In the second part of the history of NES emulators, we will talk about the primary Famicom Emulator, the prototype LandyNes, the renowned iNes, the beginner NESA and the classic Famicom.exe.
Famicom Emulator (1996)
In 1996, another Famicom emulator was released in Japan, the Famicom Emulator, also known as DirectX Famicom Emulator, created by M. Kami. Its first known version was released in May 1996, version 2.4 for Windows 3.1 and 95. The emulator included some demos and only ran ROMs in PRG/CHR formats, extensions used in Pasofami, but it had low compatibility. There was a 50% English translation patch for this version made by Acey. A version 3.0 was released, but it required version 2.4a to work. We do not know if DirectX support began at the beginning or the following year.
There is almost no information about this emulator. In May 1996, M. Kami also released an emulator for Super Famicom called Super Famicom Emulator for MS-DOS, with only version 1.01 being known.
LandyNes (1996)
was created by Alex Krasivsky, who released a beta version (a prototype in fact) on September 8, 1996 for MS-DOS, which ran only simple, slow games with no sound, and was also known as DC NES. An official version of LandyNes was never actually released. The project was left aside, and ended up helping the creation of Marat Fayzullin's iNes emulator. Alex actually gave up on the project in 1997, with the release of NESticle.
iNes (1996) (InterNes)
The project actually started in 1996, with Russian Alex Krasivsky, who found some Famicom programming information on the internet and wrote the original code (it remains to be seen whether this leak was from the original Famicom hardware programming, or from the hacking that Pasofami suffered. Who knows?). As the project progressed, Alex lost interest in it, and Marat rewrote the code for him. Meanwhile, Marat encouraged Alex to copy features of the original Famicom hardware to transform into support for various cartridges, and add-ons for the emulator.
Its first version was released on September 9, 1996 for Windows, titled 0.5. Marat also brought versions for FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and other UNIX systems. John Stiles and Marcel de Kogel made ports respectively for Macintosh and Linux. All these versions in the year of release. Initially the emulator already supported 85% of the console's games, which in fact makes it the first playable NES emulator. But this came at a price, US$ 35 dollars. Only the Windows version was paid. The MS-DOS version is reported to be under development between 1996 and 1997. It is not known when it was released, but from 2005 it was reported on Marat's website that it came with the Windows version. Around June 1997, it gained an online version on the Kagi website, also shareware.
The emulator also had its own game format, .NES, which became the standard format used to this day. Due to piracy, Marat decided not to release the source code or freeware versions for MS-DOS and Windows, releasing only versions for the UNIX system. The Macintosh version was also freeware. Marat did not like Windows programs, as his origins were always with Macintosh. In addition, he had become frustrated with the piracy that had occurred just a few hours after the emulator was first released.
Over time, the price of the DOS and Windows versions dropped, reaching $25 in 2006, $19.99 in 2008, and finally becoming free in 2015. The last MS-DOS version came out in 2014. From 2015 onwards, it simultaneously released versions for Windows and Linux. Its latest emulator version was released in March 2021.
In 2011, he launched iNes-Android for smartphones. In 2019, he integrated iNes-Android into his multi-system emulator also for Android, called VGBAnext, which ran all three Gameboys. Marat already had classic emulators for these systems, and the well-known VGBA from which the multi-emulator originated.
NESA (1996)
Also in 1996, NESA (Nintendo Entertainment System In Assembler) was developed by Paul Robson, the same creator of the A26 for Atari 2600, using the same base to develop NESA. The project was launched in September 1996 for MS-DOS, and its beta version was released in the same month. The difference with iNES was that, in addition to being free, it released the source code to help other developers in the field. NESA had no sound, joypad support and little game compatibility, but promised all of this in future versions. The emulator also ran slowly. It was a very early project, even though it was already in beta. It ran on very simple PCs, such as 386 with 640kbs of RAM. In 1997, the project was discontinued and migrated to TNES, which was an emulator with more robust tools and resources than the old emulator. The sources of its programming survived and provided the basis for several subsequent emulators. The project was officially closed on January 1, 1998.
An interesting fact. Paul said in an interview that CPU power was so limited that the first emulators reduced games from 60 to 10 frames per second. Imagine how difficult it would be to play something like that? Another interesting fact that Paul mentioned is that some Gameboy emulators hacked the PC's VGA card, that is, the video card of the time, to achieve a resolution similar to the portable one, without a drop in quality or frames like in the first NES emulation projects, such was the scarcity of virtual resources.
