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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At the base of all programs are things that the hardware (the actual physical computer) can do. Programs call on the hardware to do its pre-made (designed) operations (hardware can only physically do certain specific things, things it is made to do). Operating systems tend to combine several machine-level operations into specific actions, so we can just write a word up in the operating system, and it sends a series of instructions down to the machine, which will then automatically do the (possibly many) physical steps involved. The program code also does this (takes one instruction and converts it into a series of machine actions).
We can write programs always down at the machine level, but it is long and arduous. Easier to make common tasks run as automatic routines called by a single instruction. Like, when my mom told me to clean my room, I didn’t need her to tell me every single thing I had to do while cleaning: that phrase “clean your room” told me that I had to do a number of tinier tasks. That is sort of how a program works. Mom could have said “gather your dirty clothes and dump them in the hamper, put all the books on a shelf, organize your toys and put them in the closet, and then vacuum the room including under your bed”, but “clean my room” told me all of those things so easier for everyone to just use “clean your room”.
The thing about it though, is that the program calls for a sequence of base level actions, and those actions are very specific to the hardware (the actual physical computer). When we make better computers, we change basic functions in the process, so you have to change the system or program codes to make the computer do what the other one would do for the very same instructions. Be like having a babysitter that thought “tidy your space” was how to tell me to clean my room. Say what? tidy my space? what’s that mean, exactly?
Emulators are just shells that allow taking the old instructions and converting them into the way the new system will do those same actions. It is a translator, basically. The new hardware speaks a different language than the old program, so a translator is needed. Easier to use a bilingual intermediary than to take every program and rewrite it for the new language.
Some words can still get lost or confused in translation, so bugs are possible.
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