As a game collector, emulation completely changed my perspective of game collecting and backlog culture.
Game collecting is a hobby I’ve taken up over the last five years or so, and over that time, I’ve come to familiarize myself with common talking points within the game collecting community. People like to say that if you don’t play the games on their official hardware, with official controllers, then you didn’t really play it. For a while, I held this belief as well. I wanted to have official games with the official hardware, I bought every game console I could so that I could play (almost) every generation of gaming, I amassed a collection of games that I was really, truly proud of, something that I could go back and look at to get inspiration for my next play.
But then came the backlog. You see, when you collect a bunch of games from every feasible generation of gaming, you end up with a stacked as hell backlog, one that seems daunting to tackle.
Of course, the backlog would be that long regardless of owning the games or not, but there’s a sense of urgency when it comes to games you own. I mean, you spent money on it, sometimes a lot of money, and if you aren’t playing it then it’s just sitting on your shelf collecting dust. It starts to feel like a waste.
I wanted to find a means to get through my backlog without dreading it. A simpler means, one that didn’t make me feel so regretful over. Thus, enters emulation.
Disclaimer: I’m not recommending anyone emulate (*wink*) nor am I suggesting it to be ethically sound (*wink*); I’m suggesting how emulation might affect my life if I were to do it (*wink*), which I do not (*wink*)
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Alright, let’s get back into it!
Emulation on iOS
In January 2024, Apple finally opened the doors for emulators to be functional on their phones without having to hack their devices. I had spent some time previously trying to figure out how emulation works, but a lot of my hasty research ended up proving to be a fruitless endeavor. But when Afterplay—an emulator website—came into the picture, I finally gave in to the temptations and found a (legally acquired) ROM of Metroid Zero Mission. And, man, I was hooked.
Sure, I had to use touch-controls because I didn’t have controller meant for my phone (which made shinesparking an absolute bitch), and sure, I had the free version which limited how many save states I could use, but I finally understood the hype of emulation.
I mean, all of these games that have previously been locked out of me from purchasing due to egregious pricing were suddenly available, and games that I had already purchased didn’t require the hassle of plugging in a new console, searching for an open space to set the console, configuring the wires, and finding the right controllers, all for one game that’s approximately 20 hours to complete. It’s just a simple matter of turning on my phone, clicking the right game, and playing.
Delta Emulator soon came into the picture with DS support, and I picked up a Backbone One for a simple controller set-up, and suddenly, I was truly living my gamer dreams.
But, with just a simple taste of emulation, I couldn’t be stopped. I needed to see this picture to the end. I wanted to experience more emulation, more convenient means of gaming, and soon, jumping headfirst into the modding community.
There was still a part of me that didn’t like emulation, that still struggled with my backlog. I had a lot more games easily accessible, but all it really did was add more games to my backlog. I still wasn’t picking up games on my shelf, and now, I was more inclined to emulate because it was easier.
GB Operator and Transferring Save States
I picked up an Epilogue GB Operator around Christmas in 2024, enthralled by the idea of downloading save states on my laptop. Not only did it allow me to play official cartridges on my laptop, but I could also save my save files for finicky cartridges with dying batteries, allowing me to replace my own batteries without risking loss of data.
This seemed like the rational progression from being a game collector. If you’re gonna take the effort to collect a bunch of retro game consoles and cartridges especially, you should be ready to troubleshoot any issues you may have, learn how to clean them, and familiarize yourself with the internals. While I did use the GB Operator to save my save files to my computer, what I ended up learning is that the GB Operator is a great way to transfer save states between devices.
Now, not only could a play my cartridges on my laptop, but I could take a save file from a ROM on my phone and download it back onto the cartridge itself, and vice versa. Gone are the days of playing a game exclusively through a ROM or exclusively on cartridge, I could play one and send it to the other in a matter of seconds. Of course, this was limited to the Gameboy family of games, but imagine what this could do for all cartridge based games and the future of emulation as we know it.
This, in tandem with having Gameboy Player and Delta Emulator, I could buy the official cart for a game and play it virtually anywhere, depending on how I felt. If I wanted to play it on a TV, or my laptop, or my phone, I could transfer the saves between devices and play however I wanted.
PSP Modding and PS1 Emulation
In May 2025, I bit the bullet and finally purchased a PSP. This was incredibly exciting for me, despite watching the PS Vita I got the year prior collect dust, because I watched my dad and brother play their PSPs growing up, and always thought it was fascinating. I picked up a Japanese PSP since it was a bit cheaper, and happily went on my way playing the PSP games in my dad and brother’s collection.
Well, I say this, but the first thing I did with my PSP was hack it. Which, I don’t know if anyone has ever said this before, but a PSP is very easy to hack. Sometimes, I genuinely forget that I hacked it to begin with.
Now, the main reason I did this was to region-unlock the UMD movies. I think it’s incredibly funny that the PSP is region-locked, but only for the movies not the games despite both being disc-based. Though, of course, I also dabbled in downloading (legally acquired) ROMs for it. The PSP can really only handle PSP games, though people have figured out how to get other ROMs to work on it, I had Delta Emulator for the ROMs outside of the PSP realm. Plus, I really just wanted to download games I wanted to demo to see if it was worth purchasing later on down the road.
