Emulators

Emulation

  • replication of internal processes of another hardware
  • game console emulators - try to match or even improve the gameplay experience of the original HW
  • Factors
    • nostalgy
    • quick but engaging gameplay (pick-up-and-play)
    • emulation features (streaming, statistics, load/save, fast forward,...)
    • the only way how to play certain games (Pokémon ROM hacks, fan-made translations)
    • legal issues (downloading games you don't own a copy of is illegal)
SNES

History

  • 1990 - Family Computer Emulator for NES
  • 1993 - VICE emulator for Commodore 64
  • 1995 - Virtual GameBoy
  • 1997 - NESticle - emulator that defined retro-gaming
  • 1997 - NO$GMB GameBoy emulator for DOS
  • 1998 - PSEmu PlayStation emulator
  • 2000 - VGBA GameBoy emulator
  • 2001 - PSCX2 PS2 emulator
  • 2002 - Dosbox, DOS full CPU emulator
  • 2010 - RetroArch released, cross-platform front-end for emulators
  • 2015 - revival of home-made arcade cabinets
  • 2016 - Raspberry 3 released, a new wave of retro-gaming emerged
  • 2020 - 3DSen beta version of 3D Voxel NES emulator
VICE emulator
Nesticle emulator
Dosbox emulator
3DSen emulator
Arcade cabinet

Pokémon ROM hacks

  • fan-made mods of Pokémon games for GBC/GBA/3DS
  • expansion into a universe the game has already established
  • despite the fear of Nintendo, the community is still growing
  • Pokémon Prism - full-fledged character customization, rewritten story
  • Pokémon Light Platinum - rewritten story, based on Pokémon Ruby
  • Pokémon Mega Power - new areas and story
  • Pokémon Glazed - rewritten story
Pokemon romhacks posts
Pokemon romhacks

Raspberry

  • full-fledged (not only) retro-gaming device
    Raspberry
  • Rpi 3 is capable of emulating C64, GBC, GBA, PSX, MegaDrive, NES, SNES, DOS (~486DX2 CPU)
  • Rpi 4 is also more or less capable of emulating PSP, N64, and Dreamcast
  • emulation is managed by libretro framework with RetroArch gui, running in Emulationstation front-end, powered by RetroPie OS
    Retropie diagram