I'm realizing that it's actually not that hard to access a computer that can near perfectly emulate a PS2 or a GameCube in 2024, with very little loss of performance. Maybe it's been a long time coming, that we can have that with such a high degree of compatibility, but I feel like this is going to be the next iteration of an emulation renaissance in video gaming.
I'm thinking about the last time I consider this to have happened, with the PlayStation. The advances in PS1 emulation, with the "finally stable" releases of ePSXe and pSX, coupled with it becoming - by 2006 - actually quite easy to locate and lay hands on a copy of almost any given PS1 game, granted a lot of people access to games that were really not accessible short of spending a lot of money on the used market. Throughout all this, you had people like me, short on money and long on time, who just really wanted to keep playing new video games and getting new experiences. Well, all I had to do in '06 was install a good torrent client and a copy of my emulator, and voom, away I went to experience stuff like Tactics Ogre, Panzer Bandit, Intelligent Qube, Armored Core 1, and Pepsiman - games I would otherwise not have been able to find or buy, at that time. I was experiencing tons of games. I was brushing up on the stuff I'd missed out on, that through various faults, I hadn't had the chance to experience when it was contemporary.
Now that same scenario can very well come to pass, in 2024, with the next generation.
We're in a very different gaming world here, now. We think of these older titles in terms of when they'll get remastered or put on Virtual Console or Arcade Archives, and not in terms of if they'll get a Greatest Hits edition or if some company ordered a second print-run. It's simultaneously easier, and harder, to seek out experiences of games from generations ago. Easier because the publishers/devs are acknowledging that there is demand for the old titles, and in some cases, actively throwing us a bone. Harder, because due to licensing, hardware issues, or the wholesale scuttling of entire companies over the years (the last year in particular), the big publishers are still pretty much only giving us what's guaranteed to sell, and sometimes, not even doing a very good job of it. And for the stuff they're not giving us, sometimes it's active hostility on part of the rightsholders that we're dealing with. And let's not forget that roughly 87% of all video games are not available to purchase without going through side channels like eBay or hoping you get lucky at a used game store.
But y'know, there's that whole emulation thing. It's easier than ever to set up your computer to run PS2 games, and it's definitely not hard to go find a specific PS2 game if it ever happens to strike your fancy. Weighing in at just under 5 GB on average, it'd take you about as long to download that game as it would to download a Content Update for something newer. It's good fun to pick a game at random that you've never heard of, and just grab a copy sight-unseen and see if it's any good. Hell, even I'm discovering a whole lot of games I'd never hear about otherwise, like Under the Skin, or as it'd been explained to me, "Hitman, but you're an alien prankster trying to bilk humans out of their pocket change." That game in particular is going for around $25-35 as a disc-only, and almost three times as much with the case and/or manual. I'd have skipped it if it cost money. Thanks to emulation, I can taste it. Because Capcom sure aren't going to remaster it.
I'm definitely not the only one sifting through the sands of the hourglass, here. I feel like PS2, GameCube, Xbox, and - to some extent - PS3 and Wii games are likely to start seeing a new lease on life this way. It's like a time capsule, a window to a different era where designs were wilder, big companies let their lesser B and C teams work on original stuff on a lark, and where not everything in popular video gaming had been pummeled into a featureless, focus group approved lump of Content. Where games were released into the world and being allowed to make mistakes. Because sometimes they weren't mistakes. And the kind of concepts we were seeing back then, well, I don't want to say we'll never see the likes of them again - but it sure seemed like everybody was trying to do something wild and unique, then, and it was an era of such indescribably vast variety that... sheesh, just go play something and you'll see!
man you know what i was doing like five minutes before reading this?
Playing Viewtiful Joe. On my phone.
Emulation has come such a long way, and is opening so many doors.
