Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio, and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It's time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published March first, twenty seventeen. It is
Speaker 1: titled how Video Game Emulators Work. And I've often thought
Speaker 1: about getting like an Arcade setup running a video game emulator.
Speaker 1: Never done it because while most of those titles that
Speaker 1: I would want to play are not really available through
Speaker 1: any legitimate means, I can't reconcile the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of video game emulator solutions involve essentially just kind
Speaker 1: of stealing intellectual property. But let's listen to this classic episode.
Speaker 1: Just letting you guys know, in case you're wondering, like,
Speaker 1: whys Jonathan sound so weird, or rather more weird than
Speaker 1: he normally sounds, is because I am recovering from said cold,
Speaker 1: and my voice is probably somewhere between eighty and ninety
Speaker 1: percent back.
Speaker 2: So got that out of the way.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is actually coming to us courtesy of a
Speaker 1: little listener male or actually it's from a listener tweet Now,
Speaker 1: remember the tech stuff Twitter handle is tech Stuff HSW
Speaker 1: so if you tweet me there, I will see it.
Speaker 1: And this one comes from Dan who says I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear a show on how video game emulators work.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to explore what an emulator is,
Speaker 1: why they're necessary, in how they work. Now, first of all,
Speaker 1: I should say there are a lot of different types
Speaker 1: of emulators. It's not just for the video game world,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to focus specifically on video games. And
Speaker 1: you might wonder our, right, So what is an emulator? Well,
Speaker 1: it does what it sounds like. It emulates some other technology,
Speaker 1: which means it's attempting to replicate how another technology works
Speaker 1: or what it does. Now, sometimes the emulator does this
Speaker 1: in a very different way than the original technology did.
Speaker 1: And more often than not, an emulator relies on software
Speaker 1: at least partly to replicate a particular piece of a
Speaker 1: hardware's functionality. So you can think of emulators as being
Speaker 1: at least partly a virtual machine. Some of the components
Speaker 1: may actually be physical parts that are original to whatever
Speaker 1: the technology you're trying to emulate was. Other components are
Speaker 1: going to be purely software, and it's helpful to use
Speaker 1: a little analogy here to understand what an emulator tries
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: So let's say you got two people.
Speaker 1: And you know what, let's give them some random name. So,
Speaker 1: just picking out of the air, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: with Josh and Chuck. Now, both Josh and Chuck are
Speaker 1: in a jungle, but they are separated, so they're each
Speaker 1: individually in a jungle. Both are running from something. Let's
Speaker 1: say they're being chased by aggressive badgers. So both of
Speaker 1: them have managed to put some distance between themselves and
Speaker 1: the fur balls of fury chasing them. And then each
Speaker 1: of them individually comes to the edge of a pit
Speaker 1: two different pits. So Josh is at one pit, Chuck
Speaker 1: is at a different pit. There's no way around the pits.
Speaker 1: There's too much overgrowth on either side, so you have
Speaker 1: to go over it somehow, but you can't go around.
Speaker 1: They each have a short amount of time to figure
Speaker 1: out a way around, or rather over.
Speaker 2: Their respective pits.
Speaker 1: So Josh decides what he's going to do is fashion
Speaker 1: a makeshift bridge out of some branches on the ground
Speaker 1: and some vines, and so he binds them together and
Speaker 1: he lays the bridge across the pit he crosses gingerly across,
Speaker 1: because we know that Josh's sense of balance is somewhat
Speaker 1: precarious under the best of circumstances. He gets to the
Speaker 1: other side and then he kicks the bridge back into
Speaker 1: the pit so that the badgers can't just follow him across,
Speaker 1: and then he continues on his merry way. Meanwhile, Chuck,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, uses a vine to tie it
Speaker 1: to a branch and use that as kind of a
Speaker 1: grappling hook. He tosses it up into the limbs overhead
Speaker 1: and it catches, and so then he swings Tarzan like,
Speaker 1: bellowing the whole time, and he gets to the other side.
Speaker 1: Then he jerks the vine and dislodges the branch so
Speaker 1: that it falls down and throws that into the pit
Speaker 1: just in case. Badgers can also swing across pits. But
Speaker 1: that's because he has not yet read how badgers work
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot com. So both Josh and Chuck got
Speaker 1: across their respective pits, but they both did so in
Speaker 1: very different ways. The end result was the same, but
Speaker 1: the pathway was different. That's sort of what emulators do.
Speaker 1: They're meant to produce a result that's identical to another technology,
Speaker 1: even if the pathway to get there is very different.
Speaker 1: A video game emulator is really meant to replicate how
Speaker 1: a specific machine works so that you can play the
Speaker 1: games that were designed for that machine, typically on a
Speaker 1: computer a PC. So an emulator could be a specific
Speaker 1: arcade game emulator, like for a very specific title, or
Speaker 1: it could be a video game console emulator, which means
Speaker 1: it could act like a video game console virtually and
Speaker 1: you could play the games made for that console on
Speaker 1: your computer. The end result is that you can play
Speaker 1: those games meant for one device on a totally different device,
Speaker 1: and as I said before, typically we're talking about a
Speaker 1: personal computer. Now, emulators are not the same thing as ports.
Speaker 1: A ported game is one that developers originally created for
Speaker 1: one architecture system and then they adapt that game for
Speaker 1: a totally different system. So the easiest example is a
Speaker 1: game that originally comes out on the PlayStation might get
Speaker 1: ported to the Xbox. These are totally different architectures. The
Speaker 1: video game consoles work in very different ways, so you
Speaker 1: can't just reformat and put it on an Xbox one
Speaker 1: disk and expect it to work. You actually have to
Speaker 1: redesign parts of the game that's what porting is all
Speaker 1: about now. Because each system, whether it's Xbox or PlayStation
Speaker 1: or mac os or Windows, works in a very specific way.
Speaker 2: Those programs are.
Speaker 1: Not compatible, but a port can be reworked so that
Speaker 1: it will operate on those new systems. Now, an emulator
Speaker 1: is different. An emulator can run a game meant for
Speaker 1: one system on a totally different system because the emulator
Speaker 1: is doing the work.
Speaker 2: So instead of.
