Miming With a Mime

by EE

Emulation. The word could mean many things to whoever hears it. It could mean saving hundreds of dollars and thousands of cents on used games by downloading them, or could remind you of illegalities and piracy. Whatever the case, emulation is a fact of the gamer's life, and I'm writing/I wrote this to share my views.

I'm against emulation of N64 since that's the only system (besides Game Boy) where software can be downloaded that currently is making money. Which means old, retired, dead systems are fair game. There are 2 types of 'legal' Roms-those of copies you own, and games you know will never be released or should have gotten here. Getting FFV would technically be piracy, but though we should have gotten it 4-6 years ago. Besides, the PSX translation is way off. But playing games normally isn't always why I play games on my PC. I usually play games in a different way than on console. By that I mean I play with different color sets or at different speeds than on console. Want a yellow Mario? That's possible with emulation. Want to be able to save ANY TIME on ANY GAME? Emulation allows it. Want hyper-speed or grandmother-speed games? Seek emulation. Ever wanted to trade saves with MILLIONS over the net? It won't happen with consoles. I usually prefer playing SNES/NES games on my PC because of hyper-speed and save-anytime features.

Though there are negative sides to emulation, whatever number. Some games just won't work, hardware problems, errors, longer boot-ups are among the evils. Illegality being another factor.

Through all this the facts have been presented. The choice is yours. Will you imitate, mime, copy, emulate, or go with the real thing?