Software that imitates other hardware, letting old computers and game consoles run on new machines. They are important for preserving digital art.
The advantage of emulation, as the third strategy, is that once you emulate a platform at the chip level, you can basically run anything that ran on that chip. So that's why emulators are popular with preservationists now.
Jon Ippolito, Preserving Digital Art: Regina Harsanyi, Jon Ippolito
You have to get an emulator to run most of these pieces. And even when you get an emulator, sometimes these emulators can have floating numbers that completely change how the pieces look.
Conrad House, One Year of Le Random