Emulation

Do you ever get the urge to pull out your old playstation, Gameboy, or whatever else you spent your time playing as a kid, but then once you go looking, you find that the batteries are dead or the discs are scratched or its not working for whatever reason and you instead just give up and cry?

Theo does. But he shouldn’t. Because there's an easier way: emulation! Video game emulation is where software running on a PC duplicates a gaming system, allowing you to play the games of that system on your PC! Most older gaming systems have fan-made emulators available on PC, allowing their games to live on and be experienced even after the original hardware falls apart and eventually ends up in the rubbish bin.

Emulation has its advantages: because of the constant increase in processing power, old games can be rendered with much nicer graphics than the original (see below: original Wii game is on the left, PC is on the right)

Also, with PC emulation, you don’t have to go rummaging around for physical discs or cartridges in order to play your games. You can just keep them in a folder on your PC!

However, the legality of downloading games to play on your emulator is questionable at best. If you don’t own the game in real life, it is downright stealing, even if the game is fairly old (copyright expires after 70 years in Australia). If you do own the game in real life, an argument can be made that you are simply “making a copy for personal use” AKA “format shifting”, which is legal for you to do with computer programs in Australia.

Stay tuned to Super MEATO Bros, as next time I'll be having a go at using an emulator myself!

- Olly