We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

While modded consoles are impressive, I can't get behind anything that just loads game dumps. The console becomes a semi-official meta-emulator at that point. It has already ceased to be "the real thing" and it just seems like a waste of space if you're not collecting games anyway. But then I am a collectnerd so what do I know.

Well... basically, the accuracy of emulators in common use is actually worse than most people suspect. Way worse. Testing on something besides the actual hardware is fine and dandy, particularly if you need nice features like a debugger and all that, but when it comes to almost any game console (we may have to excuse some very rare / awful systems), the actual console itself is what it needs to run on; it’s the best bet when it comes to the ultimate preservation of what has been made.

It’s true, most people who use these sorts of things do it for piracy or some other nefarious deeds. But most of the people who work on these things are hobbyists, just like the prudent collector, preserving their own tiny share of our own cultural heritage (which is something of the rationale for why, from 2003 to 2010, doing the sorts of protection-bypassing you need to do to write an emulator was a DMCA exemption). And make no mistake, even practitioners of Dark Arts against whom I stand diametrically opposed* are doing this in their own misguided fashion.

Furthermore, I consider that the DMCA’s overbroad stance on circumventing digital access control must be destroyed.

*repro carrrrrts