Speaker 1: Giving a game to a new group of developers and
Speaker 1: saying I need you to make this version of the
Speaker 1: game playable for this other system, you have a piece
Speaker 1: of software that pretends that it is the other system,
Speaker 1: and that way you don't have to have developers change
Speaker 1: the code of the of the original game. You do
Speaker 1: have to have developers create the emulator. So it really
Speaker 1: just shifts the world from adapting a game to a
Speaker 1: different system to adapting an emulator to be able to
Speaker 1: work on whatever target machine you're talking about. Like I said,
Speaker 1: typically a PC, more often than not it's a Windows
Speaker 1: based PC, but you also see them for Unix and
Speaker 1: mac os, so it's not like it's exclusive to Windows machines.
Speaker 1: Now it's necessary because video game consoles and even arcade
Speaker 1: games like the old arcade game cabinets, they have specific
Speaker 1: hardware and software architecture to them. So some of those
Speaker 1: old arcade machines don't really even have much software at all.
Speaker 1: It's like the lightest level of software. It's mostly circuitry,
Speaker 1: like hard coded circuitry. The game itself is represented in
Speaker 1: the circuits that are on the board within the arcade cabinet.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the old cartridge based systems if
Speaker 1: you had one of those, like the old Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System or Super Nintendo or the Atari. Those are video
Speaker 1: games that would be programmed onto a circuit board that's
Speaker 1: housed inside of a cartridge, and you insert the cartridge
Speaker 1: into the video game console and some contacts between the
Speaker 1: console and the cartridge allow the console to read that
Speaker 1: information and then you're able to play the game. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't have, for most PCs, a cartridge based system
Speaker 1: that can accept these games in this way. Now, in
Speaker 1: the olden days, arcade games contained a circuit board unique
Speaker 1: to that particular game. So in other words, an Asteroid's
Speaker 1: machine was an Asteroids machine. That's all there was to it,
Speaker 1: because the circuit board had the Asteroids game on it.
Speaker 1: If you opened up a pac Man machine and you
Speaker 1: opened up a Donkey Kong machine, you'd find two different
Speaker 1: circuit boards. The pac Man one and the Donkey Kong
Speaker 1: one would be unique to those arcade games.
Speaker 2: They did have a very.
Speaker 1: Low level of software on the machines, on the circuit
Speaker 1: boards called BIOS now that stands for Basic Input Output System,
Speaker 1: and really it's just a foundational software layer. It's really
Speaker 1: just meant to be responsible for managing the relationship between
Speaker 1: input devices like a push button or a joystick or
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, and the output devices like the monitor,
Speaker 1: or even just what the game is supposed to do
Speaker 1: whenever you enact on those input devices. So the input
Speaker 1: could be a jump button, for example, you press the
Speaker 1: button and the output is you see your character jumping
Speaker 1: on the display. But keep in mind, the actual output
Speaker 1: is really the code for jumping and a signal to
Speaker 1: the arcade machine's display. Right, the display is not making
Speaker 1: your character jump. That's being controlled by the code of
Speaker 1: the arcade machine itself. It's reflected on the monitor in
Speaker 1: a way that you can see by having the little
Speaker 1: character jump up.
Speaker 2: In the air.
Speaker 1: Now, the game's circuit board handled everything else in those
Speaker 1: old machines, Besides that input output, the hardware was handling everything.
Speaker 1: It was just programmed directly onto the circuit board, and
Speaker 1: that included the game's sound, its graphics engine, its logic.
Speaker 1: If you had an Arcade cabinet and you wanted to
Speaker 1: switch out games. Let's say you've got a Pacmand cabinet
Speaker 1: and you think I'm gonna put Donkey Kong in this cabinet,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I want to switch out the games. What
Speaker 1: you had to do was gut the machine. You had
Speaker 1: to take all that circuitry and those connections out of
Speaker 1: the machine, the Pacman machine, and replace them with the
Speaker 1: ones from a Donkey Kong machine. You couldn't just swap
Speaker 1: out a certain element. You had to do pretty extensive surgery.
Speaker 1: It took some time, usually, you know, half hour an
Speaker 1: hour easy to switch these things out. Later on, it
Speaker 1: got a little simplified. First, it got simplified in the
Speaker 1: the adoption of some more standardized connectors. So that meant
Speaker 1: that you could start to disconnect a circuit board from
Speaker 1: the rest of a system, and assuming that the control
Speaker 1: scheme is similar from the old game to the new game,
Speaker 1: you could plug the new circuit board into a cabinet
Speaker 1: and it would work pretty well. Now, obviously, that only
Speaker 1: works if your control scheme is the same. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you're playing pac Man, there's no jump button, right,
Speaker 1: there's a player one, a player two, and then there's
Speaker 1: the joystick that has for motion control, and you just
Speaker 1: control the pac Man character that way. But let's say
Speaker 1: you want to play Centipede. Centipede is a very different
Speaker 1: type of game. It has a rollerball controller, so you
Speaker 1: have a ball that you swipe and you can move
Speaker 1: your character that way, and it has a fire button
Speaker 1: where you shoot whenever you press the button. So if
Speaker 1: you were to switch out the pac Man to the
Speaker 1: Centipede boards, assuming that they had these universal connectors, you
Speaker 1: still would have to switch out the control system as well,
Speaker 1: or else you wouldn't really be able to control the
Speaker 1: game Centipede the way it was meant to be played,
Speaker 1: Particularly since you wouldn't have a fire button, that would
Speaker 1: be a problem. Later on, arcade manufacturers would create machines
Speaker 1: that had the basic hardware set up so that different
Speaker 1: games could be plugged into the system more like a
Speaker 1: video game console. So this was even simpler than the
Speaker 1: universal kind of standardized controls. This was more about like
Speaker 1: a set structure where you plug in a chip essentially
Speaker 1: that has the game on it and everything else remains
Speaker 1: the same. So kind of like a video game console
Speaker 1: where if you're playing a Nintendo and you wanted to
Speaker 1: stop playing Super Mario Brothers instead play Gumshoe, then you
Speaker 1: could turn off the console, pull one cartridge out, put
Speaker 1: the other cartridge in, turn it on, and there you go.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing with these old arcade machines. Once
Speaker 1: they got to this level of sophistication, it was still
Speaker 1: a bit of a pain in the butt because he
Speaker 1: still had to open everything up and get in among
Speaker 1: all the wires and stuff, but it was still way
Speaker 1: faster than the old days where you had to replace
Speaker 1: everything essentially. Now the games themselves are called ROMs.