Famicom (Fami/Famicom.exe) (1997)
The Famicom emulator, known simply as Fami or Famicom.exe, was released in February 1997 by Japanese developers Taka2 and Nori for Windows. Its first version required the execution of ROMs in its own format, FAM, which required a converter from the NES format. This converter (called NEStoFAM) was developed by Matt Conte. In version 2 of the emulator, the FAM format was modified, becoming the emulator's default from then on. Only a few FAM format games from the first version were executed.
The emulator came with real NES sound and competed with NESA in the freeware category. It had two advantages: speed and sound quality. Its first version was in Japanese, but from the second version onwards SoM2Freak, Zofo and VmprHntrD created EFamicom, which replaced the executable with an English version, which was used in subsequent versions. These modified versions were known as FamiE. In version 3, it began to support the joypad, as well as changes to the color palettes. In version 4, Famicom Disk System games began to work. From version 4.01e in October 1998, the authors began to include the English version in the original emulator, and to develop one in parallel with the help of MEGABYTE. After a few more versions in English and Japanese, they released their own version, 100% in English and the last of the emulator, 4.04, in November 1998.
Fami ran smoothly on a Pentium 1 100MhZ with 32 MB of memory. Despite the emulator's advantages, one of its main problems was the impossibility of 85% of ROMs with sizes above 64Kb being executed.
An erratum. Initially this emulator erroneously credited Seil as its creator, something that was denied in the emulator's own readme in later releases by the project's creators.
In today's Evolution of Games, we're going to talk about the games released from the Inuyasha anime. We have everything from RPGs to fighting games, mainly for the WonderSwan Color handheld and the PSX and PS2 consoles.
The first part about the history of NES emulators, starting with the prototypes Family Computer Emulator and Famicom For Mega Drive, and the pioneer Pasofami.
Family Computer Emulator (1990)
The first NES and console emulator was the Family Computer Emulator, developed in 1990 by Haruhisa Udagawa. Udagawa was a developer who worked for Namco, Sonic Team and KAZe. For Sonic Team, for example, he helped program Sonic Jam in 1997. Released on December 12, 1990, the Family Computer Emulator only ran a few games, such as Donkey Kong, Xevious, Famicom Tennis, Mario Bros and Space Invaders (these were games that Udagawa tested). Despite this feat, the emulator ran slowly, without sound and required specific ROM size, pixel and graphic quality to run. Something very primitive. It also only ran ROMs in .bin format. The version released in December 1990 would have been 0.35, which leads us to believe that there were many other versions of the emulator before this stable version. The system only ran on the Sharp 68k computer. Other sources say that it ran only on a Japanese computer called FM Towns. The author said that it ran on FM Towns and MS-DOS. The project was not taken forward.
Famicom For Mega Drive (1991)
The following year, a NES emulator for the Mega Drive began to be developed. It was one of the first video game emulators in the world and the first to run on another console. The person responsible for the emulator was Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog. Yuji's intention was simply to show his peers what he could do. The project never went ahead. Yuji has a long resume. He programmed the four Sonic games for the Mega Drive, as well as the two Nights for the Sega Saturn, and the two Phantasy Star games for the Master System. Space Harrier, OutRun and Black Belt for the Master System were also programmed by him.
Pasofami (1993)
The third NES emulation project, and what is officially considered the first, was developed in 1992 by a Japanese man, Nobuaki Andou, and released in April 1993 for the FM Towns computer and MS-DOS system. It required 2MB of RAM to run. Despite its history, it was also a very deficient emulator, with MIDI sound and limited instrumentation on each channel, which resulted in low sound quality, and only sprite emulation that limited the quality of the games. Over time, the emulator was improved, but very slowly. In addition to being a paid program, with a free game time limit of 5 minutes and all in Japanese, it also required technical knowledge to run the games. In conclusion, his system was pirated and distributed worldwide. In return, Nobuaki allowed sales only to Japanese people, and installed malware in the program to format the hard drive of anyone who obtained the program illegally.
Around 1996, it began to support Windows 3.1 and 95. One of the first versions of this phase was 2.6b from July 1996. This version included the ability to record images in BMP and sound in MIDI. Around 1997, it began to support DirectX. One of the first versions was released in February 1997 as 1.1a. From the DirectX versions onwards, thanks to the support of DirectSound, it began to make sound channels available in PCM as well. The releases continued until version 2.8e in October 1998.
In December 1998, Pasofami '99 was released. This version became 32-bit, unlike the previous one, which was improved to 32-bit thanks to DirectX. It runs on both Windows and FM-TOWNS. Also in 1998, version 0.0j was released, which accepts ROMs compressed in ZIP and LZH with extensions .NES, .NEZ (with Z) and .PSO. In January 1999, version 1.0a was released with support for Windows NT and the English language, although the documentation and part of the menus were still in Japanese.
