Extra Punctuation: Keeping Old Games Intact

[taltamir]

Emulators are your friend. Even if you have to violate copyright to download them and the roms that go in them, they are the only way to preserve gaming history.

But sometimes the emulators aren't good enough. For example all the old consoles had slowdown when lots of stuff was happening, and some games even took advantage of it. On newer systems the emulation runs so well there is no slowdown and the game isn't as playable (gunstar heros virtual console wii, I'm looking at you).

All emulators allow game specific hacks/fixes. So what you describe can easily be recreated on an emulator.

 

[Zolcos]

the ONLY thing preventing an emulation based archive of all games ever is the illegality of such an endeavor.
There are no serious technical issues and there are more then enough people with the will and the money.

There's also the problem that not every old console controller with a proprietary connector has a fully-functional adapter to the PC. Newer controllers seem to have a trend of using standard interconnects, though, and are thus either usable with third party drivers (Wii) or sometimes even have official PC compatibility (360) so it's a problem that's improving naturally

 

[taltamir]

the ONLY thing preventing an emulation based archive of all games ever is the illegality of such an endeavor.
There are no serious technical issues and there are more then enough people with the will and the money.

There's also the problem that not every old console controller with a proprietary connector has a fully-functional adapter to the PC. Newer controllers seem to have a trend of using standard interconnects, though, and are thus either usable with third party drivers (Wii) or sometimes even have official PC compatibility (360) so it's a problem that's improving naturally

It is really easy and cheap to make knock-off controllers. And in fact you can actually buy such knock-offs already. Not only that, but ones specifically made to work with modern computers for emulator purposes yet still identical in appearance and function to older console controllers.
Aka, you a USB controller that is identical to an old .

And those would be even more common and readily available if there were less legal barriers to emulation. In fact you would have companies who do nothing but make such controllers.