eli5: Why do we need emulators to play old games? why can’t we just make the games work without the emulator?
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Programs, at the base level, are a series of instructions. Let us assume that there is an instruction on a console 1 called x. This instruction always performs a certain task. Now let’s say you want to run this program on console 2. Console two does not have an instruction called x, or maybe it does but it performs slightly differently. What you need is something in between to say whatever you are supposed to do. X, do y instead, where y is a series of steps on console 2 That will give the same result as x on console one. That something is called an emulator.
You could go through each game individually, replacing the instructions as needed, that is very time consuming. The alternative is to create one program, the something, that always does those substitutions. That’s why we do it.
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