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  1. What is Legacy Mode Emulation?

    Although when talking about emulation almost everybody jumps right at the idea of running classic game ROMs under modern hardware and operating systems, not all emulation is of this nature. In fact, most modern consoles have emulation software built in at the factory to make running games that were published for the previous generation of that console possible on the current generation version.

    Take XboX 360 for example. It shares nothing more than a name tag with the original Xbox console. This makes the modern Xbox 360 system not backwards compatible with it’s predecessor, which can be disappointed for early adapters that invested in the original console and games just to find out that they cant run them when they upgrade to the 360.

    To address this, Microsoft created and Xbox emulator for the Xbox 360 platform, making possible for the seamless integration and running the old games under the new hardware. Sony on the other hand uses the actual physical components of it’s original Play Station to make playing games for it possible on the latest Play Station 3 console. However, some versions of the 60GB Sony Play Station for the US market lack original Play Station 2 CPU, but have the original graphic subsystem. So in order to make PS2 titles executable under the Play Station 3, Sony uses partial emulation to replace the missing CPU, achieving something of a hardware and software emulation mix. Finally, the engineers of Sony perfected the emulation process, making PS3 capable of running PS2 titles on pure software emulation, thus removing the need for dedicated PS2 hardware in the PlayStation3 and reducing the manufacturing costs considerably

    Another way of this type of emulation is even used by big game development studios. They often use software emulation techniques to reissue more popular older game titles and exploit their popularity further by making them run on modern consoles. A good example of this approach is the Final Fantasy series, and it’s developer, Square Enix. They recently re-released this popular series on modern day consoles such are Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Sony Play Station Portable. Another developer who did this was Sega, who created bundle pack of their popular titles from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

    But most popular commercial emulation package has to be Nintendo’s own emulator called the Virtual Console. Virtual Console comes preinstalled on their latest generation entertainment system, the Nintendo Wii, and it successful emulates Nintendo’s most popular titles from classic consoles such are the original Nintendo Entertainment System, it’s successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, but also consoles from their main competitors Sega – Sega Master System and Sega Genesis (called Sega Mega Drive outside United States). Nintendo’s Virtual Console also successful emulates games from NeoGeo, Amiga’s Commodore64, early PC’s and various arcade games as well. Nintendo also used emulation for the various Game Boy Advance (GBA) re-releases of popular Nintendo Entertainment System games in their famous Classic NES series. This clearly shows that emulation technology is not something reserved for hackers and home users – large game studios and developers often use it themselves.

  2. It’s easy to improve the classic console hardware, it’s hard to emulate it correctly

    Have you heard of DICE? DICE stands for Digital Integrated Circuit Emulator, and it’s a software project that is created for perfect, pixel by pixel, frame by frame instruction by instruction emulation. It accomplishes this by emulating on a low level, but taking this approach to the extreme – [...] Continue Reading…

  3. Emulating the extra processors

    One of the most interesting things about those old, cartridge based systems, is that by putting a game cartridge in the slot you are in fact plugging a PCB device directly to your console. A modern equivalent of this would be hot swapping devices that run on PCI slots, [...] Continue Reading…

  4. What is an video game emulator, and what other emulators are out there?

    A computer game emulator is a piece of software, or a program that makes playing video games that were made for one specific hardware platform playable on other hardware. Most types of emulators are developed to enable playing classic video game titles like Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda playable on [...] Continue Reading…

  5. Why is it important to emulate an old computer as closely as possible?

    The question most casual emulator users, and even some classic game enthusiasts are often asking can be summed up as: what’s the difference? If it looks good enough, runs smooth enough and works without bugs, why should we care if the emulation is really not all that accurate?

    The simple [...] Continue Reading…

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