[Hard core Rikki]

Definitely emulator is the hardest.

- When you code a game, you know what you WANT. Not any difficult getting there. Hell, there even are middleware softs that simplify it greatly!! 1 creative person with spare time would be enough.

- When you code an emu, you dont even know what you need, and have to keep trying in the dark till something shows. If it works for one game, it has to work for all others, or else it's nothing more of a "port".
There are too many aspects that need to be studied/tested/checked for an emu to be singlehandled. A team literally is a must, unless some emu aspects have been covered before (the GBA saves/battery readwriting procedures being useful examples).

Nobody should need to reinvent the wheel after all.

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Just for the record, you seem particularly interested in this whole emu cooperation/creation and all. Did you or any of your techy friends ever considered contributing any useful knowledge or talents. Certain emus certainly could use any enhancements if available.

 

[Hard core Rikki]

Refrac specifically pointed to how there was no convenient SDK kits to simplify game creation.

So yes, it was not easy to make games once upon a time, and even now, because there still arent any (any good ones anyway).

Right now this is different, because games have become so big nowadays, no company could hope to afford not using friendly SDK's, at east because of the time constraints. We dont need no Duke Nukem Forevers.

This was a major factor in the previous 128-bits console race. If you coded for GameCube/XboX but didnt keep PS2's max capabilities in mind when creating, any PS2 port you would make would either be highly unoptimized or worse, stuterry. This added with its lower graphic capabilities of course.

 

[Hard core Rikki]

In emulation, those "SDK's" would usually be an emulator as a basis. Take VisualBoyAdvance. Anyone
can build on top of it, but any GBA hardware specific issues/advances couldnt be used for a console with different hardware.

No universal emu possible here, though luck. MAME is close enough to one though, but required colossal amounts of dedication and knowledge.