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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Old games are designed to run on old hardware or old operating system that does not exist anymore. While it is possible to get the source code of an old game and recompile it for a new hardware and new operating system, it will take a lot of effort. Instead, we can create an emulation software to emulate the old hardware or old operating system to run the old games – not only one old game, but many old games.
Another problem with old games is that some of them were developed based on the speed of computer in that era, like, 33 Mhz CPU, or even slower. Even if you are able to get the source code and port it to the current CPU, running 2 Ghz CPU, you will see the old games run so fast that it is not playable. So, it will require not only to port it to the current CPU, but also need to change the logic of the game so that it does not rely on the CPU speed. It is a lot of work.
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