Speaker 2: MS.
Speaker 1: Now ROM is an acronym. It stands for read only memory.
Speaker 1: That meant the player or anyone else couldn't write anything
Speaker 1: to the game. Now, they might have something on the
Speaker 1: circuit board, some temporary memory in the arcade machine that
Speaker 1: would allow players to put in initials next to high score,
Speaker 1: and that would be stored in that memory CHEP, but
Speaker 1: the game itself was immutable. You could not change the game.
Speaker 1: It was the computer equivalent of being set in stone.
Speaker 1: So in the emulator world, we generally refer to game
Speaker 1: files as in the software that represents that game as
Speaker 1: a ROM. If you've ever used an emulator, you're probably
Speaker 1: familiar with ROM. And there's a big legality question people
Speaker 1: have when it comes to ROMs, and I'll get to
Speaker 1: that later in the episode. At the end, I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend time talking about the legality of read only
Speaker 1: memory files and whether or not it is legal to
Speaker 1: download them, But for now, let's just focus on the
Speaker 1: technical side of things. We'll get to the legal stuff
Speaker 1: at the end. So you got various types of games,
Speaker 1: each designed to run on specific hardware. And there are
Speaker 1: the standalone arcade machines that each had their own peculiar architecture.
Speaker 1: They're the later arcade machines that could accept different chips,
Speaker 1: with each chip containing a different game. And then there
Speaker 1: are the video game consoles and their proprietary game technologies.
Speaker 1: You even got old computer games that were designed to
Speaker 1: run on slower machines with much less computing power than
Speaker 1: today's PCs. A lot of those are impossible to play
Speaker 1: on later machines because they just they can't handle the
Speaker 1: fact that they've got access to all that processing power.
Speaker 1: So you might even need an emulator for a PC
Speaker 1: based game on a PC.
Speaker 2: If it's old enough.
Speaker 1: If it's an old game, you may need an emulator
Speaker 1: in order to run it a virtual machine of some sort.
Speaker 1: Emulators are what let you run those games designed for
Speaker 1: those older or other devices on a modern machine. So
Speaker 1: I've got more to say about this, but before I
Speaker 1: get into it, let's take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: There are two big categories for emulators, and this doesn't
Speaker 1: depend upon the type of console or game you're trying
Speaker 1: to emulate. It's universal. These two big categories are universal
Speaker 1: no matter what system you're trying to emulate, so all
Speaker 1: different systems, all different arcade games, emulators can fall into
Speaker 1: one of two categories. There's low level emulation and there's
Speaker 1: high level emulation. And it might be a little counterintuitive
Speaker 1: what these mean, but with low level emulation, programmers are
Speaker 1: trying to create software and or hardware that can pretend
Speaker 1: to be the emulated hardware. In other words, you're trying
Speaker 1: to replicate the actual mechanics, although it's not mechanical, it's electronic,
Speaker 1: but the actual physical process I guess physical process doesn't
Speaker 1: really work either, right, the actual logical process of the
Speaker 1: original game system or arcade machine. So you want your
Speaker 1: system to look from a high level as close to
Speaker 1: that original system as you possibly can get it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that actually means including original hardware from the target machine
Speaker 1: with the emulator, so that means you're not just replicating
Speaker 1: the target machine, you're using some of its actual parts.
Speaker 1: You're in part rebuilding the actual original machine. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first couple of models of the PlayStation three actually
Speaker 1: contained elements of the PlayStation two inside it in order
Speaker 1: to provide some backwards capability. So if you wanted to
Speaker 1: play a PlayStation two game on one of those early
Speaker 1: PS three models, instead of it using the typical PS
Speaker 1: three equipment inside the console, it would actually hand that
Speaker 1: off to the PS two elements. So it was almost
Speaker 1: like having two different video game consoles in the same box.
Speaker 2: You didn't know it.
Speaker 1: As a consumer, like, you don't see any of that happening.
Speaker 1: It's all happening inside the console. But it wasn't a
Speaker 1: PS three system reading the information and then playing it
Speaker 1: on your screen. It was actually a PS two system
Speaker 1: housed inside that PS three, So the PS three's core
Speaker 1: system was acting as the emulator, but it was using
Speaker 1: PS two hardware to actually read the information off of discs. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're using something like an sixty four emulator, the
Speaker 1: emulator's trying to replicate the way the N sixty four
Speaker 1: is hardware worked, and the more sophisticated that target system is,
Speaker 1: the more difficult this is to do.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: With low level emulation, the amount of processing power you
Speaker 1: need on your computer to run the emulator so that
Speaker 1: you can play those games the way they were meant
Speaker 1: to be played. That processing power demand increases as the
Speaker 1: complexity of the video game system you're emulating increases, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, right. The more complicated the system, the greater
Speaker 1: the demands are in processing power, particularly if the system
Speaker 1: you're trying to emulate is remarkably different from PC architecture,
Speaker 1: because your processors having to handle all of those differences
Speaker 1: and it ends up creating a bigger drain on the
Speaker 1: processor's ability. So if you've ever played a video game emulator,
Speaker 1: and you've run a game and you're thinking, this thing
Speaker 1: as slow as molasses, I'm barely able to get this
Speaker 1: character moving. It's probably because you're experiencing that problem that
Speaker 1: the emulator is probably a low level emulator. It's trying
Speaker 1: to replicate that original system as closely as possible, and
Speaker 1: as a result, your processor is having to work super
Speaker 1: hard to keep up, even though the game might be
Speaker 1: fairly simple. It can be very frustrating because you might
Speaker 1: be playing a game that came out in like the
Speaker 1: late eighties, and you're thinking, it's twenty seventeen. My computer
Speaker 1: should be able to run this with no problem. But
Speaker 1: the truth is the processor is trying to handle a
Speaker 1: system so different from itself that that's what's causing the
Speaker 1: slow down. I experienced this with a friend who had
Speaker 1: an Arcade emulator, and he's had Ghosts and Goblins on there.