The following versions released throughout 1999 and early 2000 also added several improvements, such as improvements in sound, execution speed, improvements in MIDI sound, with the possibility of saving sound files in .MID, improved save state and expanded to 10 recording slots, player for playing NSF files, which are sound files from NES games, support for Famicom Disk System, improvements in the front-end, display of 16 sound channels, support for netplay, as well as several improvements in menus and ROM folders.
One of the emulator's distinguishing features was that it had ROMs in its own formats created by Nobuaki. They were divided into two files, usually .PRG and .CHR, but there were also .PRM and .700 formats. These were the first NES ROM extensions created.
In March 2000, it began to support loading save states from the famous NESticle emulator, in addition to the possibility of saving sprites in BMP format. In June 2000, it introduced the possibility of setting the volume of each sound output channel in real time, as well as mixing the outputs of MIDI and PCM sound channels. In July 2000, it began to support recording video in AVI and support for the function of extracting/sucking NES cartridges and saving them in .NES format to be played in the emulator. All the user needed was a converter for this. This support for extracting ROMs, the famous ripping or dumping, became one of the main tasks of the emulator over the years.
In September 2000, it released its latest version as Pasofami 99 and in December 2000 it went back to being called just Pasofami, and began to preliminarily add Gameboy emulation. Around September 2001, it began supporting the Super Nintendo, four years after discontinuing its Super Pasofami emulator. In February 2002, it stopped supporting the English version. In June 2002, it created another player, now with the ability to play sound files (non-NSF) in WAV, MP3 and MID formats.
In December 2002, he developed Pasodisk, a floppy disk for the Famicom Disk System to rip games from the Famicom add-on, costing 2,900 yen including shipping. This service was limited to users with a Pasodisk registration. In February 2003, he added support for Chameleon USB, a device created in January 2002 by the company Optimize that allowed games to be extracted from cartridges. Over time, Nobuaki was able to detect cartridges from different consoles and rip them via Pasofami. By 2003, the emulator was able to extract (the famous rip) cartridges from SFC, GG and MD in March, SMS in April, PCE, GB, GBC, GBA and MSX in May, 32X, Sega Mark III, SC-3000, SG-1000, MSX2 and Neo Geo Pocket in August and Nintendo 64 in September. Over time, the ability to rip cartridges with larger ROM memory, as well as special Super Nintendo cartridges and others, has also increased. In March 2005, the NSF player recording output was saved in MIDI, MP3 and WAV formats. In April 2005, cheat codes were added. The emulator has its own extension, .XTM. In February 2007, it began supporting ripping games from the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color handhelds. In September 2010, the Chameleon USB drive was updated for 64-bit systems.
From 2010 onwards, updates were basically about the function of extracting NSF sound from ROMs and the cartridge ripping process and fixing bugs related to this. At a certain point, the emulator had compatibility with more than 2,000 NES titles.
The emulator was continuously developed until 2018, with the last version released on March 25, 2018. Nobuaki Andou passed away on May 5, 2018, from stomach cancer, a disease he had been battling since August 2017. After his death, his son Kouji Andou ended the emulator's services and left the website active in honor of Nobuaki's work.
Today's Evolution of Games will talk about Dragon Ball Z fighting games, from the classics released for Super Nintendo and Playstation, through those for Playstation 2, to the most recent ones for XBox 360 and Playstation 4.
Second video about the history of emulators, we will talk about the history of the Nintendinho, to warm you up for the videos that will come next about NES emulation.
NES
The Nintendo Family Computer, the Famicom or Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES in the US, was released in Japan in 1983. Having been successful in arcades since 1978, with games such as Space Fever, Donkey Kong, Popeye and Mario Bros, the company decided to release a home console. The console was re-released in 1985, correcting several hardware errors and also being released in North America. The Famicom is considered the savior of the console industry, which had been in decline in the US since 1983.
The console's hardware consisted of a 1.79 MHz Ricoh central processor, based on the MOS 6502 that was present in computers and consoles of the time, such as Atari, for example. It had five PSG sound channels and a PPU (image processing unit) also from Ricoh and support for 48 colors, reaching up to 25 simultaneously. It also had 2kb of RAM and 2 more of video memory.
