eli5: Why do we need emulators to play old games? why can’t we just make the games work without the emulator?
In: 409
Imagine Sonic the Hedgehog, that was written for the Mega Drive, the code expects the cartridge to be over here, the sound chip interface over there, and the video RAM over there, so you can only run it on a Mega Drive.
Modern machines though are fast, stupidly fast compared to the Mega Drive. So an emulator looks at the code and goes “It was going to write over here, which was the sound chip, which would make the sound chip do XYZ, so I can spend a little time making that sound (which is hard for me, I’m not a sound chip). Okay we have that, what was the next instruction?” and it can do all that fast enough to be playable.
The other option is a port, the version of Sonic 1 inside Sonic Jam for the Saturn is a port. A port is making what is effectively a brand new game that looks, sounds, and plays like the original.
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