“The Magic of Dedicated Hardware:” An Emulation Enthusiast’s Rejoinder
Note: These opinions are the author’s alone. Don’t go yelling at Wololo because you don’t agree with me. That’s all!
On Saturday at EuroGamer, an article was posted that argued that the proper way to enjoy a game is on the hardware it was designed for. Now, I love EuroGamer. It’s a great site, and EuroGamer’s Digital Foundry articles are especially neat to a geek like me. But this article went against everything I stand for as far as games go. PSOne classics on a Vita or PS3 are not a valid way to enjoy PSOne games? I shouldn’t play the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time because it isn’t how the developer originally intended the game to be played? In the next few paragraphs, I will offer a different perspective: one where emulation is not only a valid way to play games, but a good thing for classic gaming overall.
According to EuroGamer, this girl isn’t actually having fun. Sorry to deceive you.
The following sums up my entire premise: games are made to be fun. Forget the “games as art” debate, as it doesn’t affect this subject. Even “art games” are meant to be fun. Flower was fun. Braid was fun. Shadow of the Colossus was fun. If a game is not fun, then it has failed at being a game.
Consider my daughter. When I got a 3DS, I gave her my DS (she was 5 at the time). She loved Pokemon. She didn’t know what she was doing, and frequently did things wrong (like trying to pokeball a monster at full health), but she was having fun. Was she experiencing the game wrongly? I would argue “no.” The game existed to be enjoyed, and she was enjoying it, so everyone was happy. Happy ending, right?
Not according to the EuroGamer blogger. She wasn’t playing the game “right,” and that is what counts. Is there a “right” way to play a game? I would agree that there are “authentic” ways to play a game. For the authentic PSOne experience, you need a CRT television, some Pearl Jam playing in the background, a PSOne and a good game or three. For an authentic Vectrex experience, you need, well, a Vectrex. But is the authentic experience the same as the “right” experience?
The “right” way to play Vectrex?
Let’s consider my situation. I still have my PSOne and a stack of games, but I don’t have an SDTV anymore. One of the wonders of HDTVs is that SD looks remarkably bad on them. I could run at the native system resolution, but that means my game will be in a small box in the middle of the screen. That sucks! My TV can stretch the image to fit the screen, but that just makes the picture blurry and ugly. What am I to do?
FF9, did you always looks so . . . chunky?
Enter emulation. The emulation scene was originally about preserving classic games (I was there, I’m old—some time I’ll write about the evolution of the scene). And emulator coders have really gone out of their way to accommodate different experiences. You want to filter the sprites for higher resolutions? They’ll do that. You want to emulate playing on a screen with scanlines? They’ll do that too.
So when I’m emulating (be it on my PSP, my Vita, my PS3, one of my Nintendo devices, or on my PC), I personally prefer a filtered, sharpened experience, and I can get that. And someone who wants a more authentic experience can get what he or she wants too. Win-win, right?
Emulation to the rescue!
Apparently not, according to the blogger at EuroGamer. Because while I’m having fun playing on my HDTV, I’m not honoring the “authorial intent” of the game. By his logic, his experience is more “correct” than mine. Unfortunately for him, the facts do not bear this out.
Consider, for example, Shadow of the Colossus. It was a great game which took advantage of every last drop of power the PS2 had. But the PS2 game, the original experience, did not match the “authorial intent.” There were framerate issues that were fixed in the PS3 HD port. The game was filled with glitches that were fixed in the HD port. Did Team Ico really intend this? Of course not. That’s why the problems were fixed in the remaster. What was Team Ico’s “authorial intent?” For people to play their game and have fun.
This brings us full circle. Games are made to be fun. If someone enjoys going for the most “authentic” experience possible, then the game succeeded. If someone enjoys blowing their classic games up to 1080p with smoothing enabled, then the game succeeded. If someone enjoys sprite swapping and using their own sprites to play, then the game succeeded. All of these are valid experiences! If anyone tries to tell you the “right” way to play a game, I say tell him or her to get lost. Are you having fun? Then you’re doing it right.
Another great article by TStrauss 🙂
Now that I’ve saved this excellent article from a nubby first comment, I can add my opinion to the comments.
I completely agree with everything here. In many cases, emulators can improve games. I had a few DOS games as a kid that had a few bugs that really annoyed me. For the most part DOSBox runs DOS games better than DOS does. And my N64 games look 200% better running on Project64 than they did back on my TV screen all those years ago. Even if you don’t use a hires texture pack for your N64 games, they still look better than the N64 could manage. Emulators for the most part is improving gaming, not ruining it, and I’m having more fun finding out how much better all my old games are now than they were back then.