In 1986, the Master System was released, and given Nintendo's advantage in exclusive contracts with game companies, Sega's console was isolated, unable to compete with the Famicom. Despite this, SMS had its advantages over its rival, such as having a VDP video chip (which is superior to a PPU), support for 64 colors, 32 simultaneously versus 48 and 25 of Nintendo's competitor, and its 16kB of RAM and 8kB of video RAM, versus 2 of RAM and 2 of video of the NES. Despite this, the Famicom came out on top with its 5 sound channels versus 4 of the Sega console and had a central processor that was equally powerful to that of the SMS.
Also in 1986, the Nintendo Disk System add-on was released, which was fitted below the console and allowed games to be played on 112kb floppy disks (a popular recording card in home computers at the time). The accessory came with 32kb of memory to store the disk cache, 8kb of RAM for games and an FM audio channel, greatly improving games on the console. Despite this, it had its disadvantages, such as being easily damaged, inconvenient to remove the disk from the drive and invert it in the middle of the game and easy to pirate. These difficulties were probably what prevented the support from being released in the US, which already had a slot for a possible version of the American NDS on its console (the NES). More than 200 games were released for the Disk System, most of which were ports or alternative versions of NES games and arcade ports. Only 17 games were released exclusively for the add-on, and they are from a wide range of genres, such as puzzles, platforms, educational, shmups, RPGs, musicals and even anime.
Returning to the Famicom and its cartridge games, the console was the first in history to start region locking, meaning that American games would not work on Japanese consoles and vice versa. In this case, the American cartridges, with 72 pins, were larger than the Famicom's input. The Japanese ones, on the other hand, were smaller than the American console's input, with its 60 pins. However, what prevented a Japanese cartridge from fitting into the NES was its short length, which did not allow it to reach the console's slot.
Regarding its releases, several franchises had sequels on the console, such as Bomberman, Mario Bros and Donkey Kong, and many others were born on it, such as Metroid, Zelda, Contra, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Megaman, Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dragon Quest and many others. Regarding its games, we separated them by style. Starting with the shmup ones, such as Gradius, Twin Cobra and 1942. Run And Gun ones, such as Gunsmoke, Smash TV and Contra. Puzzle ones, such as Solomon's Key, Dr. Mario and Wrecking Crew (u-requen cruu). Sports ones, such as Tennis, Soccer and Volleyball. Platform ones, such as Kid Icarus, Ghosts 'N Goblins and Shinobi. Racing ones, such as Super Off Road, Spyhunter and Chase HQ. RPG ones, such as Dragon Ball Z, Crystalis and Dragon Warrior. Anime ones, such as Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa and Yu Yu Hakusho. From beat'em ups, like Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon and Phantom Fighter. From Disney, like Aladdin, Mickey (like Mickey III and Mickey Adventures) and Darkwing Duck. From Warner, like Bugs Bunny, Road Runner and Tiny Toons. From DC, like Superman and Batman (like Return and Return of The Joker). From Marvel, like Wolverine, Spider-Man and Captain America and The Avengers. As well as arcade classics, like Dig Dug, BurgerTime, Bubble Bobble, Galaga, Galaxian, Gyruss, Ice Climber, Karate Champ, Pac-Man, Volleyball, Xevious, Rygar, Popeye, Arkanoid, Karateka, Duck Hunt and many others.
The console ended its activities in 1995, and until that moment, even with the competition from 16-bits, it was considered the first in sales in history, being later surpassed by the PSX. The NES has sold 60 million units throughout history, and in 2022, it was the 8th best-selling console in history and the 13th best-selling among consoles and portables.
Shmup: Gradius, Fantasy Zone, Twin Bee, Defender, Twin Cobra, 1942, Blade Buster and Life Force Puzzle: Yoshi, Solomon's Key, Tetris, Adventures of Lolo, Dr. Mario, Wario's Woods, Castlequest, Wrecking Crew and Pipe Dream. Sports: Mike Tyson, Tennis, Ice Hockey, Soccer, Tecmo Soccer Bwol, Pro Wrestling, Baseball, Volley, Punch-Out!!, Baseball Stars, Excitebike and Double Dribble. Platform: Ghosts 'N Goblins, Duck Tales, Megaman, Mario Bros, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, Kirby's Adventure, Shatterhand, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Rush'n Attack and Shinobi. Run And Gun: Gunsmoke, Smash TV and Contra. Racing: Road Fighter, Turbo Racing, Excitebike, Cobra Triangle, Rad Racer, Super Off Road, RC Pro-AM, Spyhunter and Chase HQ RPG: Final Fantasy, Zelda, Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball Z, Crystalis, Dragon Warrior, Faxanadu and Destiny of an Emperor. Anime: Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa, Transformers, Patlabor, Shin-Chan, Yu Yu Hakusho, Akira, Maruko-Chan, Doraemon and Hello Kitty. Beat'em Up: Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Phantom Fighter. Disney: Aladdin, DuckTales, Mickey (Mickey III and Adventures), Chip and Dale, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Darkwing Duck, Mowgli, Screw Squadron, Donald Duck and Roger Rabbit. Warner: Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Tiny Toons. DC: Superman, Batman (Return and Return of the Joker) and Swamp Thing. Marvel: X-Men, Daredevil, Silver Surfer, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Captain America and The Avengers. Arcade: Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, BurgerTime, Bubble Bobble, Galaga, Galaxian, Gyruss, Ice Climber, Karate Champ, Pac-Man, Mario Bros, Volleyball, Xevious, Rygar, Popeye, Qix, Arkanoid, Commando, Gauntlet, Karateka and Duck Hunt.
