The term emulation means to either equal or exceed something or someone else. As computer jargon, however, emulation means recreating another computer or console’s operating system on another system; e.g., recreating a Nintendo Entertainment System on your Sega Dreamcast so you can boot up a _Super Metroid _ROM, or playing classic arcade games like _Ms. Pac-Man _or _Omega Race _on your Gameboy Advance SP. Certainly, neither Nintendo nor Sega ever meant for their systems to be used for such purposes.

The obvious utility of emulation software is that it allows users better compatibility and more freedom. The obvious threat of the software is that it allows users better compatibility and more freedom.

This article is not a “how-to” or a guide for emulation. If you want to learn how to emulate a NES on your Dreamcast, there are better sources of information. What I’m concerned with here is why we, as promoters of free software and concerned citizens in general, should care about these issues. As I will endeavour to show, emulation is not just about playing the latest PS2 title on your PC or even allowing new gamers access to older titles. It’s about the freedom to run the software you want on the hardware you want.

The threat of emulation

As we discover so often in the computer industry, emulation involves a clash between private and public interests. It is in the best interest of most software and hardware corporations to “lock-in” users. If you want to play a Nintendo game, Nintendo wants you to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. If you want to play _Metroid _on your GBA, Nintendo expects you to pony up $20 for the “authorized” version they’re selling for the GBA even if you bought and still own the original cartridge for your NES. (It is quite possible to emulate the original on your GBA.) If you want to run Amiga Software, you’ll need an Amiga, and a company named Cloanto is ready to sue you if you don’t pay them for the privilege of emulating the system on your PC. Microsoft’s strategies to shut out GNU/Linux users or impose Internet Explorer on web surfers are well known. Emulation represents a threat to corporations who thrive on the exclusivity of their software and hardware.

What’s the big deal? Who cares if you’re not free to emulate other systems on your PC or console? Probably the most obvious reason I care is convenience. As someone who enjoys researching game and software history, it’s neither convenient nor economically viable for me to own all the hardware I need to run more than a few systems. To use an analogy that Larry Lessig uses for a different purpose, imagine if the highway system were built so that only a particular make of car could drive on a particular kind of road. With such a system in place, you’d need three different automobiles to get from California to Florida and two more to get to New York. If one car could “emulate” the rest and get people around without the need for separate vehicles, everyone would want one no matter the “threat” such a car would pose to the other manufacturers. Sure, perhaps a Toyota would perform better than a Mazda on a “Toyota Highway”, but as long as I can emulate my way to Bourbon Street in my Miata, I’ll deal with it.

**Emulation threatens corporations who thrive on the exclusivity of their software and hardware**

Emulation has been with computers since the dawn of computing, and it certainly hasn’t always carried the stigma it does today. In 1965, IBM released its new IBM 360 line. The only problem was that IBM’s customers would rather live without the bells and whistles of the 360s if they could continue using the same software they’d paid so much to develop and spent so much time getting familiar with. IBM anticipated their fears and made the switch a no-brainer. Along with their 360s came an emulation program by Larry Moss that allowed users to run software written for IBM’s older 7070 systems. IBM realized quite rightly that users would be reluctant to upgrade their computers if it meant reprogramming or purchasing a whole new suite of customized software. Moss’s emulator made switching less costly, and was thus quite popular with IBM’s clientele. Moss’s emulator was IBM’s trump card, and they won big with it.

If every emulator was as helpful to a company’s bottom line as Moss’s was for IBM, there would be no “threat” of emulation. Every corporation would welcome them and probably develop emulators themselves. As long as emulation software is programmed “in house” and kept under corporate control, it’s a jewel in their crown. The problem is that it is just as easy for a competitor to take advantage of emulation software, which can become a powerful weapon indeed if a company is relying on the exclusivity of its software to maintain its market share. This was certainly the case with Colecovision’s “Atari 2600 adapter” released in 1982, which gave owners of Colecovisions the freedom to select from two formerly competing libraries of games. There’s no good reason to buy one of Atari’s game consoles if you can play all the Atari games on your Colecovision—_and _play those near pixel-perfect Colecovision arcade conversions you’ve been hearing so much about.

There is also a concern that emulation may be bad for current hardware; ensuring backwards-compatibility may limit a system or drive up manufacturing costs. Commodore made no serious effort to promote C-64 emulation when it released its newer Amiga line and didn’t even include a 5¼” floppy on any of its new machines—a decidedly different strategy than it had taken with the C-128, which could switch between three different modes: C-128, C-64, and C/PM. Sony’s decision to incorporate backwards-compatibility with the PS1 in its PS2 was seen by some as a concession to consumers, but by others as a rather meek strategy to buff up the game library for their new console (a few hundred PS1 games looks a lot better than 3 or 4 rushed PS2 titles on release day).

Another economic issue is that users may not want to buy new accessories like joysticks or mice or new versions of old software if they can use the ones they purchased for another system. Console manufacturers want to do everything they can to increase “customer loyalty” by forcing people to purchase proprietary accessories that will only work with their systems. Those of us who can still remember unplugging our Atari 2600 joysticks and plugging them into our Commodore 64s (and later our Amigas) are just too spoiled to tolerate the dozens of incompatible plugs and ports on later consoles.

Yet we’ll still buy a console if it has “the game” we can’t live without. Console manufacturers and operating system developers know that if a very popular software program is only available for one operating system—the “killer app”—then consumers will purchase it regardless of the sophistication of another machine. No one knows this better than Nintendo, who have milked their various “franchises” to the point of absurdity (what’s next, Yoshi’s Love Match Timber Sports?). Consumers will also be drawn to computing platforms with the most software. In the 80s, consumers were often bewildered by the dozens of incompatible computer systems on the market. Computers like the Commodore 64, Tandy TRS-80, and Apple II competed savagely with each other and divided consumers, who often became fiercely loyal to whatever brand they purchased. Companies who dared to manufacture “clones” of these proprietary machines, like Franklin, were taken to court and driven out of town. The money was assumed to be in proprietary hardware—an assumption which Microsoft wisely did not share. The war continued into the “16-bit” era, and it is still easy to find diehards still clinging to their proprietary Amiga or Atari computers despite their alleged obsolescence. When you’re asked to learn another operating system from scratch, it’s amazing how superior your old one feels.

**1982 was a year when consumer interests triumphed over corporate greed, but in 1983 came the great videogame crash. So it goes**

Game consoles underwent a similar turf war in the 80s. Seemingly every major department store was offering its own “television game”. Few families could afford more than one system, so the games that children played were limited by whether their living room was home to a Colecovision, Intellivision, Atari 2600, Adventurevision, Astrocade, or Odyssey II—to name a few. Each system had its special features, quirks, and a game library that distinguished it from the competition. Unlike the personal computer market, the hardware manufacturers produced nearly all of the software “in house” or under exclusive agreements and even tried to hide the identity of their programmers to protect against competition from other console manufacturers. When four programmers (including David Crane, later developer of Pitfall) left Atari to begin producing unauthorized games for the 2600 in 1979, Atari promptly sued to protect its monopoly (a strategy that would be later repeated by Nintendo against Atari, who’d try the same thing). The stakes were high and Atari was too short-sighted to see the advantage of third-party developers in helping it to sell consoles. Atari eventually lost in 1982, the same year Colecovision released its “Atari 2600 Adapter”, which allowed Colecovision owners to play any of the Atari 2600’s titles. Atari sued and lost yet again. 1982 was a year when consumer interests mattered to our elected officials, but in 1983 came the great videogame crash. So it goes.

80s Frogger ad showing screenshots from 8 systems. From Tomorrow’s Heroes website