Blaine said:
An emulator is something that allows you to play Roms. Roms are just older video games, like FF7.
No, a ROM file is a data dump from a cartridge-based media upon which a Read-Only Memory chip stores data for a game.
FF7 is stored on CD media. A rip of it would be called an ISO.
An emulator is a program that makes one hardware system "pretend" to be another one.
A Macintosh or Linux user used to need Windows emulators (stuff like Wine for Linux) to run Windows programs.
A video game console emulator is a program that can interpret and run programming originally intended for a video game console (for example, a Super Nintendo or Sony PS1), with the primary intent being academic, as well as to support homebrewn applications.
Of course, once one of these is made, if the program actually works, it'll be able to run commercial game rips too, but 3D console emulators have never been perfect and probably never will be.
Take a look at the screenshot I linked. Look at the graphic for the Ration in the lower left corner.
The thread is a joking reference to the fact that the screenshot in question was obviously taken on an emulator.
As an aside, by the way, emulation software is 99% bulletproof legal. There's a small gray area with, for example, PS1 emulators, because they require a PS1 BIOS dump - which is, incidentally, ripped from a ROM chip on the PS1 mainboard - but it
can be ripped from an authentic PS1 by an average joe if they just get a few simple cables that plug right into the system - without even opening it.
Other than that, at least with CD-based game systems (PS1, Saturn, 3DO, SegaCD) if you're running off the original game disc there is nothing illegal about it.
Oh, and blaine, of course I use emulators, I've been in the emulation community for almost a decade and am on a first-name basis with two people who've done extensive work on Snes9x and ZSNES...