Today's Evolution of Games will talk about all the games released from the puzzle game, Magical Drop, famous in the 1990s in NeoGeo arcades and on the Super Nintendo console.
My first video about the History of Video Game Emulators, from a series of videos that will be released on the channel. These videos were made through a material constructed during 1 year and 5 months of almost 300 pages, telling the history of the main emulators of the main consoles and arcades.
History of Video Game Emulators
What are emulators? They are faithful reproductions of hardware in a virtual environment, that is, a software/program that recreates each chip and processor of the emulated device through its original codes or documentation. There is also the emulation of software, which was originally designed to run on a specific machine or operating system and can be adapted to another. This was the case of the world's first emulation in 1964, created by Larry Moss who wanted IBM 7070 software to run on the IBM System/360. In the 1980s, especially, the emulation of PCs, such as the TRS-80, Amiga and other PCS from the 70s, became popular within more modern computers, especially from 1989 onwards, with the arrival of processors such as the 486 and sound cards such as the Sound Blaster. In addition to hardware emulation in software and software in software, there is also hardware emulation in hardware, which is the rarest and is the case, for example, with the ColecoVision adapter to accept Atari VCS cartridges. Regarding hardware emulation in software, it is important to say that it can only be achieved if the computer that emulates it is superior to it in terms of performance, hence the difficulty nowadays in emulating, for example, recently released consoles, since they have the same or better power than current computers. Emulation started to become viable mainly in the 1990s, when better computers started to appear.
Want to know a little more about this story? Then follow me in the video.
Sometimes emulators bring greater breadth to the emulated hardware. In the case of consoles, they can provide greater joypad compatibility, time scale control, color, image filters, better sharpness, widescreen support, more accurate sound, cheat codes, game speed, faster loading times, the possibility of accelerating scenes, compatibility with the game's region (for example, US, JP or EU), save state, and even the possibility of online play, among others. Emulators also help in the creation of home games and games created after the original hardware was created.
In order for games from these emulated consoles and arcades to run, there needs to be a ripping or dumping process, which is nothing more than transferring the data from these game cartridges to the computer, the famous ROMs. There were several game backup accessories that connected directly to the consoles, with outputs for floppy disk drives for recording them, as was the case with Super Magicom and Super Wild Card for SNES, Super Magic Drive for SMD, among many others. Some did these recordings directly onto CD-ROMs, as was the case with Doctor V64 for N64. These accessories brought the ROMs in various formats and sometimes as more than one file. Many were able to be read by emulators and others were converted to their own formats according to each emulator creator. Games that are not played through cartridges, but rather through CDs, are generally converted to ISO images. There are several image standards. ISO, IMG, CUE and BIN are the most commonly used formats. Some formats, such as MDF and MDS, are more commonly used with the Sega Saturn. The CCD format is more commonly used with the PCE.
Some people prefer to rip their own games to avoid piracy, as is the case with Chameleon USB, created in 2002 for several Sega, Nintendo and Neo Geo games on cartridges. There is also Retrode, created in 2009, which allows you to connect your cartridges to your PC and run them via an emulator without needing to rip them, although it also performs this function. Games on optical media can be run directly on many emulators, but ripping is recommended, as PC optical drives are not designed to spin in the same way as consoles, often causing crashes and malfunctions.
The main concept of the emulation process is to preserve old hardware or software (regardless of what you want to emulate) that are old and rare and that will one day disappear completely. This is the case with the emulation of game hardware and their physical media. In addition to preservation and better functioning (for optical media, in this case), ripping games also provides improvements to them, such as the possibility of applying patches to correct bugs, translations and other modifications.
