That part of the system memory was set to ‘read only’ so you wouldn’t accidentally overwrite parts of the program you needed to make the computer work. ROM stands for Read Only Memory, part of early computers that stored the operating system. Speaking of the games, let’s talk about those briefly as well. The emulator must seamlessly mimic a proprietary graphics card, sound card, CPU, and storage system.

You could actually take that game and run it on your GameCube.Īs you might expect, reverse-engineering an emulator for a twenty-year-old game console is complex. It’s creating a software version of the GameCube inside your NVIDIA Shield TV. It works by simulating the individual hardware components.įor example, when you play Mario Kart for the GameCube on your NVIDIA Shield TV, the emulator isn’t changing the game to run on your Shield. However, it acts like a piece of hardware.Īn emulator is a program or computer that imitates or ’emulates’ another program or computer. I mentioned earlier that an emulator is a piece of software. Over the last few years, video game emulators have become popular because they allow us to play older games on modern computers or consoles. Once you’re finished reading this article, check out my article covering the best android boxes for gaming to see some of my other top choices! While the NVIDIA Shield is one of the best platforms to run emulators on, it’s far from the only one. However, some, like RetroArch, will emulate several different consoles. Most game system emulators focus on one game system. This allows you to play classic games without digging them out of your closet or finding a used one on eBay.įor example, if you know someone with a Mac computer that runs Windows, they use an emulator.

An emulator is a software that runs on a modern system (PC, or in this case, the NVIDIA Shield) that imitates a classic console.

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