Yet, that argument has always been part of the problem whenever you try to pretend that emulators do not, on some level, offer a necessary service in the modern gaming age.
While the idea of playing your favorite retro games via modern consoles on your TV or, in the case of the Nintendo Switch, on the go in an entirely official way is fantastic, the sad fact of the matter is that the opportunity to do just that rarely comes up. While Microsoft remains committed to its backward compatibility programs, Sony and Nintendo have struggled to find a way to offer gamers ready access to some of their best retro games (if they truly care about offering such options at all).
That’s actually a big part of the reason why some fans felt that Switch Online’s Expansion Pack service was too expensive right from the start. Nintendo has been…inconsistent in both the frequency of their Switch Online retro game library updates and the quality of the games they’ve added to that service. Yes, this initial batch of N64 games is impressive, but what in Nintendo’s recent history leads us to feel confident that they will continue to update this service enough to properly justify this price increase in the long run?
Of course, these recent technical issues really put the scope of this problem into focus. A big part of the reason why people are calling these bad ports of the original games is that we have access to unofficial emulations of these titles that run better than these official ports do and offer more features. Mind you, the N64 is a notoriously difficult console to emulate, but the fact that there are technically better versions of these games available elsewhere is really something that shouldn’t happen.
There’s a degree to which emulation allows us to see what’s possible and not just accept the occasional handout as the best we can do. Yes, there are legal reasons why companies aren’t able to give us all the retro games we want all the time, but there are very few reasons why the ports they do give us shouldn’t at least be of the highest possible quality. It’s one thing for emulators to offer the quickest and cheapest access to the largest collection of retro titles possible but it’s quite another thing when those emulators continue to be the gold standard in so many ways they shouldn’t be.
That’s the point here. The biggest reason why you shouldn’t be tempted to use emulators should be that companies already offer ready access to high-quality, official versions of retro games and only charge you a few bucks for the pleasure of owning them. Instead, we’re living in a world where paying twenty more dollars a year to access nine N64 games (as well as all the other features you get with that service) that aren’t properly optimized and that you don’t actually own is considered a blessing by many “loyal” fans. The biggest argument against emulators should be that they’re a way to avoid paying money for something that’s otherwise available, but as we see time and time again, that’s just not the case.
