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One of my favorite ways to spend my free time is watching old movies. I love catching up on classics on my big OLED screen, and delving into the history of a medium I love. Unfortunately, itโs harder to do that with video games. While pulling up an old movie is usually as easy as finding it on streaming or renting it digitally, old video games are split across a number of different consoles, and you canโt always count on rereleases to make them accessible on modern systems.
Luckily, there are still options for those who go looking for them. You can hunt down a vintage system and hook it up to your modern screen using an adapter, yes, but you can also use the power of modern devices to โemulateโ these games in virtual environments, often with improvementsโand if you do it right, it's all perfectly legal.
What is video game emulation?
Emulation is a massive rabbit hole, and can get about as deep as you want it to be. Iโve been using it for decades, and Iโm still learning new things. But there are some basics you should know that will help you get started, including how it works, its legal status, the drawbacks of not playing on real hardware, and the benefits it offers beyond simple convenience.
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
Essentially, emulation uses the power of modern machines to brute force virtual environments that are close enough to real hardware that files designed for it think theyโre running on the real deal, and will boot up like they are. Usually, this means emulators wonโt come out until one or two generations after a console's official release, but there are now emulators for everything from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Nintendo Switch (which runs on older hardware than you might think).
Granted,…