the.com/emulator
a machine pretending so convincingly to be another machine that the lie runs the software.
means software that mimics another system's hardware and behavior closely enough to run its programs unmodified.
from from latin aemulari, to rival or imitate; ibm used the term in the 1960s for software letting new mainframes run old mainframe code, so customers wouldn't have to rebuy everything.
vs simulationsimulation mimics behavior, emulation replicates it exactly
legal gray zonethe code is legal, the game roms usually aren't
preservation tooloften the only way to run dead hardware's software
performance taxemulating a console can need 10x the original's power
for instance
mame — emulates over 40000 arcade machines since 1997
dolphin emulator — runs gamecube and wii games on modern pcs
rosetta 2 — apple's 2020 layer letting intel mac apps run on m1 chips
dosbox — keeps 1990s ms-dos games alive on every os since 2002