I recently saw heard that emulators in all forms will be banned for ESA this year (and probably coming years as well) in all instances, except for DOSbox.
While I see the reason in banning emulators for e.g. NES, N64, PS1 etc, I do not see the logic in enforcing a blanket rule with a single exception.
Computers that run DOS well are becoming more scarce as the years go by, but this does not mean they're all that rare. In addition, the video signal is carried through VGA, which requires no modding to capture properly with a secondary computer.
At the same time, there's loads of consoles that probably never will recieve a run neither at SDA nor any marathon due to this rule since capturing them would require a private person to both research and build a capture mod for that specific console, similar to how 3DScapture.com came about. The difference is that there's a big demand for 3DS capture.
Now, like I said this wouldn't apply for consoles like GBA, DS or PSVita. However I do think consoles like the Gamegear, Neo Geo Pocket or Virtual Boy should deserve special treatment in this regard, at least for exclusive games. MAME is also a terrific emulator for arcade games that while not technically all that hard to capture, still requires a whole load of transportation costs to get a single game to the location.
There's also the matter of games for Android. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between emulator and natively running programs, but things like Bluestacks certainly is a special case.
While I see the reason in banning emulators for e.g. NES, N64, PS1 etc, I do not see the logic in enforcing a blanket rule with a single exception.
Computers that run DOS well are becoming more scarce as the years go by, but this does not mean they're all that rare. In addition, the video signal is carried through VGA, which requires no modding to capture properly with a secondary computer.
At the same time, there's loads of consoles that probably never will recieve a run neither at SDA nor any marathon due to this rule since capturing them would require a private person to both research and build a capture mod for that specific console, similar to how 3DScapture.com came about. The difference is that there's a big demand for 3DS capture.
Now, like I said this wouldn't apply for consoles like GBA, DS or PSVita. However I do think consoles like the Gamegear, Neo Geo Pocket or Virtual Boy should deserve special treatment in this regard, at least for exclusive games. MAME is also a terrific emulator for arcade games that while not technically all that hard to capture, still requires a whole load of transportation costs to get a single game to the location.
There's also the matter of games for Android. I'm not sure where the line is drawn between emulator and natively running programs, but things like Bluestacks certainly is a special case.
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