The emulation of electronic game hardware, known as video games and arcades, began in the 1990s. The first emulator appeared in 1990 for the Nintendo Switch, called Family Computer Emulator, created by Japanese Haruhisa Udagawa, who worked for Namco and Sonic Team. The project ran few games and without sound. Famicom For Mega Drive appeared next in 1991, created by Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic, to run inside the Mega Drive. This was just a prototype that was not released. A third Nintendo emulator, Pasofami, appeared later. It could run commercial games with sound, but it was paid and its sound was synthesized instead of emulated. Because it was charged, it was hacked and released to the public, which led its creator, Nobuaki Andou, to place malware along with the executable to prevent piracy for those accessing it from the West. The first truly functional NES emulator was iNes, released in 1996 by Marat Fayzullin. It was also paid, but released free versions for other systems, and helped the NES emulation scene and the emulation scene in general. The most popular NES emulator was released in 1997 by Bloodlust Software, called NESticle, for MS-DOS. Other emulators became popular for NES, such as FCE Ultra in 1998, Nester in 2000 and Nestopia in 2003.
Although our article does not cover handheld emulation, one interesting fact about it should be mentioned. In 1992, a Gameboy emulation prototype for the Amiga called Gameboy 68000 was released to test the viability of the concept. It only ran a customized version of Tetris. The program was leaked, and its contents were leaked onto the internet. Years later, in 1995, Marat Fayzullin obtained this material from an Amiga hacker community, combined it with documentation about the handheld and created the first functional Gameboy emulator, the Virtual Gameboy, in July of that year. After that, Marat developed many other projects in the world of emulation, among others, the NES iNes and other pioneering emulators on the scene. Virtual Gameboy was the first functional emulator of a handheld, and one of the first functional emulators made individually/not by a company.
The second console to attempt emulation was the Mega Drive, with the Megadrive Emulator in 1994. It only ran Sonic, and still slowly and without sound. The second attempt, more successful, was GenEm in 1996. The project ran several games and with sound, but with several emulation problems and the sound was only emulated by those who had the Sound Blaster, an expensive and not very accessible sound card at the time. The first functional MD emulator was Genecyst, also created by Bloodlust Software, and ran in a DOS environment. It was the first popular MD emulator. It was only surpassed by Steve Palmer's KGen in 1998, which in turn was surpassed in 1999 by Stephane Dallongeville's Gens, which among other things brought Sega CD emulation to an MD emulator for the first time. Steve returned in 2004, creating the acclaimed Fusion emulator, which became the most acclaimed MD emulator, running not only MD, but also Sega CD, 32X, SMS and GG with perfection.
The third console to be emulated was the SNES in 1994. I'm talking about Virtual Super MagiCom for MS-DOS. At first, it only ran demos, and only started running commercial games in 1996. Despite its legacy, it never supported sound. In 1997, he began selling his emulator for $35, which left the emulation scene, the emuscene, unhappy. Three months after its release, the emulator was hacked and released for free by Ice Wizard. Its creator, Chris, left the emulation scene, accusing the community of hacking. In 1996, Nobuaki Andou's Super Pasofami for Windows also appeared, also paid and with synthesized sound. The first functional emulator appeared in 1996, Virtual Super Wild Card, by Ernesto Corvi, but only for Macintosh. The milestone in SNES emulation occurred, also in 1996, with Snes96 for Windows by the Dutchman Jerremy Koot. In 1997, he created Snes97, and finally at the end of the year, Snes9x together with Gary Henderson. Snes9x was the first emulator to functionally run the SNES, running sound, image and speed correctly. The month after the launch of Snes9x, ZSNES appeared, which also made its mark, being responsible for the emulation of most of the special SNES chips, for example. Despite the pioneering role of Snes9x, ZSNES became the most popular of the console's emulators because it ran in MS-DOS mode, still very popular at the time, for emulating software more quickly. And finally BSNES in 2004, which managed to have the greatest compatibility of all, in addition to creating the MSU-1, a virtual chip that makes it possible to transform SNES games into games with cut scenes and CD-quality sound.
Fourth on the list is the Atari 2600 emulation, brought by Activision in June 1995, in the Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack compilation for Windows. It is considered the first functional console emulator. The following year, several other projects brought Atari emulation. The first free project was Virtual 2600 for Linux in 1996, with a version for MS-DOS only in 1997. Then came Virtual VCS also in 1996, but the most popular and stable was Stella. Stella was supposedly the first functional free console emulator. PC Atari Emulator and A26 also came out in 1996, but they were short-lived. To this day, Stella is still the most remembered of all.
Next came the ColecoVision emulations in 1996 by Marat Fayzullin's ColEm and Atari 5200 in 1996, by Atari800.
