Game Emulation Stories: Volume 2

Since the first one is the biggest blog of the bunch, it's been very long enough to do a second volume of stories. I'll have at least a couple to talk about.

The first goes back to 15 years ago. Around this time, there had been sites that were doing their own arcade emulation. I believe the site was called 1980stees (it's been a long time, so the name is something else) and they specialized in doing early 80s arcade games. There was Donkey Kong, Frogger, and a couple other games from that era that I played. It was about as close as I could get, not knowing that there were places where you could get the actual arcade ROMs or even get the real PCBs on eBay. They did have some other flash games like one I played a lot that was based on Sonic Advance 2, which was the newest handheld Sonic at the time. I had good enjoyment out of it.

Going to do more 80s, this time called 1980sgames.com. At the time, roughly again 15 years ago, they had access to about every NES game released in America. Even included were some rom hacks of a couple games such as Aladdin. Unfortunately, emulation was rough with Nesticle or Nestopia. Once again, my memory is a little fuzzy. Regardless, the games ran really slow. Try playing through Bionic Commando or Back to the Future on that.

The site also had access to Sega Master System games and included both the American and European releases. It might have been the first time I had every tried out games for it. It's 8-bit Sonic games I definitely tried. Altered Beast and a few others I gave a shot. I remember the emulation being good, but the audio was a few pitches down compared to how it was on a real Master System. As far as that site was, it was okay. If you didn't want to hassle with emulators, it was fine, but it was not something I would have recommended. Now these days, the site's domain is up for sale.

And that wraps up volume two. I do have a bit more emulation stories I'll talk about in the near future. Here is the first volume:

https://sullivanentertainment.blogspot.com/2019/03/game-emulation-stories-volume-1.html

Game Emulation Stories: Volume 1

This might be the start of something I want to do, but we'll have to see if it pans out and if I talk more about it. I've had my share of playing games via emulators and emulation over the last decade or so. I'm going to talk two games in this volume.

One of the games I would keep playing via emulators was the Sega Genesis version of Home Alone. I had tried it back in the mid 2000s on emulator, but 2010 was where I played it extensively. It would be something I would get a chance to play any time I didn't have any college work. Around Christmas, I walked down to a local used game store that had been open for almost two months and found a copy of it. Along with Tecmo Super Bowl (Genesis), Doom (PlayStation), and Mission: Impossible (PlayStation), I bought Home Alone.

It is a game I always try to play around Christmas. This is a fun one that captures the spirit of the movie. The graphics are solid for a game released in late 1992. Christmas vibes are what I think of with the outdoors and each house is unique. There is fun in assembling weapons and setting traps. It may be the best of games that the first two films had.

The last is another Genesis game. As a kid, a cousin of mine had Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure. I played it a few times in the early 2000s and that was it. Around the same time in 2010, I played it again after a long time. It was a hit of nostalgia since I hadn't seen the show in about almost a decade at that point and about seven, eight years since playing the game. It's a Sonic the Hedgehog type of game. Looks like the show, has a great soundtrack and has solid controls. My only complaints are a somewhat high difficulty and a complicated password system.

I played it for a while in 2010, but stopped and didn't come back to it until August of 2011. It was one of those nights where I played it overnight on my laptop and used save states to beat it. When it got to the credits, I knew a few characters, but most I didn't know or remembered. It got me very curious and it got me to watch clips of the show. Then it grew to watching episodes and writing a spec movie script of my own. I do own an actual copy of the game and have beaten it legitimately on a real Genesis.

Hope you folks enjoyed these two stories and hopefully I'll do more of these in the future.

The Game Emulation Route

I have seen and played games on emulation since 2001-02. Only in the last decade have I greatly embraced the concept in spite of still buying games. It's a way to play certain games you can't find or buy depending on the problem at hand. That being said, it's a slippery slope as despite the various systems that are covered, it also has plenty of hiccups.

Very few arcades exist and unless you're going to Illinois or Wisconsin for the famous arcades, you more than likely don't have an arcade or your selection is very poor no matter the good games. That's why MAME has been around for a very long time. So that you can play stuff you remember or never had a chance to try. Especially as arcade hardware starts to dwindle in working condition. Being able to play The Simpsons on emulation was nice with a college friend and myself.

Console wise, it adds a whole new depth of what there was to offer. For one, you get to see games from other parts of the world. Stuff that either should have released in other parts or shouldn't have. There may also be games that you may have missed out on when they were out. I have a few stories like that which I will get into in another blog soon. But overall, with the vast amount of systems, the world's your oyster.

It's not without it's flaws, though. Obviously, it's not replicating the hardware all the way. A number of arcade games suffer from sound issues. Glitches are present in the graphics of certain systems titles, especially ones like the Nintendo 64. Systems like the 3DO don't get a lot of love from the emulation community and the result is less than stellar. We also see multiple emulators for a single system and the results vary. The SNES is a prime example with at least three that have their ups and downs. Last to talk about is whether these emulators will continue to work as we move further into the future and see future operating systems with much better specs.

Now, I can't say I'll recommend emulation, but it is route that can be taken. Just a word of caution as not everything will work properly.