What Is ... Emulator

[ZPGames 0]

I have heard this word all over the web and I am curios to what it is. I am I just technologicaly illiterate or something like that. An answer would be much appreciated. Thanx

 

Notice from BuffaloHELP:

Questions are not allowed in What Is...? forum. Please review the forum description. Moving to Computers > Software section.

Edited October 2, 2005 by BuffaloHELP (see edit history)

[penny665 0]

Emulators are illegal. they are basically PC versions of your PS2,Gamecube, Xbox, ect... they allow you to play ps2,gamecube, ect... games on your PC.

[Gyad 0]

Wrong.Emulators are perfectly legal. They are programs that allow you to play ROMS, some of which are illegal, and some are legal.The ROMs that ARE legal are the non-commerical ones.The creating and usage of an Emulator is perfectly legal, its the ROMs that are the problem.

[Hiaito 0]

Nothing on the net is illegal unless you know how to cover up your tracks. But Emulators are nothing but dubbed games. :?

[Sprnknwn 0]

You make a big mistake calling emulators "illegal" in a generic way and saying that they are used to play last generation videogames.I don?t know which was the first emulator to be released but I think the most famous is MAME, which allows you to play old arcade games that anyone is going to sell you. You can find emulators of almost all system that has ever existed from Spectrum or MSX to Atari, Nes, Master System... Yes, they are not really legal but sincerely, I?m not going to buy and old arcade machine to play Tetris or a NES to play Super Mario. So if I can play them for free I don?t really think I?m doing any harm. Of course you can find emulators and isos/roms of PS2,Gamecube, Xbox, etc. which are closer to piracy but don?t minimize "emulator" term to those, please.

[ZPGames 0]

Wow that was a fast reply. Thank you all very much. Now I feel a lot smarter about technology.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well to enlighten this topic just a bit yes emulators are illegal since you are playing burned copies of games that 1 you did not make 2 the games are copyrighted.But on the other sense i don't think anyone covers their tracks with all the websites i have seen that you can download these roms at no one has yet to be shut down and this one website i use to go to since the late 90's has been up for awhile. Of course 99% of the websites don't offer you roms at all just a bunch of bs to get money through ppc programs and what not.And since emulators and roms are illegal anyone caught posting links to those websites here will be taken care of properly.

[ashiezai 0]

emulators are legal thing ... only the ROMS are illegal ... but who doesnt own a internet-downloaded MP3 ? this is the same thing that goes to the ROMS ...

[Gyad 0]

Heres some stuff I found on the web. So Emulators are NOT illegal, its the usage of it with the ROMs that are illegal.

Legal Issues
Emulators are perfectly legal, although a lot of misinformation has surrounded them in the press and on the internet. In order for the users of the emulator to be legal, they must own the software they want to emulate. Downloading copyrighted programs from the Internet, or exchanging them with friends is illegal without the permission of the copyright holder.

That states that emulators are legal and ROMs are not.

* Just because a game isn't sold in stores, it's not free - definitely true. Commercial exploitation as listed in the code only pertain to assessment of damages, and you as an emulator user probably never want to be in that position.* Copyrights have not expired - definitely true. The shortest safe bet copyright period is 75 (or 95, if new legislation holds up) years from publication. They can go much longer.
* Enforcing U.S. law outside the U.S. - Yep, this can happen (it's not a U.S. centric thing, it applies to Euro nations for instance enforcing their law against US citizens as well - see the references at the bottom of the page for the applicable texts).

That states that ROMs are illegal also.

[moldboy 0]

Hold on just one minute, ROM's are NOT emulators, yes most roms are ilegal, if not to make or use but definatly to distrobute. An emulator is a piece of software that looks and behaves just like a piece of hardware. On mention was of MAME, MAME is an emulator, it allows you to run the roms of old games, these ROMs are in effect exact copies of the cartridges that have been fileized. You can run PC emulators on the mac, so that you can run things like MS hearts on osX. Or the other way around you can run emulators that fake (emulate) OS X hardware and allow you to run Mac OS on a PC.When you download a program there will be a OS requirement, something like Win200/XP. That is because that program was written in such a way that it makes use of some of the features of Win2000/XP. Now you could argue that a Nintendo64 didn't really have a OS so when a game went into it the game called particular prts of the hardware, basicly, I know that that chip will be able to keep track of the speed of my car so I am assigning that job to that chip. Now if you were to try to run the ROM (virtual cartridge) of that same game in a PC it would so now I know that that chip... waite I can't find that chip!!! An emulator steps between the ROM and the hardware and takes a very small part of your processor and says you are now that chip so when the game is running and goes looking for chip it finds that chip (or atleaset thinks it does!)Now another type of ROM isn't just the game but rather the actual software and OS many of the games also have the OS built into them, anyway an example of this is the Virtual TI program which is used to emulate TI calculators, it takes a ROM from the calculator and runs it faking th Z80 processor in the calc. That ROM contains not only the OS but also all the available port calls from the calculator because the emulator needs that informationNow just a point on emulators and there legality. When MS releases the new xBox 360 (It hasn't been released yet, right? I don't keep up) it will no doubt be followed by quite a few games If the world hasn't seen the Hardware yet how can the game makers make functioning games? With emulators, thats right the developers acquire a copy of the Xbox 360's ROM and then runs it in an emulator enviroment to test there games.I can't resist, no emulators are not like mp3 files downloaded from kazaa of Napster they are rather like Windwos media player and Winamp, ROM's are like mp3 files.

[amhso 0]

from what i have read, ROM's are legal also if you own the actual game and catridge.

[Dawid 0]

PS2, XBOX and the more modern ROMS are very illegal. Your more older ROMS and emulation such as Nes and maybe even sNes, many are still illegal but for the most part not at all. I'm sure the gaming community and creators of those older games rather see those roms as a way of keeping those old classics going far beyond their consoles time.

[Florisjuh 0]

And you also have Linux, Macintosh and windows emulators for other Operating Systems, like Cygwin (Linux console for windows), which arent illegal either. Or are you just talking about emulators for games?

[Gyad 0]

I think it depends on how you got the ROM itself.If you downloaded it off the internet, its definetely illegal no matter what.If you bought the actual game and converted into a ROM, then its legal. (I think...)Just to be safe, don't use ROMs. And for Emulators, they're useless without ROMs.And if you do use it, be REALLY careful.

[Lozbo 0]

But how do you make a ROM in the first place? If id like to get my games into the pc and emulate them there...