eli5: Why do we need emulators to play old games? why can’t we just make the games work without the emulator?

Question

eli5: Why do we need emulators to play old games? why can’t we just make the games work without the emulator?

In: 409

Answer 1

For the same reason you can’t run an Xbox game on a PlayStation, the game is designed for a specific hardware layout.

In order to make the game work, you need to interpret your game into terms your computer can understand. That’s what the emulator does. Whereas an N64 takes your game’s N64 instructions and turns them into hardware instructions. An N64 emulator takes your game’s N64 instructions and turns them into computer instructions.

You could replace the instructions themselves, but at that point you’re creating an entirely new game. It’s easy to simulate the N64 than it is to write every N64 game.