People have been able to create emulator for consoles like N64 or PS1, but how were they able to do it? and how has it become harder to do for new gen consoles like PS5?
In: 15
So a normal game played on a PC is going to be an executable file that was made specifically for PC, and is set up to run in that environment.
N64 games on the other hand are designed specifically with the N64’s hardware in mind and is not designed to run in any other environment.
To get around this hardware mismatch, some very skilled people write code that simulates the hardware of the N64, and run it on a PC. Once they’ve got a simulated N64 running on a PC, they simply feed the original ROM data from an N64 cartridge into this simulated N64 and it just works.
If they didn’t get the simulation(really it’s an *emulation*) quite right then you can get unusual behaviors and errors.
The more advanced the hardware you’re trying to emulate, the more likely you’re going to get little details off and cause more of these errors. The N64 is very simple compared to a PS5, so it takes less power to emulate the hardware through code, and the lower complexity means there’s less things for you to screw up and get errors.
So, summarized: Emulation is when you simulate the hardware of the console, and the more complex the console, the more computing power it takes and the harder it is to get everything right.
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