Speaker 1: And I love that game. I loved it when it
Speaker 1: came out, but as I started to play it, I thought,
Speaker 1: this game is way slower than and I remember it
Speaker 1: am I just remember getting incorrectly.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: Turned out it was because the emulator was putting too
Speaker 1: great a demand on his system's processor, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the game I was playing was much slower than what
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be, and it's really hard to
Speaker 1: make low level emulators efficient. Some games and systems require
Speaker 1: multiple synchronization processes to make sure all the emulated components
Speaker 1: are working together properly. So the more frequently that happens,
Speaker 1: the more times that an emulator has to say, hey,
Speaker 1: is everything all right and send that message out to
Speaker 1: all the different components and wait for a response, the
Speaker 1: more demands it places on that processor. So if you
Speaker 1: want to have a really good low level emulator, you
Speaker 1: need a computer with like a screaming fast processor. And
Speaker 1: that could be again a little counterintuitive. You might think, well,
Speaker 1: this game can run the latest computer games with no
Speaker 1: frame rate issues at the highest graphic setting, everything's awesome,
Speaker 1: But when I try to run this emulated game, everything
Speaker 1: slows down. Why is that? It's because of this. Now,
Speaker 1: then you have high level emulation. This is very different.
Speaker 1: High level emulation simulates the functions of hardware, but doesn't
Speaker 1: try to replicate those functions. So, in other words, all
Speaker 1: it wants to do is get to that end result.
Speaker 1: It doesn't care if it follows the same path as
Speaker 1: the hardware. So this gets back to that Josh and
Speaker 1: Chuck example I gave at the top of the show.
Speaker 1: Both the vine and the bridge will get Chuck and
Speaker 1: Josh across the pit, but they do it in different ways.
Speaker 1: The end result is the same. That's what high level
Speaker 1: emulation aims to do, so we call this abstraction. We
Speaker 1: are able to create an environment in which a game
Speaker 1: will work even if you're using totally different hardware because
Speaker 1: of this level of abstraction. This is particularly handy for
Speaker 1: game developers, not just people who want to play games,
Speaker 1: but people who are making games, because you can develop
Speaker 1: a game for a specific system using a level of abstraction,
Speaker 1: and you can use whatever system you prefer to develop on.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a developer and that you use
Speaker 1: a Mac as you're a computer, but you're developing a
Speaker 1: game for the Xbox. A level of abstraction allows you
Speaker 1: to do this on a virtual level, so that you're
Speaker 1: developing an Xbox game in a Mac environment and you
Speaker 1: don't have to have special equipment or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You've abstracted all of the elements into a virtual realm.
Speaker 1: So high level emulation uses shorthand for basic operations instead
Speaker 1: of a specific pathway. So a low level emulator would
Speaker 1: try to replicate the exact way a game saves information.
Speaker 1: For example, a high level emulator would just say save
Speaker 1: this data to the storage drive, and firmware would actually
Speaker 1: handle the transaction. So the software hands it off to
Speaker 1: the firmware that says, all right, what's the most efficient
Speaker 1: way for me to do the task I've been asked
Speaker 1: to do? That puts the least demand on the processor.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a voice activated assistant in a way.
Speaker 1: As these systems get more robust, you can ask for
Speaker 1: the same information in many different ways. So for example,
Speaker 1: if I had an iPhone, I could ask Siri what
Speaker 1: is the weather like outside? Or I could ask Siri
Speaker 1: is it raining?
Speaker 2: Now? Both of those questions.
Speaker 1: Will get me a weather answer from Siri because the
Speaker 1: system can actually handle the different ways to request essentially
Speaker 1: the same information. Hardware abstraction does something similar. It interprets
Speaker 1: a request and then it does the leg work to
Speaker 1: fulfill that request. Now, there are three main ways that
Speaker 1: high level emulators simulate hardware functions. The first is called interpreting.
Speaker 1: The emulator will go through the code of the game
Speaker 1: line by line in chunks and replicate what the instructions
Speaker 1: are supposed to do, so, interpreting makes sense right like you,
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you were to read a
Speaker 1: story and then tell somebody what does the story say?
Speaker 1: Like what are the basic points of the story. Or
Speaker 1: you're trying to tell someone about a movie you've seen
Speaker 1: and you're giving them kind of a high level, bullet
Speaker 1: point rundown of what the plot was all about. That's
Speaker 1: what interpreting does, except it does it with code. Next
Speaker 1: is a strategy called dynamic recompiling. Now that method actually
Speaker 1: looks at blocks of code, looks at the instructions that
Speaker 1: are the processor is supposed to carry out according to
Speaker 1: that code, and then it starts looking for a more
Speaker 1: efficient or optimized way to run those same instructions on
Speaker 1: the actual computer you are using. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's recom hiling the code for a different piece of hardware.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like saying, all right, this was written
Speaker 1: for an Atari twenty six hundred, I want to rewrite
Speaker 1: it so that the same result will happen on the
Speaker 1: PC that is running the software. Very interesting that this
Speaker 1: can be done on an abstract level. And finally, there's
Speaker 1: a strategy called list interception. Now this is relevant for
Speaker 1: computers that use coprocessors, and for systems that you're trying
Speaker 1: to emulate that also had coprocessors. Most PCs these days
Speaker 1: have a coprocessor. The graphics processing unit is a coprocessor. Now,
Speaker 1: those chips are meant to handle graphics, but they're also
Speaker 1: really handy for parallel processing. You might have heard that
Speaker 1: a lot of hackers use GPUs in order to do
Speaker 1: brute force attacks against secure systems. This is because GPUs
Speaker 1: can process stuff in parallel, which means you can have
Speaker 1: a bunch of parallel processors all tackling the same problem,
Speaker 1: going through different potential solutions, and that cuts down on
Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes for you to find
Speaker 1: the real answer. So with list interception, an emulator interrupts
Speaker 1: a command list sent to the original device's coprocessor and
Speaker 1: turns that into instructions that the actual host computer's graphics
Speaker 1: processing unit can handle. So it's kind of like translating
Speaker 1: text from one language to another. It intercepts the message
Speaker 1: says okay, well, the GPU can't understand this the way
Speaker 1: it's written, but I can take these instructions rewrite it
Speaker 1: in a way that the GPU understands. And send it along,
Speaker 1: And that's how that works. The big advantage of high
Speaker 1: level emulators over low level emulators is that they require
Speaker 1: less processing power to run games. So a well designed
Speaker 1: high level emulator can run titles smoothly on a modest PC.
