Sonic Mega Collection, emulation or ports of the games?

[the.importer]

Sonic Mega Collection, emulation or ports of the games?

[Da_Shocker]

I'm sure it's emulation.

[Devil N]

Generally, emulation is cheaper and easier to implement than a fully fledged port. So if a platform is powerful enough to smoothly emulate a classic game, you can safely bet that it is emulated. When it comes to 16-bit classics compilations, in the 32/64-bit era they were mostly ports, while from the 128-bit era onward they were mostly emulations.

[17daysolderthannes]

IMO emulation is generally better as well since ports can cause physics and other things to be off. For instance, the iPhone version of Mega Man 2 is very different in terms of jumping, you sort of "float" compared to the NES version, but it was an intentional modification to account for the less precise controls of simulated buttons and d-pads on a touch screen.

[kool kitty89]

I think almost all in these compilations are emulated, in some cases the system isn't powerful enough for full emulation so they drop the sound and write a sound engine to run on native hardware. (I think this was done for several mid-90s Sega PC releases)

Sonic CD was not one of these though (granted it's not in Mega Collection) and I beleive all conversions of that are ports, not emulation. (the one in Gems was converted from the old PC port as well)