Soon after, another milestone in emulation emerged: the Master System and Game Gear consoles brought to MS-DOS by the Massage emulator in 1996. Marat's MasterGear was also notable and evolved greatly. But the great Master System emulator of the time was called Meka, and was created in 1999, and was only surpassed by Steve Palmer's (or Steve Snake's) Kega Fusion in 2004. Other SMS emulators were also successful, such as SMS Plus in 1998, the Brazilian BRSMS in 1999 and Dega in 2001.
PC Engine was brought to MS-DOS in 1997 through the Virtual PC Engine. Other successful PC Engine emulators also emerged, such as Magic Engine in 1997, Hu6280 in 1998 and Hu-Go! in 1999. PC Engine also became popular running on Mednafen in 2005 and BSNES in 2017. PC Engine CD started running on Magic Engine, but for free only on Hu-Go! from 1999 onwards. To this day, one of its best emulations occurs on Mednafen from 2012 onwards.
From 1997 onwards, most emulators started to gain support for sound or have this system improved, as was the case with Atari, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Nintendinho emulators, for example.
Another milestone in emulation was PSEmu in 1997, emulating PSX and developing the plug-in system that would become popular in several other emulators. It ran some commercial games, but not just any PC could run them. Bleem! arrived in the sequel, in 1999, with excellent results, but for a fee. It was soon taken out of play by Sony lawsuits. That same year, Virtual Game Station was released, which was the most popular emulator at the time, as it ran even on weak PCs. This was another one that suffered from lawsuits from Sony. And finally, ePSXe in 2000, the most acclaimed of all to this day.
Other consoles were emulated in the sequence, such as O2EM for the Odyssey 2 console in 1997, Ages also in 1997, being the first to emulate 32X and Sega CD respectively in 1999 and 2001 and Intellipacks for Intellivision also in 1997, released for free and later continued in the collection Intellivision Lives! in 1998. The case of Intellipacks is curious. It was released by a group that was part of the creation of the Mattel console in 1982, entitled The Blue Sky Rangers. It was the first emulation project made by the creators of the original emulated console.
Project Unreality in 1997 was the first to pave the way for the emulation of the Nintendo 64. It inaugurated the N64, U64, V64 and Z64 ROM formats. Despite its pioneering nature, it ran few games. Other projects emerged, such as TrueReality, Ultra64 and Nemu64 in 1998 and 1964 in 1999, but it was UltraHLE that changed the whole scene in 1999, being the first to run commercial games satisfactorily. In addition, it created the HLE standard, simulating several parts of the emulator instead of emulating them, and doing so with high performance. Instead of needing the correct hardware code to run it as in emulation, simulation simply creates a program that simulates, resembles that specific hardware function, making the PC not overloaded too much. This changed the whole history of emulation. UltraHLE had a short life because of Nintendo itself. In 2001, the one that popularized the scene once and for all arrived, Project64. Mupen64 was also quite famous, also from 2001.
In 1998, the first prototype of Sega Saturn emulation, Satan (as Saturn is pronounced in Japanese), appeared in Japan. The emulator was primary and never ran games. The first to run games and also to consolidate itself was SSF from 2000. The only one that beat it was Yabause in 2003, and its forks Yaba Sanshiro in 2016 and Kronos in 2018. It also has a good run on Mednafen, brought to the project in 2016.
Then we had the Atari 7800 in 1999, by the great Dan Boris, creator of several emulators, with his V7800 emulator and Odyssey 1 by the ODYEMU emulator, also in 1999.
Jagulator was the first consolidated Atari Jaguar project in 2000, with CD support only in 2001. But one of the most consolidated emulators of the console was Virtual Jaguar created in 2003, but had its full emulation only in 2011.
As for the 3DO, the last of the classic consoles to be emulated, arrived in 2003 through FreeDO. There were other projects such as 4DO in 2011 (the most consolidated emulator of the console) and Phoenix in 2014.
Regarding arcade emulators, the first was developed in 1994 by Digital Eclipse under the name Williams Digital Arcade and released for Macintosh. It was a partnership between Digital and Williams, who created several games for this platform. In 1995, it began to be released for Windows. This was the second attempt to emulate gaming hardware, the first being the Nintendo. But it was the first emulator developed that was actually functional, followed by the Action Pack for Atari in 1995. What do the two have in common? They were developed by companies in partnership with brands that released these games in the past.
The first free arcade emulator (and also for consoles and portable devices) was Sparcade! in September 1995 for MS-DOS, which ran games such as Frogger, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Space Invaders, among others. It is also considered the first project to emulate several boards together. In 1996, Emu, later known as Retrocade, also in the same vein, appeared. And finally, in 1997, MAME, which completely innovated the scene, being the largest arcade emulation project of all time.