Speaker 1: You don't need to have a killer gaming rig, but
Speaker 1: a low level emulator would require that bf yeer processor
Speaker 1: to handle demands. Now, the flip side is a low
Speaker 1: level emulator tends to be more accurate when replicating a game,
Speaker 1: and a high level emulator might not be able to
Speaker 1: replicate all the things the game does because it's not
Speaker 1: as specific to that system, like, it's not replicating the
Speaker 1: system as faithfully.
Speaker 2: As a low level emulator would. So there are trade offs.
Speaker 1: So let's say you want to invest in an emulator
Speaker 1: and some games, and just for argument's sake, let's say
Speaker 1: that there's a legal way for you to buy the
Speaker 1: games rather than just download them willy nilly. Like I
Speaker 1: said before, I'm going to talk more about the legality
Speaker 1: of all of this at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: So what system should you go for if you want
Speaker 1: an emulator? Well, that really depends on several factors. For one,
Speaker 1: are you missed their money bags or miss money bags,
Speaker 1: because if money's not an object, you might as well
Speaker 1: go bonkers and trick out a nice low level emulator
Speaker 1: system with a really really good gaming rig PC to
Speaker 1: get the most authentic experience when you PLoP down to
Speaker 1: a rousing game of Burger Time or Gauntlet two. Low
Speaker 1: level emulators, particularly ones that include actual hardware used by
Speaker 1: the system you're trying to emulate, get pretty pricy, and
Speaker 1: remember you got to have that powerful processor to run
Speaker 1: those emulators.
Speaker 2: And as opposed to.
Speaker 1: The high level emulator types, high level emulators don't require
Speaker 1: as much horsepower from the host computer, which brings the
Speaker 1: cost down. You don't need to buy a super fast computer.
Speaker 1: In fact, you may already have a machine more than
Speaker 1: capable of running a high level emulator program, so you
Speaker 1: won't have to spring for that screaming gaming rig with
Speaker 1: you would like for a low level emulator. But sometimes
Speaker 1: those high level emulators cannot perfectly replicate whatever the target
Speaker 1: system is the emulated system, so you might find certain
Speaker 1: games don't have all the bells and whistles that they should,
Speaker 1: and if you might even be unplayable, like you might
Speaker 1: get a title a rom for a game you love,
Speaker 1: and you have an emulator, a high level emulator for
Speaker 1: that system or for that machine, and then you find
Speaker 1: out you still can't play the game. Well, it might
Speaker 1: not be that the file you got is corrupt.
Speaker 2: It may be that the.
Speaker 1: Emulator just isn't capable of replicating that game the way
Speaker 1: it should. Now, mostly that depends upon the way the
Speaker 1: original game developers programmed the original game. If they use
Speaker 1: a lot of weird shortcuts and hacks to create the
Speaker 1: game that would work on the target system, it may
Speaker 1: not work on an emulated system. So in other words,
Speaker 1: like let's say I've developed a game for the original Nintendo,
Speaker 1: and the original Nintendo could totally handle these sort of
Speaker 1: cludgy hacked processes I've created because I wanted to do
Speaker 1: it to make a bunch of shortcuts. Like the code
Speaker 1: looks messy as heck. If you look at the code,
Speaker 1: but the gameplay doesn't reflect that, it's just fine. But
Speaker 1: then you pull it over onto an emulaid system that's
Speaker 1: more designed to handle games that are written to the
Speaker 1: standard of Nintendo as opposed to just getting it done,
Speaker 1: and you may find out that that game isn't really
Speaker 1: playable on the EMULAID system. It's really frustrating if in
Speaker 1: fact that was your goal from the start. So the
Speaker 1: more standard of games code is, the better the chances
Speaker 1: are that a high level emulator will be able to
Speaker 1: handle it. Now, arguably one of the most popular types
Speaker 1: of emulators is the multiple arcade machine emulator or MAN.
Speaker 1: That's an open source emulator. An open source essentially means
Speaker 1: the code is open for anyone to look at, to alter,
Speaker 1: and even to re upload and distribute. So that means
Speaker 1: as people find better ways to emulate a particular machine,
Speaker 1: they can make adjustments to the code, and a new
Speaker 1: version of the emulator can incorporate those changes. So if
Speaker 1: it's a multiple arcade machine emulator, then you may have
Speaker 1: a specific arcade cabinet that has not been emulated yet.
Speaker 1: You might figure out how to do that, and you
Speaker 1: add that code into a already existing MAME emulator, which
Speaker 1: I understand is repetitive. See also my tire rate about
Speaker 1: atm machines and pen numbers. But because you're able to
Speaker 1: actually take that code and change it, then you can
Speaker 1: increase the functionality for the community as a whole.
Speaker 2: Now, the stated purpose of.
Speaker 1: MAIME is to preserve games as an historical effort because
Speaker 1: these old arcade machines relied on physical hardware, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them are no longer in production. In fact,
Speaker 1: most of them aren't in production anymore. So creating the
Speaker 1: software that could run those games is a way to
Speaker 1: preserve the games indefinitely instead of just have them get
Speaker 1: older and older and older and eventually they just don't
Speaker 1: work anymore. They break down to the point where it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you have an original arcade machine, the
Speaker 1: circuit board just won't play the game. This way, they
Speaker 1: could be preserved indefinitely.
Speaker 2: Now it just so happens that the.
Speaker 1: Software also allows you to play those games, because that's
Speaker 1: how the games work, right, Like, if the software didn't
Speaker 1: allow the games to run, all you really would need
Speaker 1: to do is find a way to preserve that random
Speaker 1: or rather the read only memory the ROMs. If you
Speaker 1: could just preserve the ROMs period, you could have a
Speaker 1: library of unreadable files. It would be pretty unusual to
Speaker 1: do that, Like, what's the point.
Speaker 2: It'd be kind of like going into.
Speaker 1: A library that is filled with books written in an
Speaker 1: ancient language that no one understands anymore. So, yeah, they're historical.
