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?)"

Comments

Memories...

[ActiveSX]

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.

Hobbyist crossover

[Kris_J]

I'm rather happy about the inclusion of new "homebrew" Atari 2600 games on the Activision Anthology for the GBA (Pre-order now available), Skeleton+ for example, which I'm mentioning here for the second time in as many days, will be amongst the games available in this new retro collection.

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.

Antique games and history

[mnmn]

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.