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[petran79]

My view about emulation changed significantly. It is not anymore about grabbing ZSNES, Nesticle or Kawaks and play the games of your childhood and teen years. Though I have to admit, emulation of 32-bit+ systems and games that were not arcade ports never captivated me as much, even today.

But aside from that, browsing emulation developer webpages and reading progress about emulation is a very interesting subject. BSNES made the start, making me forget about ZSNES and understand more about SNES.

Also reading about the history of arcade games on MAME and the various changes each version brought over the years, taught me about the process of emulation and the hardware involved. Though MAME got bloated with redundant drivers, I try to keep in touch with arcade emulation at least.

Preservation and dumping aspects are also another thing that keeps surprising me. The solution engineers and programmers had to come up with were very original.

Even current gen emulators like Citra, Cemu, Decaf and RCPS3 are really exciting to follow. Despite the fact I am not that delved into computer science, I got used to understand some basic terms and the process involved. Prefer their Linux versions tbh, though RCPS3 is slower there.

Another interesting thing is learning what makes each system special either through its interface or its games. Eg the quality, love, presentation and polish Japanese games have on Nintendo consoles, would not be possible on PC. Wii, Gamecube, 3DS, Wii U and Switch games are worlds apart from PC games in that respect. This requires a big company to oversee things. On PC this would simply not work. Emulation made me realize even more that for Nintendo hardware plays a big role. Despite the digital era, Nintendo still has the toy marketing and mentality.

Are you following that aspect of emulation too or put emphasis in playing games?

 

[Platy]

Emulation made me realize even more that for Nintendo hardware plays a big role. Despite the digital era, Nintendo still has the toy marketing and mentality.

Playing Star Fox on anything that is not a N64 makes you appreciate that trident controller much more

 

[MaDKaT]

I use emulation mostly out of convenience to continue playing my favorite games.

 

[Luigiv]

Well if you really want to go down the rabbit hole of learning more about games through emulation: http://www.emulator101.com/

Spoiler

I'm still stuck on step one.

 

[sixteen-bit]

I'm subbed to some cool emulation threads on this forum and keep up with development that way.

 

[LiK]

Def for arcade games especially the ones you cannot buy anywhere or aren't arcade accurate. Emulation is the only way. I also check out old Japanese games because I am not importing them sight unseen.

 

[Chainsawkitten]

I spend way more time reading Dolphin, RPCS3 and Citra, etc. progress reports/devlogs than I do actually using emulators. That stuff is interesting to me as a programmer.

I also spent some time coding for NES for fun and naturally that's most convenient with an emulator (by a loooong shot).

 

[nkarafo]

As long as the emulators i use have a decent accuracy so the end product represents the games as close to reality as possible.

Playin Starfox on ZSNES for example is not how the game works. You are basically playing the game in fast forward, the music doesnt even have time to loop once.

The og Starfox was a 10-15 fps slow paced game. So if you use emulation for reaserch and education this is how you need to experience it. N64 games had a blurry image quality and were low res, PS1 games had a lot of dithering and pixellation and were low res. And so on. Its great that you can enchance graphics and overall quality but then you dont have a good representation or you are using emulation for other reasons than education/reaserch/comparisons of ports, etc.

I do both but i prefer the original look.

 

[petran79]

Well if you really want to go down the rabbit hole of learning more about games through emulation: http://www.emulator101.com/

Spoiler

I'm still stuck on step one.

Even if I grasp 1% I'll be content....

As long as the emulators i use have a decent accuracy so the end product represents the games as close to reality as possible.

Playin Starfox on ZSNES for example is not how the game works. You are basically playing the game in fast forward, the music doesnt even have time to loop once.

The og Starfox was a 10-15 fps slow paced game. So if you use emulation for reaserch and education this is how you need to experience it. N64 games had a blurry image quality and were low res, PS1 games had a lot of dithering and pixellation and were low res. And so on. Its great that you can enchance graphics and overall quality but then you dont have a good representation or you are using emulation for other reasons than education/reaserch/comparisons of ports, etc.

I do both but i prefer the original look.

This is why I prefer emulators on computer platform instead of the commercial emulators on consoles. They look more scientific, are usually more accurate and feature many more options.

Though the downside is that Nintendo's magic is gone.

As opposed to this