What Is It With Emulation??

[Lodestar]

Emulation has its place, but the authentic console experience is superior.

bite the emulation in the ass invest some cash and get a flash cart if you have a shit ton of roms and want authentic its the perfect hybrid

All this authenticity stuff is placebo, I think. When I modded my PS2 to play games off a HD, it felt exactly like emulation. It's not really about sitting in front of a TV or using the original controller, so much as it is about playing something you've purchased or procured by special means - it's all about the legitimacy of the means you used to get the game. The readily available 'feel' of piracy makes it feel fake, I reckon.

So, I agree with Haoie.

*Nothing against emulation, I love it, but I think this authenticity talk is a tad...exaggerated. At the end of the day, I've played through some cruddy games - all because I purchased them and felt obligated to. Emulation never gave me that compulsion and neither has modding consoles, for that matter. Why? They're all free...and so worthless. No loss in not playing a game you didn't pay for, right?

That's the extent of it for me, the only times emulation has really made the experience less authentic for me was with multiplayer games (SSB), others that required proprietary hardware like built-in solar or tilt sensors (Boktai, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble), Wii games that require a special controller to play properly, and so on...

EDIT:

Just realized this post is ambiguous. Basically, I agree that there is a discernible difference between the two (obviously), but I think it's overstated. Emulation tends to have a negative stigma around here, so I'm not entirely surprised by the purism. The key difference between the two for me is that I own far less than I have available on my PC, I have attachments to those games I've bought and thus they feel realer to me. It hasn't stopped me from enjoying emulation, I don't even think it's a tangible thing that I can describe accurately. I'm on the fence, because I do enjoy many of the luxuries emulation provides that the console experience lacks.

[o.pwuaioc]

Emulation never gave me that compulsion.

Really? It did for me. But I am interested in hidden gems and historical oddities, in the movement of ideas and themes throughout the history of video games, so I'm willing to try a lot more crappy games, and having them freely available made me try many more games, but having so many of them I couldn't focus on very many. I only beat a handful of games through emulation.

That being said, I do think that having a physical copy of something is a psychological thing. But that's not quite the same as a "placebo". It may be no different gameplay-wise, but it does have an effect on the player, and that matters a lot more.

[Lodestar]

Emulation never gave me that compulsion.

Really? It did for me. But I am interested in hidden gems and historical oddities, in the movement of ideas and themes throughout the history of video games, so I'm willing to try a lot more crappy games, and having them freely available made me try many more games, but having so many of them I couldn't focus on very many. I only beat a handful of games through emulation.

That being said, I do think that having a physical copy of something is a psychological thing. But that's not quite the same as a "placebo". It may be no different gameplay-wise, but it does have an effect on the player, and that matters a lot more.

It certainly used to, but nowadays I've got so many games at my disposal that I can't sit down and play one for a reasonable amount of time without getting bored...probably why I started collecting again, because I actually play the games I buy.

The reason why I say it's placebo (maybe not the best term to use) is that it isn't consistent among people. Authenticity for one is not the same for the next guy. For some, they want to use the actual controller instead of a keyboard or third party controller, some want to be in front of a CRT TV, others are taken out of the experience at the mere sight of a GUI, and so on...but it's not always the same, there are a lot of variables in play. We're all enthusiasts here, so we feel strongly about it - but Joe Schmoe who wants to play Super Mario World on his PC probably doesn't give a single shit about authenticity or whether or not the sound is outputting at the native 32000 kHz.

I still think with the right amount of finaggling, emulation can come fairly close to the authentic experience. Of course, I'm not even talking about platforms that aren't fully emulated, it's perfectly understandable that people would not want to bother with something that is clearly still in development.

[Xeogred]

Authenticity for one is not the same for the next guy. For some, they want to use the actual controller instead of a keyboard or third party controller...

I can't believe I used to be able to pull off Super Metroid speedruns with the keyboard and I got so good at other games. Ever since I bought my USB PS2 controller adapter though I have not touched the keyboard for emulation in years, and I never want to ever again anyways. lol

I think you're kind of onto something about the modded systems / burning games thing being kind of the same as emulation.

