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

They work perfectly fine without the emulator, granted they’re on the original medium and used with original hardware. But yeah, the computer wasn’t built to run like an NES, so I need to tell the computer to build an environment that tries to run like an NES did, so the game can function in that environment.