Emulation

My Grey Area.

Piracy? It is, if you use unlicensed roms of games you don’t own …Preservation? For sure, even if it is illegal…Did I play emulated game systems? Who didn’t at some point…

From the late 90’s until early 2000’s, all the attention of the gaming community and industry was focused on the home console 32bit/3D markets. That led to the decline of interest on previous console and arcade generations.

The 8 bit and 16 bit games were now seen as relics with almost no interest. But there was a group of gamers with the interest of experiencing those titles and started to dump the roms into online repositories. For several years, the mainstream industry carried on with the development of new technologies, paying little to no attention to the emulation enthusiasts.

In 2001, I started playing emulators on my PC, mainly arcade and 16 bit games that I didn’t have access to before. Emulation required a bit of fiddling around, and it wasn't  straightforward plug and play. Mostly driven by nostalgia, the emulation scene was very growing both in developers as in player base. 

At some point, the industry turned their eyes to emulation, when some of the development teams started to divert to commercializing software to more contemporary console generations. Who doesn’t remember Bleem! That didn’t go well. Some companies started to flex their legal power in order to scare developers and websites to stop distributing their legacy titles as infringement to copyright laws. That led to some big repositories being shut down completely and a lot of “cease and desist” letters being issued.

China, a country with disregard for copyright, found a thriving market for emulators consoles for years, thanks to low prices and a very upcoming resurgence of retro gaming. A lot of very questionable products, that featured a myriad of games built in, found their way to the west. Some eventually evolved to more premium  products, as in the case of Powkiddy and Ambernic.

The main players in the industry as Sony, Sega and Nintendo, jumped on the retro nostalgia craze as a way to capitalize on their legacy catalogs, using the very same emulation technologies they tried to shut down earlier on their fully licensed mini consoles. In the end they managed to profit from reminiscent players, collectors and a new generation that find retro appealing. To be honest, their devices took all the hassle of setting and optimizing, to a plug and play experience available to everyone.

I still use a bit of emulation, especially on titles that are really rare and expensive to own.But nowadays I limited my usage, taking in consideration I have more buying power for original games and the increase of the amount of affordable titles on the market, thanks to indie developers.

Do I agree with emulation? Probably not in legal terms, but if it wasn’t for it a lot of games could be lost forever, because at some point the companies that made them didn't care that much. For me it’s a grey area, where most of us are doing or did it at some point…