I have never used an emulator in my life. I almost did about a year ago but couldn't get it working on that laptop (don't own that one anymore) so I just stopped trying. I wasn't really interested, just wanted to be 'cool' at the time. Which looking bad sounds as stupid as it was.
I imagine that they are awesome to use though. They most likely make it extremely easy to play the games on the computer, phone, or tablet.
Lol, that's one funny reason to use emulators
People usually use them to play a specific game they want to play but without owning the console (or owning it but it's dead (or owning it but the cables are not compatible with modern TVs (etc))) (which doesn't prevent anyone from owning the game though).
They're not necessarily "awesome to use", it depends. Most "old game console" emulators are great yeah, because these consoles only had 8 buttons, every keyboard has more buttons than that, the emulator can emulate that quite nicely.
Now, if you try to emulate a GBA for example, well your keyboard still has enough keys. But you can't really play it with a keyboard actually, you probably want a controller to have the triggers at the right place. And that was not the most annoying example, just think about the N64 and its controller
Also, they don't always feel too much like what they're trying to emulate. For example, the GBC didn't have a lit screen. Well, playing GBC games on a modern LED screen feels weird, you see everything too much. Just look at this...
The colors seem to attack you or something, there's too much of them. That's because you weren't supposed to see them as well as that...
