Miracles of Modern Technology

Emulators.

NO WAIT. WAIT. Keep reading, I have some info you might like.

Emulators are a dirty word for many game collectors, especially those that value having "the real thing". I understand this, I hate buying digital music and movies. Something about someone needing a court ordered search warrant to take my stuff away comforts me... anyway.

Not all Emulation is bad, and it is not all dubious downloading from the internet. First let me explain what Emulators actually are. They work LIKE a game system, without BEING the original game system. That's it. That is why EMULATORS are legal, as long as doesn't use code from a system, it is legal.

But downloading the games are illegal right?

Yes... well no... well yes.

Ok, the law lets you have ONE digital back up of anything you own. If you OWN a wide video game collection, you can download an own a copy of each game. You own a Zelda NES cart, then you can legally own a copy of that data(Rom form is the common one) and do with it what you will. Play it legally on emulators for example.

Why does that help? Well keep reading.

Emulation is also legal on the hardware area. We all know NES's wear out, and we all know PS1's die faster than micro-black holes in the Hadron Collider. There are legal physical hardware emulators that work with the REAL games!

From Game Collecting with Rick

Yes! You can buy one of these LEGALLY(as long as you get the right ones of course), and you can put in your prized Mike Tyson's Punch Out cart and play the real thing on your TV.

But Rick, if I have an NES what is the point?

Well that one above plays both NES and SNES games, and there is ones that will do NES, SNES, and Genesis games. That way you don't have to have all these treasured systems hooked up to the back of your TV, wearing out the sockets because 3 game systems are daisy chained back there.

Ok, but I also I said having those backup roms can be useful.

When you are traveling, you can't bring your game collection with you. It is probably too large. There are several legal hand held emulators out there too. They are the size of Gameboy DS's or even smaller.

From Game Collecting with Rick

Legally play the games you own on these and have great fun.

We game collectors can co-exist peacefully with the Emulator crowd, they have tools that add longevity and FUN to our collections. Utilize them.


Upcoming posts. More spotlights from my collection. Collecting more than just the games. And another look into the Science of Rarity.