[GigaPepsiMan]

I've been playing a lot of emulators recently and i found a good method for making it easier to search through the roms, just delete the duplicate files, games that are better on other platforms and games that you don't like or know suck.
For example I went through my master system roms and deleted the ones I didn't want and now I have a total of 27 master system games to pick from.
Pretty Useful system and it means getting rid of the crap as well as freeing up hard drive space (been doing this on all my emulators and I have cleaned several gigs of hard drive storage).

The whole authenticity is just a mental stage that people need to work through, once you get past that stage of thinking you start having a lot of fun with emulators.

[baphomet_irl]

I have to say I had kinda gone off emulation for a bit, but in the last few weeks or so I've gotten proper into it again - I like doing things like say playing all the diff versions of a game on diff emulated platforms and checking the differences, for some reason that sorta stuff intrigues me, like how utter cool it is that JAP 'Life Force' brings back in the proper Gradius powerup system (which the lack of is the one reason I could never really get into Salamander). Anyway with my HRAP 2 connected and and a folder with all my shortcuts set up, I am really enjoying emulation at the moment, now OBVIOUSLY the 'real thing' would be way better, but I have neither the space at the moment (with 2 young children) or unfortunately the money

[MrEco]

The problem I have (And in fact the reason I've avoided emulating anything so far) is that if I can get a game just by downloading it for free off the internet I'll never feel like playing it.

If something is so easily and readily available I think to myself "Why would I play that, which I can play absolutely whenever, when I could play that game on my console which is a physical copy and might break or disapear and that I paid for?" Cause if I spent my time playing an emulation and then accidentally lost or broke one of my physical games I'd feel like it was a waste of time since I could have been playing that physical one instead, and maybe I could have gotten done with it in the time I was playing the emulation.

Yes, it's a lot of "what if's?" and guesswork. But somehow for me the possibility alone is enough to cause avoidance.

On top of that there's also the fact that they never end. Though it's a minor reason in comparison to the first it's still there. It's the same reason I don't play MMO's. If something has no actual ending (Which in the case of emulations is the fact that there is always something else to emulate) I could keep doing it forever and never see the end. Then It's, like, what's the point?

[gtmtnbiker]

The problem I have (And in fact the reason I've avoided emulating anything so far) is that if I can get a game just by downloading it for free off the internet I'll never feel like playing it.

I have no issues with emulation. The whole "pirate syndrome" (e.g having too many games) doesn't affect just pirates but people who buy games as well. For the PS3, I have ~18 games and so far, I have only played 2 of them, one of which is Half Life 2, Orange Box collection. But I discipline myself to play through a game to the end or almost the end before moving on. Lately, my gaming time has been like this:

1. Play 1-2 puzzles (10-20 mins)of Animal Color Cross (DSiware)
2. Play 30-60 mins of Gears of War 3 or Half Life 2
3. Play 30 mins worth of iOS games like Fragger DS, Angry Birds, Gravity Man

[GigaPepsiMan]

The problem I have (And in fact the reason I've avoided emulating anything so far) is that if I can get a game just by downloading it for free off the internet I'll never feel like playing it.

Again it is just a mental stage that you need to work past. I have and now I think that there is more ups to emulating than plaing the real thing, I'll admit playing a game on the actual hardware is an experience and even nostalgic for some but on the technical side emulation is best, even more so for us PAL gamers who's retro games run at a slow 50hz.

[MrEco]

The problem I have (And in fact the reason I've avoided emulating anything so far) is that if I can get a game just by downloading it for free off the internet I'll never feel like playing it.

I have no issues with emulation. The whole "pirate syndrome" (e.g having too many games) doesn't affect just pirates but people who buy games as well.

True. But I think the difference is in the fact that buying physical copies (For most people, including myself) deters the amount from getting too large, since it costs money to get them that way and money is a limited resource.