fuzmeister: R.I.P. Emulation
I'm not sure what it is lately, but nostalgia is creeping up on me like bad diarrhea after Mexican food. To be honest, I think it's just the fact that my birthday is in a few days and I'm getting yet another year older. Hoorah.
This time my nostalgia stems from emulation. Emulation was quite possibly one of the first ways for people like me (who didn't own game systems as a child) to really broaden their video game knowledge. When I first laid eyes upon NESticle's almost accurate emulation of the NES, I nearly wet myself. In those days, emulation served as a source of inspiration. Being able to completely fuck around with a game over a decade old really gave you perspective on where the developers were coming from. I know when I started really getting into game development around 1998, I drew a lot of inspiration from older titles.
So what's happened to the emulation scene?! Well, I think it's dead... or at least dying steadily. Just take a look at Zophar's Domain. This November, the site will be ten years old. Even into the early years of this decade, Zophar's Domain has served as a great source for emulation news and links. Lately, you can just tell that things haven't been so hot.
I think one thing that attributed to emulation's decline is N64 emulation. Emulating Nintendo's now-defunct console served as a barrier and people said it could never be done. Several emulators successfully did so though and blew a lot of us away. I guess we were really impressed by emulation of older consoles, but once the N64 was tackled emulation really lost a lot of the luster. While some are in development, emulators for this generation of hardware are next to impossible for a small team of developers to handle.
N64 emulation might've contributed to piracy concerns too. A lot of great ROM sites went under never to be seen again. Some of them (I'm convinced) went under because of the content. I don't see how the industry can make a big fuss about piracy when the primary emulation being done is for classic systems. Yeah, I can see them raising some hell about that which can still make money though. Definately.
So where are we going now? I wish I could say a revival of emulation would occur - that dedicated authors would continue to create reliable software for all kinds of devices. Why not iPod emulators? I sure as hell wouldn't mind dedicating 20MB or so of iPod memory to some old NES favorites.
Call it nostalgia, but I just wish we could still bask in the glow of 1997.
Mood: Good
Browsing: Zophar's Domain
I'm not sure what it is lately, but nostalgia is creeping up on me like bad diarrhea after Mexican food. To be honest, I think it's just the fact that my birthday is in a few days and I'm getting yet another year older. Hoorah.
This time my nostalgia stems from emulation. Emulation was quite possibly one of the first ways for people like me (who didn't own game systems as a child) to really broaden their video game knowledge. When I first laid eyes upon NESticle's almost accurate emulation of the NES, I nearly wet myself. In those days, emulation served as a source of inspiration. Being able to completely fuck around with a game over a decade old really gave you perspective on where the developers were coming from. I know when I started really getting into game development around 1998, I drew a lot of inspiration from older titles.
So what's happened to the emulation scene?! Well, I think it's dead... or at least dying steadily. Just take a look at Zophar's Domain. This November, the site will be ten years old. Even into the early years of this decade, Zophar's Domain has served as a great source for emulation news and links. Lately, you can just tell that things haven't been so hot.
I think one thing that attributed to emulation's decline is N64 emulation. Emulating Nintendo's now-defunct console served as a barrier and people said it could never be done. Several emulators successfully did so though and blew a lot of us away. I guess we were really impressed by emulation of older consoles, but once the N64 was tackled emulation really lost a lot of the luster. While some are in development, emulators for this generation of hardware are next to impossible for a small team of developers to handle.
N64 emulation might've contributed to piracy concerns too. A lot of great ROM sites went under never to be seen again. Some of them (I'm convinced) went under because of the content. I don't see how the industry can make a big fuss about piracy when the primary emulation being done is for classic systems. Yeah, I can see them raising some hell about that which can still make money though. Definately.
So where are we going now? I wish I could say a revival of emulation would occur - that dedicated authors would continue to create reliable software for all kinds of devices. Why not iPod emulators? I sure as hell wouldn't mind dedicating 20MB or so of iPod memory to some old NES favorites.
Call it nostalgia, but I just wish we could still bask in the glow of 1997.
Mood: Good
Browsing: Zophar's Domain
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