Emulators
- Thread starter WarmasterCain55
- Start date
Posting them breaks forum rules, but I think we can still discuss things like this, right?
I've used Project 64 for N64 roms and PCSX2 for my PS2 roms, along with MotioninJoy so I can use my PS3 controller as a PS2 gamepad. As for the games, generally you torrent them or download them from rom archive sites. Emuparadise in particular has a huge assortment of games, particularly old niche RPGs that you'll never see in Gamestop, like the Ar Tonelico and Wild Arms series.
I've used Project 64 for N64 roms and PCSX2 for my PS2 roms, along with MotioninJoy so I can use my PS3 controller as a PS2 gamepad. As for the games, generally you torrent them or download them from rom archive sites. Emuparadise in particular has a huge assortment of games, particularly old niche RPGs that you'll never see in Gamestop, like the Ar Tonelico and Wild Arms series.
If you look I'm sure you can find emulators for pretty much any major platform that you might care to try.
The game files you are looking for are called ROM (Read-only Memory) files. You'll have to download them from somewhere. No, I won't tell you where. Why?
Because this discussion is talking about things that are technically illegal or close enough that people could get into trouble. You can find ROM files many places online, but they are not necessarily legal to possess.
There is also always the risk, when you go searching for pirated software, that you might pick up a trojan horse. Keep that in mind.
That's all I have to say on this subject.
The game files you are looking for are called ROM (Read-only Memory) files. You'll have to download them from somewhere. No, I won't tell you where. Why?
Because this discussion is talking about things that are technically illegal or close enough that people could get into trouble. You can find ROM files many places online, but they are not necessarily legal to possess.
There is also always the risk, when you go searching for pirated software, that you might pick up a trojan horse. Keep that in mind.
That's all I have to say on this subject.
Emulators in them selves are not illegal so long as you have the original system and the games so as long as you have a physical copy(doesn't matter if it still works or not) then it is legal so all my PS2 stuff I can't get in trouble for since I have an overheated PS2 sitting in my closet and a huge physical library of games and I'm pretty sure that the PS2 would also cover you for the PS1 emulator as well since it has the full hardware of the PS1 in the PS2. If your worried much about legalities then just buy broken systems somewhere and broken games and say what's on your computer is for back up of what you physically own and then you won't have to worry at all.
Two reasons: first, it takes a great deal of time to develop an emulator. It's not just an instruction set that has to be emulated, but all the timings on the various system buses, and some degree of the firmware/os, depending on how exactly the platform is set up. Second, emulation is expensive in terms of CPU time. You need to have significantly more CPU power in the system the emulator is running on than the system that's being emulated has - 5 to 10 times, as a general rule, and it's usually closer to 10. That's pretty much just for the instruction set; emulating the quirks of specific hardware like you need to do for a gaming platform can get even more expensive.
As far as forum rules go, I think as long as no-one posts direct (or indirect) links to BIOS or ROM files, the discussion is fine. Other staff are free to overrule me on this.
On the matter of legality, there are 2 parts to it - hardware and software.
Hardware is the physical component that you buy and can touch. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing illegal about making a software emulator for a random piece of hardware.
But, when you buy a console, the software (henceforth called BIOS) which runs on the hardware is proprietary material. It's owned by the console manufacturer and they probably have copyright protections over it. Simply put, unless Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft gives you written permission, you are NOT allowed to make copies for mass distribution.
This is why most emulator developers insist that you get a 'bios' file from somewhere else. They can legally develop the emulator, but its illegal for them to do anything with the BIOS that runs on the hardware.
The issue of region-locking makes the question of BIOS ownership tricky. For example, if you own a PS2, then there should be no legal harm in getting a copy of the BIOS, right? Well, what about a situation where you are in Europe with a PAL-version of the PS2. Would it be illegal for you to get a copy of the NTSC-version of the BIOS? I mean, you do own the console, so what's the harm?
Questions which I really don't know (or want) to answer.
-chronodekar
On the matter of legality, there are 2 parts to it - hardware and software.
Hardware is the physical component that you buy and can touch. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing illegal about making a software emulator for a random piece of hardware.
But, when you buy a console, the software (henceforth called BIOS) which runs on the hardware is proprietary material. It's owned by the console manufacturer and they probably have copyright protections over it. Simply put, unless Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft gives you written permission, you are NOT allowed to make copies for mass distribution.
This is why most emulator developers insist that you get a 'bios' file from somewhere else. They can legally develop the emulator, but its illegal for them to do anything with the BIOS that runs on the hardware.
The issue of region-locking makes the question of BIOS ownership tricky. For example, if you own a PS2, then there should be no legal harm in getting a copy of the BIOS, right? Well, what about a situation where you are in Europe with a PAL-version of the PS2. Would it be illegal for you to get a copy of the NTSC-version of the BIOS? I mean, you do own the console, so what's the harm?
Questions which I really don't know (or want) to answer.
-chronodekar
Unbugged has it down. There are other issues too, account systems and other forms of copy protection that are probably going to slow down the development of emulation technology. Note that PS2 emulation only got decent in the past two to three years, and the first good PSP emulator only released this year, and those were on very open systems.
Until the various game developers and publishers pull their collective heads out of their asses and release some official emulators and sell official roms/isos for old games then I see no moral reason not to pirate them. You aren't depriving the owners of the intellectual property of any money since they aren't building or selling those old consoles and games anymore, they aren't offering digital downloadable versions, and buying used doesn't net them any money.
Unfortunately as Unbugged mentioned, you need a beastly machine to emulate any remotely recent console. I got a Quad Core Phenom II 965 processor with 16gb of ram and a GTX 660 Ti graphics card, and even I can only play PS2 games on the PCSX2 emulator at 2x native resolution with about 45-50 fps on average. Slowdown occurs fairly often and some games are worse than others though. My CPU is holding me back, the PCSX2 is designed for Intel cards. If I had an equivalent Intel chip I'd get 10% better performance just from that. I want to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge chip but I don't have the money to replace my CPU and motherboard right now.
Unfortunately as Unbugged mentioned, you need a beastly machine to emulate any remotely recent console. I got a Quad Core Phenom II 965 processor with 16gb of ram and a GTX 660 Ti graphics card, and even I can only play PS2 games on the PCSX2 emulator at 2x native resolution with about 45-50 fps on average. Slowdown occurs fairly often and some games are worse than others though. My CPU is holding me back, the PCSX2 is designed for Intel cards. If I had an equivalent Intel chip I'd get 10% better performance just from that. I want to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge chip but I don't have the money to replace my CPU and motherboard right now.
There's actually a pretty common misconception in here that I'd like to clear up. As far as copyright law goes, there exsists a loophole for having game ROMs on your harddrive - essentially, you're allowed to make a software copy of any physical copies of a game you own for backup purposes. What this doesn't mean, however, is that you're allowed to download a game ROM as long as you own a physical copy of the game. Downloading a ROM is illegal in all cases, same is true of a system BIOS.
That said, downloading an emulator from the original creators of the emulator is usually not illegal.
That said, downloading an emulator from the original creators of the emulator is usually not illegal.