Speaker 1: They have some historical significant but there's no way to
Speaker 1: understand what is there. So you start asking the question,
Speaker 1: does it really make sense to keep them if there's
Speaker 1: no way to read them. So Maine can read these
Speaker 1: files that can play those games. But the stated purpose
Speaker 1: for Maine isn't to play the games, it's just to
Speaker 1: preserve them. Now you might find that that purpose is
Speaker 1: a little do not peak behind the curtain esk, and
Speaker 1: that you could easily imagine mame's design is meant to
Speaker 1: give you the chance to play those old games and
Speaker 1: not just keep them for posterity. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: can't play the video game, is it really worth keeping?
Speaker 1: But never mind that it doesn't really matter for the
Speaker 1: purposes of this discussion. I just find it amusing. So
Speaker 1: the main software evolves over time, and part of that
Speaker 1: is just to keep up with technology. As operating systems evolve,
Speaker 1: we have to adjust the software, the MAME software to
Speaker 1: run on new systems. So you know, if Microsoft releases
Speaker 1: a new version of Windows that's remarkably different from previous versions,
Speaker 1: you may have to tweak the code for MAME to
Speaker 1: be able to run on the new Windows platform. So
Speaker 1: it is necessary for this to be open source for
Speaker 1: the software to remain relevant, and there are lots of
Speaker 1: different versions of MAIME on operating systems like Windows, on
Speaker 1: Unix mac os. There are versions for both thirty two
Speaker 1: bit and sixty four bit Windows versions. You can find
Speaker 1: people selling MAME machines inside either classic arcade cabinets or
Speaker 1: new cabinets designed to look like old ones, complete with
Speaker 1: special controls. So if you wanted to, you could create
Speaker 1: a computer like You could build a computer on your own,
Speaker 1: a decent one, not like again, not a super fast
Speaker 1: one necessarily, but a decent computer.
Speaker 2: With a lot of storage.
Speaker 1: You could mount a display inside a cabinet to look
Speaker 1: like in arcade monitor. You could have the computer inside
Speaker 1: the cabinet. That's essentially the case for your computer, and
Speaker 1: you could hook up arcade controls, including ones that are
Speaker 1: more unusual like the roller balls or some of the
Speaker 1: other yoke versions for flight games like the old Star
Speaker 1: Wars game, that kind of stuff. You could have all
Speaker 1: those sort of controls available. You can even have ones
Speaker 1: that detach from the system so that you can swap
Speaker 1: them out whenever you need to for whatever game you
Speaker 1: want to play, and you could have that in your
Speaker 1: house and you would essentially have access to all the
Speaker 1: arcade games supported by that emulator. That doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: every arcade game ever invented, but it could be hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of different titles. On the inside's just a
Speaker 1: PC running that mame software and a collection of ROMs.
Speaker 1: So it's getting to time for me to talk about
Speaker 1: the legality of this. Like, if you wanted to do this,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have an emulator, whether it was
Speaker 1: a main emulator or a video game console emulator or whatever,
Speaker 1: what are the legal considerations you should make. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you more about that in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So you could technically build or buy a machine capable
Speaker 1: of providing an entire arcade's worth of gaming on one device.
Speaker 1: But is that legal? So this brings us to the
Speaker 1: legal discussion or law stuff, don't dun.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Note there are a lot of questions about ROMs and
Speaker 1: their legality. So our ROM files illegal? Is it ever
Speaker 1: legal to download one? Are emulators illegal? It's good to
Speaker 1: finally kind of tackle these questions now. First, emulators in
Speaker 1: general are legal. You can own an emulator. There is
Speaker 1: nothing inherently illegal about emulators. They're software meant to emulate
Speaker 1: another technology, but in general they don't contain any proprietary code,
Speaker 1: So that means emulators more often than not, don't have
Speaker 1: any code in them that is protected by copyright. Since
Speaker 1: there's no copyright violation, there's no illegal nature to these emulators.
Speaker 1: Developers haven't stolen any intellectual property from the companies that
Speaker 1: made the original equipment. They're just creating new software to
Speaker 1: run programs that relied on older original equipment. So it's
Speaker 1: a fine line. But emulators on their own are totally legal.
Speaker 1: As for ROMs, that's where it gets messy. For one thing,
Speaker 1: we do not have global laws guiding our choices about
Speaker 1: legality or illegality when it comes to ROMs, so the
Speaker 1: rules in one country can be significantly different from those
Speaker 1: of other countries. Now, I'm gonna be looking at this
Speaker 1: from the viewpoint of someone in the United States because
Speaker 1: that's where I live. Longtime listeners of text stuff. No,
Speaker 1: this is my mo I will take a view from
Speaker 1: the US because that's where I'm from and it's way
Speaker 1: easier for me to talk about this. But if I
Speaker 1: wanted to tackle the legality from every country, I'd have
Speaker 1: to do a whole series of podcasts because it's different
Speaker 1: for different places. In fact, even just the length of
Speaker 1: copyright protection is different in different countries. The US has
Speaker 1: a lengthy period of copyright protection, Like we're talking decades
Speaker 1: and decades of protection even after the death of whomever
Speaker 1: held the copyright. So something to keep in mind, all right, So,
Speaker 1: downloading a rom of a game you do not own
Speaker 1: is violating copyright and is illegal pretty much anywhere.
Speaker 2: So if you wanted.
Speaker 1: To get hold of a RAM for a game, but
Speaker 1: you don't own that game, you have no legal copy
Speaker 1: of that game, Downloading it is against the law. It's
Speaker 1: no different from downloading a song you don't own, or
Speaker 1: a movie you don't own, or a television show. If
Speaker 1: you do not own a copy, you're essentially stealing. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of arcade games, it's pretty darn common
Speaker 1: for people to steal them. Not many people actually own
Speaker 1: arcade machines. There are people who do, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of them who do, but most people do not.
Speaker 1: The average person does not own an arcade machine in
Speaker 1: their home. So unless you own a legit copy of
Speaker 1: an arcade machine, downloading the ROM for that game is
Speaker 1: pretty much illegal.
Speaker 2: But let's say you.
Speaker 1: Go go to an auction right and you buy an
Speaker 1: old Spy Hunter cabinet for your rec room at home.