MAME brought emulation of most arcades from the 1980s and 1990s in an unprecedented way. There are so many names, it would be difficult to list them all. But the project had the help of big names in emulation.
Despite MAME's pioneering role, several other projects that emerged in its wake were responsible for emulating many systems before arriving at MAME. Among them, in 1997, Callus with the CPS-1 and Sega System 16 Emulator with the System 16, 18 and Super Scaler, in 1998, NeoRage with the Neo Geo MVS and M72 Arcade Emulator with some unreleased games from the Irem M72, in 2000, Sega System C2 Emulator with the System C2 and Modeler with the Sega Model 1, in 2001, Final Burn with the CPS-2, in 2002, Viva Nonno with the Namco System 22, in 2004, Model 2 Emulator with the Sega Model 2 and in 2007, CPS-3 Emulator with the CPS-3. All had one or a few boards to which they were dedicated. The emulators Cage in 1998 and Shark! and JFF in 1999, which also brought several games before MAME, worked with several boards.
Another milestone in arcade emulation was Final Burn, created in 2000 for Sega arcades, later becoming a big name for CPS-1 and 2. It became FBA in 2001 and over time became another big multi-emulator alongside MAME.
WinKawaks was also a big name in arcades, especially for CPS-1 and 2, as were Calice, Nebula and Ace, all of which appeared in 2001.
What we can conclude about the beginning of game hardware emulation is that the first time that an arcade and a console could be played in full on a computer was through Williams Digital Arcade and Activision Pack, which were paid. And that the first free functional arcade and console emulators were Sparcade! and Stella.
In addition to the popularity of emulators, the same thing happened with ROMs. In 1997, they became very popular, including ROMs from systems that had not yet been emulated. In 1998, the Entertainment Software Association, the video game association in the United States (known at the time as IDSA), began to take down mass ROM distribution sites. The following year, it was Nintendo's turn, but in a more superficial way, due to the Nintendo 64 ROMs. In 1999, SNK began to create a method of preventing copies of its cartridges through encryption from KOF '99, which ended up being taken down the following year. In 2000, the encryption of the Capcom Play System 2, the CPS-2, began to be broken, but it took until 2007 for this to be completed by the MAME team, led by Nicola Salmoria. In 2001, it was Nintendo's turn to shield its GameCube CDs against this, which was overturned the following year by a flaw found in the game Phantasy Star Online. Despite all this, ROM ripping and sharing continued.
In 2018, Nintendo won a lawsuit in Arizona, United States, against a couple who ran a ROM fan site to pay 12 million in damages. After that, several sites that had Nintendo ROMs began to delete their collections. In more than 20 years of ROM sharing, this was the first major impasse, which actually impacted several sites, such as PlanetEmu, Emuparadise, Cool Rom, among others. Despite this, some sites such as Wow Roms, CD Romance and Romspure still maintain their collections.
Regarding lawsuits against emulator creators, the ones filed by Sony in 1999 against Connectix, creator of the PSX VGS, and against Bleem, also creator of a PSX emulator, are the best known, and it was through them that the guidelines for creating these softwares were decided. The lawsuits generated the clean room design effect, which allows reverse engineering for the creation of emulators without using the original creator's patents. In other words, you can map each piece of hardware to rewrite its code to emulate it as long as it does not copy specifications placed on it by the original creator, such as codes in its bios, which are used to operate some consoles, having to create your own bios or mechanism to circumvent it. Because of this, emulators that need the original bios of the hardware to run (mostly CD consoles) do not bring this bios along with their files.
Despite the fight of several of these console creators against emulation, many of them created their own emulators. This was the case of Sega around 2003, which hired the creator of the Sega Saturn emulator GiriGiri to develop an online service to run the console, called Cyber Disc or B-Club. The system also ran Mega Drive games, and both were sold for between 300 and 500 yen. In 2006, it was Nintendo's turn with the Virtual Console for Nintendo Wii, later extended to its N3DS and Wii U consoles until 2019. One of the latest cases was Sony, which partnered with the PCSX-ReARMed emulator in 2018 and released it on its PSX Mini, known as the Playstation Classic.
First post here on our page. This page will serve as a promotion for our YouTube channel, Lives Aleatórios, focused on Retrogames.
On the channel, we mainly do Lives, Gameplays (with or without camera), Collections and Articles.
I'll start with the Evolution of Games special, which shows the evolution of all the games belonging to a franchise. Today, we're talking about Mario Bros/Super Mario.
.jpg)
.jpeg)
%20IA.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.png)
.jpeg)
.jpg)
.jpg)