Retro Gaming: Difference between revisions
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===Hardware Vs. Emulators===
The second perennial question for retro gamers is "real hardware versus emulators", generally a question of authentic look and feel opposed to the convenience of having 10,000 games for a dozen systems available at your fingertips. Earlier systems relied on effects caused by the fuzziness inherent in their output to allow the illusion of more colours on screen and smoother transitions between colours than was strictly possible for the hardware, meaning that an emulator may not show a retro video game as the makers intended. Some very old systems are literally impossible to emulate, as they used based on analog systems.
One can also [[Take a Third Option]] in a number of ways:
* By using an FPGA to mimic original hardware. Since the FPGA itself is a special chip, this often requires its own system to function, making it more expensive than emulation or potentially original hardware. Additionally there still exists the possibility for a developer to get something wrong and not perfectly mimic original hardware. That said, a well executed FPGA project or console can effectively be indistinguishable from the real deal, often while adding additional features.
* Some companies are in the business of either refurbishing old hardware, or making compatible clones. On the low end, this consists of cheap famiclone consoles, but on the high end can consist of beautiful art consoles that source original chips with custom PCBs, allowing more and higher quality output than original consoles.
* Some retro games have their source available, and can be compiled or ported to newer platforms.
== Retro Gaming in Media ==
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