software as intended. You can certainly call a software emulation layer on PS3 for PS1 games native support because it ran software from the disc needing absolutely nothing else to work properly. The PS1 hardware was not on PS3, but the games were still natively supported.
Xbox backward compatibility support is not native, no games run from discs without downloading a repackaged app to run. That is not native support and we all agree DF is blatently lying by suggesting it is.
All consoles run repackaged legacy games this gen, which is exactly why the PS3 is still the gold standard for backward compatibility on consoles to this very day. You would simply pop in any PS1/2 disc and they'd just run without needing anything else from anywhere. Apparently, the newer PS3's (no Emotion Engine) still ran the majority of PS2 games.
@VariantAEC
First off, you’re using a different term than me. I was talking about the use of the term “native emulation.” But you’re using the term “native support.” Maybe that’s the same thing. I’m not sure.
So from what I gather, “native emulation” means emulation that doesn’t require a download. In computer terminology, I’ve always thought of “native” as implying original hardware, or at least original components.
I never understood the love for resistance... I found it the be mid at best. Infamous 2 was good. Would be great to play killzone again
It's only a matter of time before Xbox has PS3 emulation before Playstation because of them dragging their feet.
Be nice if they did. Be nice to have a reason to get an Xbox again after all this time .
OP's sarcasm comes from Xbox's superior emulation department ... likely the only efficient department at Xbox
I mean... it's really not that far-fetched. Emulation on the Xbox consoles is miles ahead of the PlayStation consoles. The Switch gets close if you jailbreak it, but it lacks power and the cool part about emulation on Xbox is that you just need a $20 dev account to use those features.
And if anything, the Xbox just doesn't have a PS3, Wii U, and Switch emulator yet because it lacks native support for Vulkan/OpenGL 4.3. The moment someone makes a new wrapper or it gets that compatibility, it will be a matter of weeks for those consoles to be playable on it as well.
rpcs3 already perfectly emulates tons of PS3 games on PC. The Xbox already emulates the PS2 far better than Sony. As for the PS3 emulator, the only thing needed is for someone to create a uwp version of RPCS3 and you'll be good to go. There's already a 360 uwp emulator. I suspect RPCS3 will be ported over before the year is out.
They already are legal. Emulators have always been legal. Roms are the grey area, they are legal as long as you own a copy of the original cartridge, cd, whatever.
If their old games why not
They are fine the way they are, they dont need promoted by a law nor do they really need some enforced laws to forbid them.
Legal or not my psp says thank you lol.
I don't see anything wrong with emulator and roms. It doesn't hurt corporations.