Slashdot Mirror
Emulating Classic Games As A Profession?
jvm writes "Jeff Vavasour has been working on commercial emulation of arcade games at Digital Eclipse since the mid-1990s and Curmudgeon Gamer just posted an extensive three-part interview with him. The first part is for gearheads, delving into the origins of commercial emulation and the issues emulation vs. simulation. The second part is about the business of emulation, and describes a crisis of confidence in the late 1990s not unlike what the recording industry now faces. (Note, the emulation industry overcame their fear of downloadable ROMs!) The third part asks some personal questions, looks to the future of emulation, and reveals that some long-awaited arcade games may actually receive professional, commercial emulation attention. (Anyone remember I, Robot?)"
your emulation is flawed. you might want to try coding it in a real language.
... make sure not to miss another interesting read about Digital Eclipse projects, posted today in the developers section:
Porting Games From Binary
The IT section color scheme sucks.
that I've seen around. To me, it seems like its an emulator with a flashy front end and ZSNES in the back. You can pick games from a list an play against your buddies. I don't know most of the games, but it has SFII, SFII Turbo, and others. Judging from the graphics and the sound, its like an emulated SNES.
What, me Tweet?
Interesting interview. However I personally would have walked out in the middle of part 2. It is obvious the guy has no real interest in MAME, and other than they compete doesn't have anything to add to the subject. Yet most of the questions are strongly related to MAME as if he can add something to the subject.
Vavasour wrote the first emulator I ever used, which happened to emulate the first computer I ever used, the TRS-80 CoCo II. I'm glad to see he's doing well.
I'm actually a little sad this story hasn't made it to the front page yet. Incredibly interesting!
.NET CLR.
I think emulation (and, on a different plane, virtualization) has a massive part to play in computer science over the next couple of decades, and if emulating old computer games is how we can get people to study the topic, so be it!
After all, writing an emulator is writing a virtual machine.. and there are a few of those around.. the JVM, Parrot, and the
Web Hosting Reviews
Maybe we're finally starting to see a rationalisation in the development of gaming products. An understanding that you can't just create entertainment product in isolation from your audience. Another example could be Bioware's encrouagement of NWN modules. Given that computer games operate in "Internet Time" it makes sense that they're the first entertainment industry to adapt.
That link mentions:
"The game was a complete flop at the time, players were really unable to cope with the surrealism and "newness" of the graphics."
How bizarre! I loved that game, and the arcade where I played at the time "The Fun Factory", always had a bit of a waiting time for it, it was so popular. I don't recall anyone being unable to cope with anything about the game.
By the way, I can kick your ass at Karate Champ.
Yes, I mean YOU.
The real value of antique games has always been underestimated. An entire generation feels nostalgic about Wolf3d, Prince of Persia, Street Fighter, Pong etc, yet the ownership and trademark of these games have been shelved by some company who bought the original company's assets and never explored the potentials.
Other games have been bastardized to extract the last drop of juice from the paying crowds without employing developers who truly feel the obsession with the original titles. Think of the sequels to Price of Persia, Monkey Island etc. Some companies who survived the dotcom bust can now drive their trademarks forward like Sierra and id Software, but the vast majority of the games cannot even be bought anywhere. Downloading ROMS become justified here.
A new booming business has been developing java games for cellphone companies. However developing yet another version of tetris, snakes or pacman just feels too redundant. Emulators like kgens have shown us how all the hard work can still be enjoyed on a desktop, even a palmtop, if only companies saw the potential. An average PDA has enough power, and sufficient space to run Atari2600, Sega Genesis, NEOGEO, 386(DOS) etc games on it, but the two things that have stood in the way have been the unwillingness to develop emulators and the licensing issues of the games whose trademark owners are unknown (who do you talk to, to gain the rights for River Raid in Atari2600?).
If one company can bundle good emulators, plenty of the original titles, the chicken n egg problem of game codebase for consoles is solved. Such a company could beat GBA sales pretty fast. Some people would pay a lot to play the games they played when they were 8... and the trademark owners shouldnt mind making extra bucks.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Perhaps you would be interested in my project: the UNIversal System Emulation Framework (UNISEF). I'm only just now drafting the requirements document, so it's very far from being completed.
It's aim is simple - to create a framework upon which emulator authors, software developers, and hardware engineers can build their product without having to worry about expensive prototyping, cross-platform compatibilities, and the nuances of platform-specific assembly code. With a framework in place that allows input plugins, output plugins, core modules communicating via a messaging "kernel", and the ability to write (for example) an NES game in C++ are just a few of the great things I have planned.
I don't think it's fair to say that MAME is a continuous beta so lightly. For starters, you can have access to documentation that MAME just couldn't get, like schematics. And second, you're getting paid to write it, where anything done by MAME developers have to be done on their own free time. And last, most games that achieved a good emulation status on MAME have been rock solid since then. There might have been the odd beta release where something broke out of a major change, but in general lines that stuff do get fixed in a beta cycle or two.
Just my 2c.
Y'know, I passed over this story four times before finally reading it, and the name "Digital Eclipse" didn't click for me until just now.
DE did the port of Phantasy Star Collection for the GBA. I wasn't terribly impressed upon encountering the save-game glitch for the first time. I gave up after the fiftieth time.
I certainly hope Phantasy Star 4 gets debugged, at least, before it's released.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I have a CD that feature 8 Sega Genesis games on a CD-ROM. It is obviously emulated, due to the fact of the high (for such tasks) system requirements of it. (133 MHz processor, 16 MB RAM) The Sega Genesis had (I think) an 8 MHz processor, and I don't know how much RAM. I have seen ports of classic games (Megaman X PC) that ran with relatively low system requirments. (Megaman X PC used about 20 MHz, 8 MB RAM) And, I think the SNES processor was about 16 MHz. Back to my CD-ROM, the lead programmer has released (for free) the emulator used on that CD. The emulator KGen. So emulating old systems commercially is not a new thing.
I love NetHack.
I didn't mean "not a new thing" What I meant is that there are other examples out there. Sorry.
I love NetHack.