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(Originally posted to Cohost on Sat, Sep 2, 2023, 9:49 PM)
I'm feeling pretty good tonight so I thought it'd be nice for this to be the subject of my next blog post before I try and get Cotton 2 running on Mednafen.
Video game emulation has always caught my attention as a... marvel, really:
Many emulators are open-source projects done as a hobby.
Each emulator starts development for a different reason (e.g. to play games without the console, or to preserve the physical console down to the cycle level).
It also puts into perspective just how small video games were back then, despite how much hours they managed to pack into them. Checking my deduplicated Atari 2600 library, all 575 games are 2.3 MiB in total, compressed. For SNES, my 1,823 ROMs are 1.5 GiB compressed, with seemingly 2/3 of the games being under a megabyte, and the biggest -- Star Ocean -- being 5.1 MiB compressed.
Emulator developers manage to find ways to cut down the sizes even further with compression. I use the CHD format for PSX and Dreamcast games, and I use the RVZ format for GameCube/Wii games. For 2600 to N64 games, you can just use regular zip compression.
Many games have been "hacked" to hell and back by passionate people, creating new experiences under the same engine. Alex Kidd in Miracle World 2, Super Mario: Star Road, Star Fox EX, Banjo-Dreamie, etc. Some games are even translated by fans and to this day don't have official translations (such as the Cotton series). Some have quality-of-life tweaks added to make them more approachable for modern audiences (like Zelda 1/2/ALttP/OoT/MM Redux). Some even implement multiplayer, such as Super Mario 64's shared screen and split-screen hacks.
Video game consoles have been "hacked" as well, which I feel extends their library this way. I can play Panorama Cotton for the Genesis and the Atari 5200 port of Mario Bros. on my 3DS.
Probably the one reason why I started this ramble: it's pretty fucking cool to be playing Dreamcast games on a $40 phone, because 24 years ago those games required dedicated, cutting-edge hardware to enjoy.
In other words: despite its problems (RetroArch, even though it's the only way to emulate some consoles on mobile), I love and feel thankful for the community that made all of this a reality. The MAME project even managed to dump and preserve two of my childhood plug & play systems.