What do you think about emulation?

[I.S.T.]

Personally, it's a huge gray area full of moral and not so moral behavior. For example, the first GBA emulator came out before the system was even out. I believe it is to date the only system to have that kind of treatment.

At the same time, however, a huge amount of people use it to experience old games no longer in print, or old games they own but cannot play for some reason(Batteries dying, system broken, etc.).

to further complicate matters, there is the copywrite ruling by the Patent Office I believe that emulation is fine provided the game you're downloading is on a "dead system."

Myself, I stay away from games in print in any fashion unless the current version is either highly changed(Graphics updates don't count.) or a poor port(To give an example, Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 were ported ot the GBA very early in it's lifespan. Both of them suffed from screwed up controls.). Given how many games are reissued nowadays, a lot of the older classics are offlimits if one adhires(I've had to have misspelled that...) to that rule, there are a ton of games I just haven't played ever, but that's alright. I figure it's worth it because I don't want to pirate. I don't feel its' right.

What do you think?

[digitalwanderer]

I likes it!!! :D

[Albuquerque]

Apple ][ Emulation FTW! :)

[Bludd]

MAME is a very impressive project IMHO.

[Zaphod]

to further complicate matters, there is the copywrite ruling by the Patent Office I believe that emulation is fine provided the game you're downloading is on a "dead system."Eh? Unless you have something concrete to refer to, I'm calling the 'abandonware myth' on that one. While trademarks can be effectively abandoned through disuse (because of the effectively infinite term of trademark protection), copyrights have no such provision. They must be actively relinquished by the creator of (or subsequent owner of the rights to) any given work.

I guess, you might be referring to the following DMCA exception that (temporarily) give you the right to circumvent access controls for:
2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace. (http://www.copyright.gov/1201/)That, however, doesn't mean that you can freely make a copy from said archive to play on your emulator unless you have the legal right to do so in the first place...

[I.S.T.]

Hmm... The wording I had read(From Gamespot the day the ruling was announced.) wasn't so specific.

I should mention i'm no angel when it comes to emulation. I've downloaded a few GBA games that were in print at the time, deleting them later when I realized I was being an idiot. I own two of them now.

[swaaye]

I bet there are companies out there with rights to games they don't even know about. Heh. So, even if they'd release these games into public domain, they don't know they could. But obviously there are companies that still try to profit off their old work, such as the Doom games. I think it's rather obvious though that a lot of games have simply been forgotten or just buried away because either the company doesn't know about them, doesn't know what to do with them, or just wants to horde them into some "porfolio" to make a buck someday next century. Etc.

I think emulation will always be "grey" because of this. And unless you own the original game still (how many people keep boxes of games they bought in the '80s) and an XT nearby, it's awful hard to play the "legal" way.

It's a real bummer too that it's so hard to legally play and distribute ancient games. Although the vast majority of gamers would probably shy away because they don't have pixel shaded 3D graphics, there are still lots of amazing tales told by old games. It's gaming history.

DOSBOX is incredible btw. I play lots of my old DOS games thru it.

[Richard]

And unless you own the original game still (how many people keep boxes of games they bought in the '80s)

/me raises hand. I still have the box and manuals for every one of my games (PC and console) My collection is one of the reasons I dislike Digital Distribution.