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YOU'RE DA BOMB
Viewers, it isn’t often Emulation Zone finds
itself treading ground last walked by Robert Oppenheimer and the
scientists of Project Manhattan, the WW2 operation to produce the
first atomic bomb. But such ground we tread this month. Oppenheimer,
when questioned some time after the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki about the moral implications of his work, famously and
rather regretfully observed that the sheer scientific magic of what
they were doing completely blinded the scientists to its practical
applications.
And similarly, a lot of the time, emulation is
something that comes about purely because a coder wanted to see if
they could do something, rather than having a practical purpose in
mind. The classic example was the release of the N64 emulator
UltraHLE a few years ago, a technical achievement so stunning that
it never even occurred to the author that people would want to use
the emulator to – no! – play N64 games, and it was with some
surprise that he withdrew the emulator immediately after release
after the entirely predictable storm blew up around it. But anyway.
Into this same category we have to enter the
emulation of most CD-based systems, such as the CD32 and Mega CD -
which we’ve covered here in the last couple of months - and now the
Sega Saturn. To enjoy the games made playable by Fabian Autrel’s
fast-developing emulator Satourne, you obviously have to own the
original CDs, and these days Saturn hardware is actually a lot
cheaper to buy than the games are, which seems to render the emu
slightly pointless. Except, of course, that all the best Saturn
games were only ever released in Japan, and to get yourself an
imported or chipped Saturn to play them on nowadays, you WILL have
to pay through the nose to some rip-off retro shop or profiteering
git on eBay. So in fact, there IS a point to Saturn emulation, and
by extension this column, after all. Phew, that was close.
GOT MILK?
PCZ’s autocratic News Ed doesn’t like it when
Emulation Zone mentions fruit machine emulators, “Because they’re
not proper games”, so we’d better make this quick and hope he
doesn’t notice. A brand-new emulator, JPEMU, was released recently
offering emulation of another arcade hardware system, JPM’s Impact.
Why should you care? Because Impact was the hardware protocol that
ran the excellent Sonic The Hedghog fruity (as well as classics like
Roller Coaster, Indiana Jones and Monopoly). And Sonic is a proper
videogame star, so we’ll sneak it in. Quick, before he comes back.
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