Has emulation surpassed the real thing?

[Paratech]

I thought this might be different enough from whether or not gamers use emulation to warrant a new thread...

Tonight, playing my NES, it was becoming apparent that maintaining the cartridges, cleaning them, the system, etc, can be a hassle. When you can click on an icon and be playing Super Mario 3, or boot up a Wii and do the same thing, it just makes you wonder why we own or use old systems?

I still prefer playing NES games on a NES, Atari 2600 games on a 2600, etc, but there are advantages.

There are emulators that support graphics enhancements, the newer joysticks for the PC (even the Wii classic controller) is much better than the NES controller, and the 2600 controller... some systems support online play, you don't give your ROM "blow jobs", some games that lacked save states (Super Mario 3? ) now have save states, and with some commercial emulators the ROMS are cheaper than buying the carts (try finding some NES games for $6 when you can buy them on the Wii.

So what are the advantages or disadvantages of emulation vs the real thing?

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[raksmey1309]

I think the idea of all in one is always the best choice!

[Paratech]

I prefer Playstation emulation on the PSP/PC to playing on the PSX/PS2. I don't know how I'd feel about playing Playstation games on the PS3, but I'm guessing I'd like it.

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-PC: AMD 5000 2.6 Dual Core, 2GB Ram, 8600 GeForce GT video card, SB Live!, Win XP SP3

[Hard core Rikki]

'Gaming' emulators have since long surpassed the real thing. Extended and improved in all sorts of ways. Adding to that the convenience of not needing to drag multiple actual consoles and handhelds in your luggage during travelling. The slimmest of emulated consoles cant beat that.

Has anyone said savestates, graphic filters and screenshotting capabilities ?

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[Rebel_X]

^ Yes in the first post.

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[Samor]

accurary of behaviour of the original system in emulation is the biggest challenge, however, most classic system emulators came to a point where the differences are so small that it's hard to even notice.
I traded my MSX collection in for emulation ~2 years ago now, and I'm really not willing to have all that junk around the house again.
And, as HcR says, there's all kinds of enhancements in emulators too, making it even better.

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[JJXB]

depends on the system.
with older systems it's more likely to be better in the "technical" sense but worse in an "emotional" sense (playing on a real C64 always gives some damn good nostalgia but half the time it's faster and easier to play a c64 emu).
with anything above PS1 it's debatable since some emulation has made leaps and bounds in the past few years (PS2 being an example) while some has made little to no progress overall compared to other areas (xbox for example).

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[Samor]

in my case, my first MSX computer was an MSX2, desktop-like model (nms8250), so playing on it was very much like playing on a pc later on... I guess that's one of the reasons why it feels "the same" for me.

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[StriderVM]

In my technical opinion, emulation hasn't surpassed the real thing unless it has a 100% compability rate.

As for extra options, save states, filters and other stuff. definitely.

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[Exodus]

Originally Posted by StriderVM

In my technical opinion, emulation hasn't surpassed the real thing unless it has a 100% compability rate.

Well, other than PS2 emulation, I've yet to find a game worth playing that isn't compatible. So, I'd say emulation is the way to go.

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[strike105x]

^Indeed plus i like the commodity and feel better playing in front of my computer :P.

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[Exodus]

I play from my PC monitor whether emulating or playing off the real thing. That does remind me of the sole advantage of playing off the console though, and that's that my PC is free to do other things.

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[shafeen]

^^agreed to exodus

but the save states etc feautures offered in emulation are jsut kick ass....look how amazing the graphics look in epsxe(compared to ps1 games played natively on console)....

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[Samor]

true, the polygon resolution boost can give quite awesome results.

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