Lool, good save 😀
This article reminds me of one of the arguments i had years ago with my friends over emulators 😀 ahhh the good memories 😀
I share your opinion 100%. This blogger must be that kind of person who gets butthurt when movies like Starwars get a remastering with new scenes ect.
Why should i watch Starwars in Lowdef without any 3d special effects possible today?
Why should 1 play DooM in 320×200 without real mouse aiming and all the fancy stuff modern ports offer?
Every improvement of a game is a new excuse to play a great game again.
yea but classic games seem right on like a psp or android i mean wen i use to play old school nintendo games i would be like 3 feet from a 40 inch tv(the fat old ones)so its like the same thing as having a 7 inch screen in my hands…i guess sum games like duck hunt u dont realy get the shoot the duck thing as u would with the nintendo gun thing.. but the shooting the ducks on the vita alright a bit diffenert then wen first playing it but the dog still does that giggle thing so its alright….
Making a game higher res is just a tad different to editing Han Solo’s intent by making him shoot last at the exact same resolution, don’t you think? (Hint: One is technical, the other authorial.)
totally agree with you on this…my daughter absolutely loves to play super mario world and the older mario classics on my vita…its awesome to see her enjoy the same things i grew up on, and play along with her just as my dad did with me…thats an experience that authenticity cant compete with, and i thank everyone who has ever made emulation possible on our consoles.
This. You just made my day!
Everyone should enjoy the games the way they like. I used emulators for years, but for myself, hooking up an old console to my hdtv through a Framemeister, beats every emulator.
It’s all personal taste. 🙂
FIRST -just wanted to say wololo is an awesome site i visit daily
and retro gaming be it on classic systems or emulators it is about the fun i myself love the fact that my psp is portable and i dont have to limit where i can play my classic games
OH not first lmao computer tricked me 😛
I hate you.
</3
why 🙁
sourside(sweetside)
I agree but is also a lot of fun, have a SNES and a SNES cartridge e play on a HDTV super metroid, Made this myself and it’s was unique.
Also, I agree with you, games is designed to be played!
nice rebuttal!
I have lots of old games I love to play on emulators, to mention a few:
– Carnage Heart (PSX)
– Breath of Fire Series
– Swords of Aaragon
Now I like to multi-task (play games, program or watch TV/Movie), so whats the problem with loading up my beloved games on an emulator instead of blowing of dusty TVs/Consoles/Games.
I can understand that some people may get the giddiness and memory flash backs of being a child while playing on the original console… but saying someones not playing it right is just weird.
This doesn’t just cover old consoles either, I play PC games on virtual machines/emulators and I’m not sure what it comes under but, in wine as well. I think emulators prolong games’ lives.
well sum how playing dust wrong makes it not fun… welll multi player game that use team work is fun but i guess if u trying to shoot the bad guy n not hit ur own team its still fun… i got *** one time i had one idea from the game .hack well was thinking about merging online games like wow an shooters games jus to see how weird it be fo a level 30 mage to take on a special ops team or how would be fo a halo guy to run up on a giant monster thing… but i guess i would need like amazon to fill in the edges n smooth out the game…
Preach Brother!!!! 😛
eric estrada the infamous your *** of the early internetz
Awesome article, and really great read. I agree with you on everything. Thanks TStrauss!
I’ve always found the whole “authorial intent” argument to be ***, personally.
Consider: Notch decided to make Minecraft after playing another game where people were having more fun building stuff than the game’s actual objectives (the digital equivalent of having more fun with the box it came in). Not my type of game, but a happy accident, I guess.
I also remember the manuals of some old PC rpgs say that when your character died, you should just live with it and not restore a saved game. (Compare this to more modern games where people create their own challenge modes, doing just that of their own free will.)
Yeah, sure. Telling people how to have fun is ridiculous. I can see these people buying their kids Lego sets, and only letting them build the things on the box.
My perspective was cemented by my experience with Morrowind. In the manual (yeah, I read the manual), on the front page, Bethesda very plainly stated that they didn’t care what I did. Complete the storyline? That’s what it’s there for. Explore that nearby cave? Ok. Run around naked? Why not!
