Hi folks! I’m new to the Playdate community and I was wondering if testing my game in the Simulator instead of on a real Playdate leads to major differences, especially in terms of performance.
Thanks in advance!
No, the simulator is not accurate to the hardware and the first time you launch it gives you a big warning telling you that and that you need to be testing on actual hardware. 
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I see, thank you!
Just asking, are there any legal limitations for community members to create their own accurate emulators?
There's nothing illegal about emulators (at least in the US, where Panic is located), and there have been previous attempts before: GitHub - TheLogicMaster/Cranked: A WIP Playdate console emulator (there are others, but this one got the farthest along).
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Note that the “Throttle Lua Performance” option in Simulator helps a little, stopping a fast computer from completely running away! Still not accurate of course.
(Truly emulating performance of a processor with precise accuracy, on a variety of different processors, sounds impossible though.)