Emulation is a good thing, granted. I use emulators for certain games. Unfortunately, it isn't perfect 100% of the time. I would love to see improvements in speed of emulation. Don't think of me as a opponent of emulation. Really, I do support it for one thing: preservation of older machines. Machines can wear out, but emulators take that threat away because you can use just about any computer that has an emulator on it to play games. However, real hardware is faster. There should be more study of the older hardware to see if it can be reproduced as exactly as possible with current technology. This is so it can be reverse-engineered and people will know how to manufacture this stuff with better technology.
I like emulation, don't get me wrong. I think it's really cool. But, sometimes it gets used too often. So, we have to be careful we don't forget the real technology in behind the creation of the emulators, and in many ways we already might have. So, emulation is something I am all for. But, engineers need to study the real hardware, too. I think that both real and emulated hardware could go hand-in-hand. Then, we would know more.