A Rant About Video Game Emulation

I fall right in the middle of the demographic that makes emulation so popular. Like many of my counterparts, I'm male, thirty-something and have fond memories of arcades packed with upright coin-op games. Odd how this same demographic is also one of the largest segments of the internet audience. Perhaps that's why the web is such a great place to find this stuff right now.

I remember how much excitement I had as a young boy walking in to an arcade with a handful of quarters. I remember riding my bike to the mall to play Star Wars, or Ninja Gai-Den. I still want to be able to play those games - for reasons ranging from nostalgia to the excitement. These games are genuinely better in many ways than the current crop of 3D everything to me. Instead of relying on flashy graphics, product placement and stereo soundtracks, there was an unmistakable element of gameplay that had to be there. I don't think that's necessarily true these days. Just as I don't go see a movie just for special effects (usually), nor do I play a video game for the "cool graphics" or "fatality move" in full bodied stereo. I need a challenge, too.

I worked for a vending company for a while repairing, leasing, and installing these classic coin-ops. I can tell you from experience that these machines are not only difficult (and sometimes impossible) to find, they're also equally difficult to repair. They're large. It's simply not feasible to have a living room full of these stand up machines, provided you can even locate them! So insofar as legacy arcade games are concerned, I think emulation is great. The developers should be proud that so many people want to keep their games alive. Let's face it, Centipede consoles don't make any money. You see them in truck stops and bus stations, not in high traffic areas. I felt this way about Commodore 64 games and Apple IIs - I owned both, and in fact I still have a lot of software for them - and I'd like to play these games too.

As it relates to the Sony PlayStation and newer consoles, I think emulation is a bad idea. Consoles are pretty cheap, in comparison with a PC. They're small, portable, and have one purpose: to play the games designed for them. Why mention that? Because the console will play the game best. The console doesn't have to worry about hard drive I/O, motherboard resources, or depend on Windows code. The PlayStation II will play existing PSX games anyway, which is why I bought one -- my existing games are not immediately useless. PCs are designed for a huge variety of applications, (general use) – and consoles are dedicated to the game. Perhaps in ten years, PSX and N64 emulators will be more realistic as the hardware and software availability fades. Right now, they're a revenue stream for their makers and should remain such.

But when was the last time Atari made any kind of significant revenue from Crystal Castles? Atari is not even the same company it once was, and many other manufacturers no longer exist.

Ultimately, I'd like to see the developers and the manufacturers of the classics agree to release the old ROM images to the public domain. In doing so, they can perpetuate their legacies. Humor us nostalgic punks, if you will. The developers would get the credit they deserve in this kind of delivery mechanism. In the meantime, concentrate on developing new technology and excitement - that's what is missing from many current games. Strip away the 3D rendering and see if the game is worth playing – I bet it's not as much fun. Be realistic and let the people who played your beloved older games with such dedication continue to do so. And protect your newest source of revenue instead of plugging the dike by making an issue out of older classics.