"Let's take the case of Speedy Gonzales. This is an SNES platformer with no save functionality, and it's roughly 2-3 hours long. At first glance, it appears to run fine in any emulator. Yet once you reach stage 6-1, you can quickly spot the difference between an accurate emulator and a fast one: there is a switch, required to complete the level, where the game will deadlock if a rare hardware edge case is not emulated. One can imagine the frustration of instantly losing three hours of progress and being met with an unbeatable game. Unless the software does everything in the exact same way the hardware used to, the game remains broken."
Yes, I have read it. I agree about this point, this is where good emulation is very relevant.
However the BSNES creator also makes the point about the importance of having accurate speed, and this is where I fail to see the critical issue of having +/- 10-1% in speed in a game. Most of the time it does not break the game itself.
"Let's take the case of Speedy Gonzales. This is an SNES platformer with no save functionality, and it's roughly 2-3 hours long. At first glance, it appears to run fine in any emulator. Yet once you reach stage 6-1, you can quickly spot the difference between an accurate emulator and a fast one: there is a switch, required to complete the level, where the game will deadlock if a rare hardware edge case is not emulated. One can imagine the frustration of instantly losing three hours of progress and being met with an unbeatable game. Unless the software does everything in the exact same way the hardware used to, the game remains broken."