Then, I learned about PS1 ROMs working on PSP. I had to genuinely limit myself on what I downloaded in this regard, mostly because a lot of PS1 games have multiple discs, and finagling the ROMs for each individual disc was nightmarish, to say the least. So, instead, I only chose games I legally own copies of, such as Final Fantasy IX and Chrono Cross, giving myself yet another convenient way to play PS1 games without having to get out a PS1/PS2, plugging it in, configuring space, the whole shebang. For JRPGs like that, that’s an incredible discovery.
But, despite this, I still felt like something was off. My backlog was only growing, now exponentially because the means of getting ROMs was far too easy. I kept feeling pressured by my list, created by my own hands, and the convenience of it all felt more like a burden than anything else. For months, time slipped through my fingers and I couldn’t bring myself to play anything.
Returning to Form
After taking around seven months off of gaming, on mostly a whim, I picked up Metroid Prime 2: Echoes again. I had bought the Prime Trilogy about a year and a half before then, and it was one of my biggest regrets because it wasn’t a cheap game to sit and collect dust for so long. And with Prime 4 on the horizon, I had a time limit to catch up.
Metroid Prime 2 is by no means a perfect game, but it was the right one to get me back into gaming. I mean, Metroid started my fascination with emulation, so it’s only natural that Metroid is what gets me back into physical gaming. And it’s safe to say I was enthralled once more.
Of course, I wasn’t gaming alone this time. I garnered new friendships where I could excitedly shout to them about how annoying the boss fights of Prime 2 can be, while also discussing the lore of the game in full and theorizing what could happen next. I wanted to play more games just to tell them about the silly happenings of the game, and to stream it to them via Discord so they can laugh about how stupid the game design can be. Hell, I bought a capture card for this sole purpose.
And perhaps it’s a little cliché, but having friends to talk to about my silly interests and my silly games, something I never had growing up, completely reshaped my relationship with gaming. Sure, I’ve always had family to talk to about it with, but they never were interested in the games I liked, and conversations were short and rare. Having friends who were interested in what I was interested in, and were excited to talk about it with me, is something that teenage me would never believe about her future.
I wouldn’t catch up on the Prime Trilogy in time for Prime 4’s release. Prime 3’s a hell of a game to get through, and I’ve been quite busy lately with this blog. But, that doesn’t mean my new relationship with gaming had to end. No, in fact, it only kept evolving from that point on.
My Evolved Relationship With Emulating and Game Collecting
Finally, I figured a way to tackle my game collection in a way that didn’t cause immense dread. Finally, I remembered why I liked video games to begin with, revitalized with the excitement of spending time with my friends. But, I still had to figure a means to advance my fascination with emulation in a meaningful way, one that didn’t just toss new logs to my backlog meaninglessly.
Is emulation incredibly convenient? Yes. Is it incredibly helpful for people who can’t afford games? Yes, especially in this economy. But, for my purposes, I think emulation may just continue to be a tool to demo games to see if I want to buy it in full, rather than it be the only means of completing games on my backlog.
I’ll forever continue to collect games, regardless of how stressful my backlog makes me feel. But, knowing that there’s a means to tackle it from a different angle than the one I’ve familiarized myself with is astronomically helpful.
And now, I have the tools to be able to evolve my relationship with gaming as a whole. Games I’ve come to cherish through emulation like Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance and Metroid Fusion can be played on a wider scale with friends in an Archipelago server, where all of the items are randomized within my game and my friends’ games. Through Archipelago, I’ve finally found the means to create a community in gaming, something that’s been lost on me for most of my life. Gaming doesn’t have to be solo activity that stresses me out to think about, it can be fun!
Ultimately, that’s what emulation brought into my life: Games are fun again! It’s no longer a box to check off, because now, I’m running Archipelago servers, spending evenings playing Ace Attorney with my friends in call, and checking out games that might be fun to run in a randomizer, all in between backlog gaming.
I don’t know what the future of gaming will have in store for me. I don’t know what the future of my backlog will look like. But, it’s safe to say, I won’t have the backlog rule my life from now on. I’ll play the games I want to play in the order in which I want to play them. However long it takes is how long it takes. You can’t fail a backlog, but you can fail at spending time with the people you cherish, and ultimately, that’s the spirit I want to bring into the future.
And that’s about it! A bit more of a personal essay, I suppose, but a muscle I gotta flex every once in a while, especially as it’s not a genre I write in often. Of course, like most posts when it comes to gaming in general, it always comes back to the backlog and my estranged relationship with it as a perfectionist.
Lemme know your thoughts about your backlog! How do you tackle your backlog? Do you let it be or have you found the perfect way to balance it? Leave a comment below!
Apparently, 2026 is the year of the backlog. If you haven’t checked it out yet, consider giving my previous post “How to Not Get Burnt Out of Your Backlog” post a read! There’s more detail in that post on how to craft a backlog and/or fix a previously made backlog so you don’t stress out over it.
Next week, I’m gonna be delving into a bit of a newer territory for this blog with a new writing format. It’s a list of Wii games that I found that are fascinatingly official, and I share a couple of thoughts on each one, so a much lighter read than the last few essays I’ve been posting. Stay tuned for that!
And as always, see you next week!
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