On the less than gamey side of Sony, purveyors of the planet’s preeminent plaything, the PlayStation (and soon the planet wide PlayStation 2), there is this convoluted conundrum of contraband code, a campaign, nay, a crusade of virtual pastime proportions: Emulators.

An emulator, in this context, is a software program which allows one thing to act like another, or kinda the same (sing the Sesame Street song). In the case of the Sony PlayStation, the emulators of the day allow PSX games to be played on both higher-end PCs and Mac G3+s (including iBook and iMacs). These emulators, bleem! (a product) from Bleem (the company) and Virtual Game Station from Connectix, now completely legal and above board, offer game lovers an alternative to the console format while playing console format games. Naturally, Sony is none too pleased and has taken gianormous steps, including muscle and intimidation tactics, to stop these emulators both at their source and at the retail level.

And who can blame them? While it is obvious that Sony correctly perceives a threat to their intellectual property, their console and the games they license and produce for said console, what kind of door is being opened when emulators are allowed to do as they may without accountability to anyone save, perhaps, dissatisfied customers who didn’t read the dissatisfied-customer disclaimer?

That said, it’s difficult to muster empathy for the game giant. After all, in this day and age piracy is the sincerest form of flattery, especially when it has that bring-it-to-the-masses flavor. Neither Bleem nor Connectix are doing anything revolutionary or ground breaking, video game emulators have been around since, well, video games.

In fact, Bleem waxed astonished when Sony first launched a suite against them, running with the pretense that playing PSX games on the PC would expand Sony’s market as it is their games that generate the revenue, the console the lost leader. This is so.

Bleem is operating from a liberal position. It is their intention “to extend the life of the HUGE library of PSX games as the PlayStation neared the end of its life,” states David Herpolsheimer, CEO of Bleem. Sony’s new console, the PlayStation 2, would seem to be a better match for sustaining a retro library, but the fact that PSX2 is able to do so stems directly from the emulator issue in the first place. “Sony didn't announce their ‘100% backwards-compatibility’ until March 3rd, 1999, well AFTER bleem! and CVGS were announced” notes Herpolsheimer, succinctly marking Sony’s apparent fan base benevolence with the tint of “damage control.”

Regardless, Sony went ogre all over bleem by claiming not only various accounts of copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets, not only by slapping down restraining orders and an injunction on the sale of bleem!, but by demanding Bleem’s proprietary data on sales figures, retail outlets, even the names of consumers who had purchased bleem!

With brass balls the size of melons, the little upstart company took Sony’s game of serious hardball in stride, brought it to the beer leagues and counter-claimed that Sony had “unlawfully acquired, maintained and extended its monopoly in the video game market through a combination of anti-competitive practices (Sony tried to force last year’s E3 organizers to eject Bleem from the show- the thugs!), including misuse of copyright, patents and intellectual property.” A US District court agreed. Bleem never stopped and continues pitching to this day.

Swing batter! Crack a cold one and cheer.

Yet this was not a precedent. Atari, once upon a time the only console maker in the home video game game, tried and failed to sue Activision, once upon a time an upstart company and the first to independently develop and publish games for Atari’s console without any licensing agreement nor profit share pact in place.

And, since then, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (M.A.M.E.), a coin-op game emulator surrounded by its own gaggle of foes and fans and kegger caliber contests, has become an established and highly praised virtual impressionist.

Likewise, there’s at least one viable emulator for the Nintendo 64 known as UltraHLE (Ultra High Level Emulation) and there’s Nightmare, a Dreamcast emulator that has struggled to win any praise due to the difficultly associated with the scarcity of Sega’s clever “GD ROM” drive.

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