About SD3 and Psx emulator

by Jean-Guillaume Paradis

I just finished the reading of Dan's editorial ( well... I finished it a week ago in fact, but you gotta begin a text with something nice ^_^ ), and I must say that I agree with him. I decided to send him an e-mail, and while I was writing it, I had an idea. A good idea. Someting that could change the industry of videogames in fact. But more on that later. First things first.

I had already downloaded the translation of Seiken Densetsu 3 before I read Dan's text, so my opinion on the subject was already made. His editorial only confirmed it.

SD3 is a great game, like the original Secret of Mana was on the snes. In fact, a lot of people are calling it the best game ever on this console. The graphics are some of the best you can have on the Snes, since it is one of the few games that is running in hi-res. The art is very good, so is the music. The story is huge, the options are endless. Truly a classic.

But there's a problem. The game never came to America, because Square didn't want it to hurt Secret of Evermore's sales. Ouch. I bought SoE, and it's not that great, most of you will agree. I would have prefered to get SD3 instead, as do most of you. But because of the laziness, or even stupidity of Square, all we could do was to cry in front of the pretty pictures of the game. Of course, one could always enjoy the game on an emulator, but what's the point of playing an rpg if you don't understand the story?

But some people decided it wouldn't be like that. They decided to translate the ENTIRE game. And believe me, there's a lot of text in it. So I decided to give it a try and loaded the rom, but my expectations were pretty low.

It turned out that the translation is as good or better than Square's latest efforts. So far, I haven't seen any weird sentence. No Spoony bard, no Off course, no I've got a good feeling. Since I can't read japanese, I don't know the original script, but if I didn't know better, I would say that the translation is spotless. Truly a great achievement.

And you know what's almost incomprehensible about all this? It's free. No charge, free. Some persons spent an entire year of their life translating a game and they don't ask any kind of payment for it. To me, there's only one explication for this: it was a labor of love, made by true rpgs fans. Because of them, we can now play and understand a gem that we should have enjoyed 2 years ago. I'm taking off my hat to you guys. Just the thought of how much work you must have been through makes me shiver. If there ever was a demonstration of the power of the simple gamer in the face of the huge, faceless companies, you made it guys, in a brilliant way. Thanks again, your work is greatly appreciated.

Now, to the second part of my text.

I understand the big companies. If I'm playing a copied version of Tekken 3 on my PC using a cracked version of Bleem!, the most famous psx emulator out there, somebody somewhere won't be happy. The argument that Sony, Nintendo and the like are incredibly rich doesn't excuse the fact that playing pirated versions of their latest games on a PC is costing them a lot of money. But those who are the most hurted by emulation are the small companies. Those guys are betting their money, their work, even their life sometimes on a single game, and we thanks them by not buying it. That's why I don't play N64 games on my PC. Of course, almost all of them are bad, but that's not the idea. I won't steal money from game's and console's creators, and I won't enjoy a recent game that I didn't pay. Period.

But should Square cares that I'm playing FF IV on my PC? The game is no longer making money for them, and I couldn't buy it anyway. Will I search all over the net for the NES cartridge of Dragon Warrior II? No. I already have it anyway, but you get the idea. The emulation of classic games that are not anymore avaible should not be illegal, or at least be tolerated by Nintendo and the like. So in my mind it's clear: playing old games on my PC is ok, but playing recent ones is a no-no.

Of course, the N64 is far more subject to this than the psx, since you can download a rom and play it on your computer, without having to buy the damn game. On the other hand, psx games take way too much place to able such a thing, so you gotta have the original cd to enjoy the game, or at least that's the theory. Their will always be some people to copy the stupid game with their cd-writer ( shame on you, guys ), but it's pretty difficult, and you gotta have a mod chip. So in theory, everyone has legal versions of their games. That's how it's supposed to be anyway.

And that's how I got my idea.

Sony went to court twice do make Bleem! illegal, and they failed. Why? Because Bleem! doesn't use the Playsation's BIOS. So that makes the emulator legal, but slow, sometimes ugly and not very compatible. Honestly, it won't replace my Psx anytime soon, or late in fact. And if a guy wants to play Psx games, will he really buy Bleem! instead of a Playstation? I don't think so, unless he is pretty dumb. It should be used in combination with the Psx, to enhance *certain* games. But it won't replace it.

In my view, Bleem! is actually making money for Sony. Everytime someone buys a game, a fraction of the price goes to Sony. So the more games we buy, the richer they get.

A lot of people hadn't touch their Playstation in months, even years, because they were playing those beautiful, 3d-accelerated PC-games. But all of a sudden you can play your Psx games on your PC using your latest video card. A lot of my friends bought Bleem! for this reason, and a couple Psx games in the process. My view? The games that Bleem! will help to sell will compense for the few Playstations that won't be bought. And the more I think of it, the more I think that the two equilibrates.

And now for my idea.

Since Sony has the right to do pratically what they want with their Playstation, why wouldn't they do their own emulator? They know their console, and I guess they could use the Psx BIOS, thus greatly increasing the effectiveness and compatibility of their emulator. And since Sony created the basic development kits for the Playstation, they must know a thing or two about how to make it works right.

Every decent PC bought in the last two years comes with some kind of 3d-acceleration, and the Direct3d API is pretty universal now. You see where I'm going here?

I mean, I would't mind paying a full 70, 80 or even 100$ for an almost perfect emulator who adds 3d-acceleration to my games, shorten the loading times and put a save-anywhere feature. But the key word here is perfect. No buggy piece of software like Bleem!. I want to play all my games, and I want them to put my 3d-card do good use. Give me a REAL emulator, and I will buy it.

The Playstation 2 will have backward compatibility, but won't improve the graphics of the games in any way. And you won't be able to save anywhere. So you know what would be great? That Sony releases a fully-working emlator the same day of the Playstation 2. A lot of people would buy the emulator for the enhanced graphics, and the psx 2 for the REALLY enhanced graphics... ;)

That would make everybody happy, I think. Since the psx 2 will be backward compatible, the original psx will be pretty dead when it goes out. And anyway, everyone already has one so the emulator wouldn't really hurt Sony's sales. We would have our better looking psx games, and a nice psx 2 beside the tv. And Sony would make a lot of money.

But I'm not a lawyer. Maybe the reason that Sony won't do such a thing is because they simply can't. But like Square did when then didn't translate SK3, maybe it is because they are too stupid.

It's possible that I'm saying a lot of crap here. Maybe I've been talking through my hat for the last 5 minutes. If anyone knows if such a thing is possible ( I mean, the psx emulator...), e-mail me please.

Oh, and about my name... I live in Quebec you see. Just call me Jubaï and it will be ok. And if there are some errors in my text well... Blame me from not beeing born in USA.