That whole concept “freed” me to really enjoy games like I never experienced before. That’s also around the time I got into game mods. 🙂
i like rpg but alot of people playing shooters its fun but can get boring jus running n shooting .. sumtimes i get a game jus to see how the storyline is…but yea game that wen u finish the story line n still get to level up n play the game(.hack) is better at times for game were like u have to wait for the next game in the series … but yea games like wow r fun cuz ur not really stuck to one thing..
I have an old CRT I keep to take advantage of my guncons, and I have a few older systems (ps2, dreamcast n64 etc.) The fact is, CRTs just didn’t have very good picture, which made everything uniformly ugly. There is not one game that looks better on my 32″ CRT than on my 50″ plasma television, with no extra filtering at all. Having a clear and sharp picture is better than having a fuzzy version of the same image, no exceptions.
Stop kidding yourself it just looks fuzzier on a CRT. The fact is you don’t understand at an instinctive level how much graphics technology has advanced since you were a child. You are remembering your old video games through a modern day filter, because that’s what you think good should look like now, and you remember them being good.
with an rgb scart cable you will get a very sharp picture on a crt
You know RGB Scart is exclusive to Europeans, right?
Awesome Article.
Try playing the original mother (NES) without an emulator’s fast forward. The battle text crawls by so slow you could go get a drink after you select the attack button but before the scrolling text finishes describing the action.
Awesome article. Keep em coming!
well on the pokemon abra u have to straight put um to sleep or throw like ur best pokeball or it will run away but yea if u didnt have a pokemon that new sleep u had to jus run in the bushes till u can catch on by throwing a pokeball but yea the goal of the game is to jus catch pokemon so yea how ever one tries to catch pokemon its like the point of the game to jus catch um but on the games r better on the hardware the game was designed fo all i got is with all the emulation of gameboy i did not find one that would let me trade pokemon from one emulated game to an outher think there was something with the pc one but i couldn’t get the thing work but was fun running super fast…but yea i guess a playstation game can be better on a pc u can probably even fix n edit the game… but its still easier to load a pokemon game on a gameboy or a ds n take full advantage of the game…
this is like the argument over dubbing games
i personally like a English dub of a jrpg as long as the voice acting isn’t horrible ( listen to the girl pirate in konami’s ps2 release of y’s ark of Napishtim)
as in Japan the cut scenes are meant to be watched, not missed because you to busy reading the very quick and often badly subbed conversations
OH GOD the plot points I’ve missed over this ***
just because a bunch of idiots don’t want to dub a game or the way bigger idiots that cry and moan that a game gets dubed!!
i don’t really care if the dialogue sounds off or doesn’t match the mouth movements, i prefer watching a cut scene not reading the annoying thing
and if it bugs you so much that your forin game got a dub,just ask the game makers to make an undub option in the in-game settings,it can easily be added though a downloadable patch/content for any and all games now,most of the time in a patch smaller then 40mb for a whole game’s dialogue
if i wanted to play a game in its original language ild import the game and forget about waiting a year(or many) on a local release like i did with legend of hero’s 3 fc sc and 3rd
on both pc and psp(pc is better by the way)
sorry about going way partly off topic by the way
He’s right just because its not running on its native platform, does not mean one cannot enjoy. Some of us cannot get an n64 because its not in production anymore, that’s why emulators exist. They bring the same action the designated console would bring, for those of us who didn’t get an n64 when it was in production. Emulators are awesome.
The most important thing about emulation is if all the neat things your emulator does are worth the extra power they consume, but with neat emulators like daedalusx64 that have architecture similar to the original system you can actually run games with as much power as they did originally.
psp daedalus emulator plays star fox 64 fast with sound and on par with the power consumption of the n64 if not less.
pcsx2 emulator with the new intel ulv processor. It’s getting to the point where the emulator uses up less than the original console and you still get to add all those high def improvements.
Basically I think it’s fine to enjoy a video game system however you want but the neat thing about emulators is they allow the efficiency of our technology to carry over into improving the look and feel of classic games all while using less power. So let the consoles remain symbolic and lets move into the future with super hd retro gaming.
I’m all for retro gaming, and personally, I really don’t care how it’s played. I
t’s simply a game. Whether I’m playing Doom I or Doom II in Hi-Def, or Standard Definition, (Or even an emulator) It’s still the same damn game.
Nothing’s going to change that.
It’s only up to you how YOU think it should be played.
If I wanna start Grand Theft Auto and start blowing things up, It’s my game. I can do that.
After reading this, It kinda *** me off that anyone would create an “Authentic” Gaming Experience.
Well me being an idiot forgot to press enter at the right spot. It’s*