Speaker 1: First of all, good job, Spy Hunter, awesome arcade game,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites from the arcade era. You get
Speaker 1: the machine home and you realize that the circuit board
Speaker 1: is damaged a little bit. It's kind of fried, and
Speaker 1: the game isn't really working properly. It's not stable, like
Speaker 1: you can get it running every now and then, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily run flawlessly or it might crash at
Speaker 1: random intervals.
Speaker 2: So the question is, could.
Speaker 1: You then download a ROM for Spy Hunter and replace
Speaker 1: the guts of the cabinet you've bought with a PC
Speaker 1: running an emulated copy of the game. So instead of
Speaker 1: having the actual Spy Hunter elements inside this cabinet, you
Speaker 1: remove those, you put a PC in there.
Speaker 2: The PC is.
Speaker 1: Running Maime, and the only ROM you have on it
Speaker 1: is Spy Hunter, because that's the game you bought.
Speaker 2: Would that be legal? Well, if you were to rip the.
Speaker 1: Game off the circuit board yourself, you could probably argue
Speaker 1: that as being totally legit. So in other words, you'd
Speaker 1: have to make a digital copy of a hard coded game,
Speaker 1: which isn't exactly easy for the average person to do,
Speaker 1: but it would be a necessary step to use a
Speaker 1: digital ROM on another type of device.
Speaker 2: In the United States, this.
Speaker 1: Would likely be seen as making a legal backup copy,
Speaker 1: as in a lawful it is perfectly fine to make
Speaker 1: a backup copy of media you have purchased. It's similar
Speaker 1: to making a backup of a CD or a cassette
Speaker 1: tape or a vinyl album, either through putting it onto
Speaker 1: another medium or ripping it and making it an MP three.
Speaker 2: That's perfectly legal.
Speaker 1: As long as you're doing it for your own personal
Speaker 1: use without the intent to distribute, you're pretty much okay.
Speaker 1: You are legally al oued to make backup copies of
Speaker 1: stuff you purchased, as long as it's for the purpose
Speaker 1: of a backup. But what about downloading a ROM from
Speaker 1: another source rather than ripping it from the circuit board
Speaker 1: you physically own. Let's say that you don't have the
Speaker 1: equipment necessary to pull the code off a hard coded
Speaker 1: circuit board and convert it into something digital that a
Speaker 1: PC could read, so instead you're just going to download
Speaker 1: a copy from the internet. Now, arguably you could say
Speaker 1: that downloading the ROM in this instance is a case
Speaker 1: of fair use. So the argument you would make is
Speaker 1: that you already own the game. You purchased a legit
Speaker 1: copy of Spy Hunter, and you're not distributing the ROM
Speaker 1: to anyone.
Speaker 2: You're not trying to.
Speaker 1: Create a marketplace for the Spy Hunter game. All you
Speaker 1: want to be able to do is play the game
Speaker 1: you bought on the arcade console you purchased. So you
Speaker 1: could argue, I'm not causing harm to the market, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not denying a sale. I'm just trying to get
Speaker 1: access to the thing I have already purchased. Well, that
Speaker 1: could be a legit fair use argument, but you got
Speaker 1: to remember fair use is an argument you have to
Speaker 1: make in a legal case. In other words, it doesn't
Speaker 1: protect you from getting sued. You can't say at the forefront,
Speaker 1: this is fair use, don't sue me. Instead, fair use
Speaker 1: is an argument you make once you have been sued,
Speaker 1: so fair use doesn't matter until you get to court.
Speaker 2: Chances are, though, no one would sue.
Speaker 1: You in the first place unless you were distributing games,
Speaker 1: particularly for some of these old ROMs because in some
Speaker 1: of these cases, the companies that made the games have
Speaker 1: been out of business for years, or they were acquired
Speaker 1: and sold and acquired so many times, then no one
Speaker 1: really knows what the ownership rights are for some of
Speaker 1: these games. So, in other words, there's no one to
Speaker 1: give your money to because no one knows who owns
Speaker 1: the copyright. And not only are no copies being sold,
Speaker 1: but there's no one who's authorized to sell them, right,
Speaker 1: no one knows who owns it. So in those cases,
Speaker 1: you're probably okay to download the ROMs, not that it's legal,
Speaker 1: but that you're probably not gonna get punished for it
Speaker 1: because there's no one to lay a claim against you.
Speaker 1: That doesn't stop companies from doing that even when they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have a legal claim to the content. If
Speaker 1: they think they can get away with it, they could
Speaker 1: totally go that route. You would have to prove in
Speaker 1: a court of law that the company suing you does
Speaker 1: not have a legal claim to the property they are
Speaker 1: arguing is theirs. So you know, if video game Company
Speaker 1: A says, hey, you know, back in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: we purchased video game Company B, which means we own
Speaker 1: the video game you have downloaded illegally and you say,
Speaker 1: well no because of X, Y and Z. Maybe it
Speaker 1: turns out you're perfectly fine, but it means you have
Speaker 1: to go through the whole court experience, which isn't great. Now.
Speaker 1: You may have also heard that there's a special rule
Speaker 1: that allows you to download any video game ROM and
Speaker 1: keep it for twenty four hours without it being illegal,
Speaker 1: as long as you delete the realm after twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: So generally people say, oh, yeah, you can download the game,
Speaker 1: give it a whirl, and delete it a day later,
Speaker 1: and there's no fear of someone coming after you. I
Speaker 1: am here to tell you that is not based on
Speaker 1: any actual legal grounding. From what I can tell, there
Speaker 1: is no legal foundation for this argument. It's probably just
Speaker 1: wishful thinking that's been passed along as gospel among a
Speaker 1: lot of realm sharing communities. The truth is, if you're
Speaker 1: downloading something that doesn't belong to you and you're not
Speaker 1: purchasing it, you're just downloading it, you are stealing. It.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter if you're keeping it forever or for twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, it's still stolen.
Speaker 2: Now. Complicating matters in this.
Speaker 1: Case is that we're talking about digital information, not a
Speaker 1: physical copy of something. I mean, if I walked into
Speaker 1: a video game store and I pocketed a copy of
Speaker 1: an actual video game that was stored on physical media
Speaker 1: like a CD or a DVD, there's no question that
Speaker 1: I stole something. Right If I walk into a game
Speaker 1: stop and I grab a box and I shove it
Speaker 1: under my jacket and I walk out, I stole that.
