Sony and Nintendo Make the Emulators of the Year ?

[Ari]

Because emulating the N64 on a 700mhz processor with 96 megs of ram is SO hard... I mean, it must be WAY easier to emulate the PS1 on a 333mhz processor with 32 megs of ram... Nintendo really had their work cut out for them, apparantly.

Yep, $10 for an N64 game is a much better deal than a $5 PS1 game that you can take anywhere. Or if you want, you can pay $30 to get your N64 games on the go with the DS! And NES/SNES games are only $20 for GBA! Isn't Nintendo just the best company ever?
[/sarcasm]

[b8a]

Do you agree or disagree with this article

Wholeheartedly disagree, for the following reasons:

1) This article gives sole credit to Nintendo/Sony, when it's a well-known fact that major corporations have been incorporating open-source emulator code into their commercial releases for some time. I obviously can't say with total certainty, but I would be willing to bet that both companies picked up code from other sources and then finished them off. This is usually known as porting or optimizing and you usually don't give props to the porting/optimizing party.

2) Most of the non-commercial emulators that we enjoy are developed as a hobby, in the coders' free time. A lot of emulators could be polished up and perfected in just a few months if you got a team of coders working on them full time (especially if they had free and unrestricted access to all of the original hardware documentation that they needed, as Sony and Nintendo certainly did).

Taking that into consideration, neither company has done anything notably special, especially if they didn't start from scratch. ...And looking at the sheer scope of consoles that the big N is attempting to provide games for, you'd have a very hard time convincing me that the emulation work was done entirely without help from open-source projects.

It's great that they're willing to provide us with these emulations, but it's nothing impressive. It's just business.

[jstush04]

PSP is the bomb.

I don't think anyone is allowed to use that expression anymore.....as in, the last time i said "the bomb" was around the time the N64 first came out

[gunntims0103]

This article gives sole credit to Nintendo/Sony, when it's a well-known fact that major corporations have been incorporating open-source emulator code into their commercial releases for some time. I obviously can't say with total certainty, but I would be willing to bet that both companies picked up code from other sources

Sony and nintendo would not need to port any homebrew emulator because they have the original documentation of the hardware. Intern it would be simple to emulate.

[aznflameboy]

Wholeheartedly disagree, for the following reasons:

1) This article gives sole credit to Nintendo/Sony, when it's a well-known fact that major corporations have been incorporating open-source emulator code into their commercial releases for some time. I obviously can't say with total certainty, but I would be willing to bet that both companies picked up code from other sources and then finished them off. This is usually known as porting or optimizing and you usually don't give props to the porting/optimizing party.

2) Most of the non-commercial emulators that we enjoy are developed as a hobby, in the coders' free time. A lot of emulators could be polished up and perfected in just a few months if you got a team of coders working on them full time (especially if they had free and unrestricted access to all of the original hardware documentation that they needed, as Sony and Nintendo certainly did).

Taking that into consideration, neither company has done anything notably special, especially if they didn't start from scratch. ...And looking at the sheer scope of consoles that the big N is attempting to provide games for, you'd have a very hard time convincing me that the emulation work was done entirely without help from open-source projects.

It's great that they're willing to provide us with these emulations, but it's nothing impressive. It's just business.

Yea i totally agree w/ u on that. Since both Sony and Nintendo had the codes for their own systems, it would be much easier for them to create their own emulators compared to homebrew coders who had to crack the systems first to get the codes and try to make a perfect emulator on wat they can get. Homebrew coders dont do it for a profit either while those 2 companies do. Exophase has done a great job on gpPSP.

[Anger]

yeah after considering what i posted i have to say something.
that something is, as already mentioned, the companies have limitless resources so of course there work is going to be better. i dont mean to take the shine off the guys who spent all there hard time making software for us all from there own home and for no gain other than recognition (which they are getting at least from me) so i really think its not fair to compare corporate software against homebrew as they cant really compete. all the emulators are phenominally good work no matter how they came about but the edge goes to the homebrew devs simply because there not doing it for money or a big company - there doing it for us.

[Mr_Biggs]

Yeah, i cant give sony or nintendo much credit on these emulators. Good idea to make them, but i wouldnt light a candle to them cause they have money out the ass and the documentation on the system's workings. so from now on, i think any emulator nominations should go to homebrew coders, not companies. bt i do have to give some cred to sony though, for making such an exploitable system.

Damn Anger, beat me to it.

[titch.ryan]

i agree with other comments the ps1 emulator would be rubbish without the crack by DA.

[b8a]

Sony and nintendo would not need to port any homebrew emulator because they have the original documentation of the hardware. Intern it would be simple to emulate.

I think we may be misunderstanding each other... I already addressed the fact that they would have access to the documentation and thus have an easier time making the emulators.

Sure they don't NEED to port emulators, but if someone else has already done 80-90% of the work, why would they work from scratch? Being a "coder" yourself, I'm sure you're well aware of the concept of not reinventing the wheel. Hobbyists may be "pure" enough to work from scratch, but these are companies that just need software that works. From that standpoint, they'd be utterly nuts not to use code that's already been tested by thousands accross the globe.

Besides, being a "coder" yourself you DO stay current on what your emulator producing bretheren have to say, don't you? Because I've read plenty of reports from emulator coders who have been able to pick their work out of commercial projects from companies rereleasing software that they had all of the original source code and hardware documentation for.

And, if that's not enough, maybe thinking about it from this perspective will help: Sony didn't NEED to incorporate open-source code that subjected the PSP to a security vulnerability. But they did.

[10shu]

If were talking legal emulation, the Wii is best. There are more fun classic games on Wii VC (Zelda/Mario) than classic games on the ps one. Is there even anything worth playing on ps one anyways?

lol...hum u may have eared about Metalgearsolid, Finalfantasy7 or Gran turismo....?!?!?

my personnal favorite: Einhender, tobal2, jumping flash