Speaker 1: There is a physical copy of the game that I
Speaker 1: have taken, and that means the store can't sell that
Speaker 1: physical copy because it's in my possession and I didn't
Speaker 1: buy it. But downloading a file doesn't feel like stealing, right.
Speaker 2: Because the original file still exists.
Speaker 1: On some server somewhere, So you didn't. You didn't take
Speaker 1: the one and only existing copy. You made a copy
Speaker 1: of another file, and now you have that copy, so
Speaker 1: other legitimate customers could still purchase the game that you've taken,
Speaker 1: because it's not like it doesn't exist anymore. And so
Speaker 1: because of this, a lot of people justify their actions
Speaker 1: as being okay, because it's not like they actually took
Speaker 1: something that physically exists, except that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you are accessing something without paying for it.
Speaker 1: When there's an entire business based off of making games
Speaker 1: for money. If game developers didn't make money, there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be games. No one would make games, or at least
Speaker 1: not on the level that we are used to. People
Speaker 1: might make games as an expression of art and they're
Speaker 1: not trying to make any money, But there wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a video game business if we all just stole stuff, right,
Speaker 1: because there's no money in that, you would spend your
Speaker 1: time doing something else where you'd actually be able to
Speaker 1: make a living. But we get even more complicated because
Speaker 1: many of the games that are in raw form are
Speaker 1: now on obsolete systems or which you cannot purchase at
Speaker 1: least not from a primary company, Like you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be like be able to buy a classic Nintendo system
Speaker 1: from Nintendo. You could buy the little ones that replicate,
Speaker 1: you know, a dozen or two dozen games on one system,
Speaker 1: but you can't just go out and buy an Anys.
Speaker 1: They don't make them anymore. Or some of those video
Speaker 1: game systems are in limbo as far as ownership goes.
Speaker 1: And that also makes it easier for people to justify
Speaker 1: downloading the files, but it doesn't make it any more legal.
Speaker 2: Now I'll admit.
Speaker 1: It's really frustrating to be in a position in which
Speaker 1: you would happily pay for something if you could, but
Speaker 1: you have no legal way to do it. That is
Speaker 1: really frustrating. I found myself in that same position with
Speaker 1: a lot of British television series that I love but
Speaker 1: are not available for purchase in the United States.
Speaker 2: So I do the.
Speaker 1: Legal, grown up lame thing, which is that I don't
Speaker 1: I don't access it like I don't. I don't get
Speaker 1: it means I don't pirate the stuff I love in
Speaker 1: the hopes that one day I'll have a legal means
Speaker 1: to access it.
Speaker 2: Instead.
Speaker 1: I'll, you know, I'll post about it, I'll write to people,
Speaker 1: I'll ask questions, but I have to wait until there's
Speaker 1: a legal way to purchase it.
Speaker 2: I do think this is a muddy area.
Speaker 1: If a game exists and there's no way to buy
Speaker 1: it and the company that made it doesn't even exist anymore,
Speaker 1: are you really causing harm to the market by downloading
Speaker 1: a ROM I'd say it probably not, because there's no
Speaker 1: way to purchase it legally. But someone in court might
Speaker 1: say you undermined their attempt to make a legitimate commercial
Speaker 1: copy of the game. Further down the road, and because
Speaker 1: we can't see into the future and see if someone
Speaker 1: is really telling the truth in those cases, that's problematic.
Speaker 1: So if I download a bunch of ROMs from a
Speaker 1: previous publisher that no longer exists, but their intellectual property
Speaker 1: belongs to another company, and that other company says, hey,
Speaker 1: in five years, we're going to release a best of
Speaker 1: compilation little console that you can connect to your TV,
Speaker 1: and if you distribute these ROMs, then you devalue that system,
Speaker 1: even if they have no plan of doing that. I
Speaker 1: don't know the case right, so it's complicated.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: It is illegal to download ROMs for any games you
Speaker 1: do not own, and you could technically get in trouble
Speaker 1: for it. And as for games you do own, it's
Speaker 1: a gray area and you could still technically get in
Speaker 1: trouble for it. So tread carefully, and if there is
Speaker 1: a legal way to buy or access the stuff you love,
Speaker 1: I urge you to do that first. It helps cut
Speaker 1: down on reactionary laws and digital rights management strategies, and
Speaker 1: it helps prevent companies from making these these.
Speaker 2: These new systems that hurt everybody.
Speaker 1: So if there's a way to get it legally, do that,
Speaker 1: and if there's not, think really hard before you go
Speaker 1: down this pathway, because you could be causing yourself more
Speaker 1: frustration in the long term. And that's it for that
Speaker 1: classic episode about how video game emulators work. As I
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, I've thought about getting like a
Speaker 1: mame machine. But the issue I have is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the content you find with those, I mean again,
Speaker 1: it's like pirated content. That doesn't mean that emulators themselves
Speaker 1: are bad, as I've said many times, they're not. Emulators
Speaker 1: are a way of preserving work that otherwise could just
Speaker 1: go forgotten. It. I don't have an issue with that
Speaker 1: at all. It's just the issue where I balk is
Speaker 1: I really do believe in paying to have access to
Speaker 1: work that other people have made, and so that's why
Speaker 1: I haven't taken the plunge on getting a mame machine.
Speaker 1: It's not that I think Maime itself or any other
Speaker 1: video game emulator for that matter, is inherently bad. That
Speaker 1: I believe in paying people for their work. And I
Speaker 1: don't just mean the people who make the emulators. I
Speaker 1: mean the people who made the original games that are
Speaker 1: running on those emulators. It's a it's a it's complicated
Speaker 1: because in many cases you literally cannot purchase the content
Speaker 1: any other way, and then you're left with the question of, well,
Speaker 1: if you can't do that, doesn't it just get forgotten?
Speaker 1: And honestly, I don't. I don't know how to reconcile that.
Speaker 1: So as I struggle with this, I hope you all
Speaker 1: are well and stay well.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I can come to some sort of decision
Speaker 1: about Maine at some point, and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again, really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
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