The History of Super Nintendo Emulators - Part 1

Virtual Super MagiCom (VSMC) (1994)

VSMC

It was the first Super Famicom emulator released. It was created by Chris George, The Brain, in 1992. The name of his emulator was inspired by the game ripping device, Super Magicom, as well as its game format, the .SMC extension. The first version of the emulator appeared in the same year for MS-DOS, titled 0.65B. I believe it was still an alpha version, since the first public release was in September 1994, still with a non-playable version. At first it had no sound and only ran demos. The playable and more stable versions appeared around 1996. At first it only ran a few demos, and over time it progressed. Around October 1996 it began to run games such as Super Mario World, Cosmo Gangs, Mr. Do!, Wing Commander, and others. It also had its own interface with joypad support, RGB screen adjustment, emulator documentation, emulation options and support for patches and cheats. To run the emulator, 500 KB of unused memory was required by the system, with a recommendation of up to 2 MB of free memory for good execution. Without the minimum, the emulator simply would not run.

VSMC (Interface/Menus)

Until December 1996, it was free, becoming a paid version from February 1997. The price was $35 for each copy. The paid version was free up to a certain point, when the game was closed. In the paid version, this lock was removed, but from that version onwards the emulator added a yellow palette of eight colors, even causing problems with the text of some games. This version was known as VSMC 97 and was for MS-DOS. Because it became a paid program, it left the emulation scene, the emuscene, unhappy. Three months after the paid release, the emulator was hacked and released for free by Ice Wizard. Chris left the emulation scene, accusing the community of hacking. The same thing happened at the same time with Nobuaki Andou with his NES emulator, Pasofami, but in this case its creator did not leave the emulator scene, having managed to find a shareware niche for his product in Japan. 

VSMC

The emulator was last released in March 1997, with two paid versions released in total. At that time, it was already running games such as That's Final Fantasy 3 & 5, Metroid, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario All-Stars, F-Zero, International Superstar Soccer, among others. Curiosity. Virtual Super MagiCom became known for creating a debugger, that is, a way to simplify programming, which was used in other Super Nintendo emulation projects, such as NLKE. Despite its legacy, it never supported sound, promising this development at the time of its last release. One of the project's intentions was also to develop cheats for the console, and even the possibility of creating game hacks, which ended up never happening. Chris also wanted to implement these tools in future GB and NES projects. One piece of information. There is a Chris George involved in creating games since the early 2010s, but he is not The Brain.

Super Pasofami (1996)

Super Pasofami

It was an emulator developed from the Pasofami emulator for NES created in 1992 and released in 1993 by Nobuaki Andou. Super Pasofami began to be developed around August 1995 and released in early 1996. One of its first versions was 1.1a from March 1996, followed by 1.2a from May 1996, both for Windows. It worked on both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. It was known as SPW (Super Pasofami for Windows). Initially it had no sound and was very unstable. It also ran games of up to 8 MB in size. Unlike Pasofami, Super Pasofami was free. It was a very complete emulator. Since the year of its release, it ran several game extensions, such as .SMC, .ROM, .SFC, .SPP, among others, as well as compressed files in .LZH and .ZIP formats. Its interface came with options for control via joypad and keyboard, as well as various screen resolution sizes, saving screenshots in BMP and sound in MIDI. In addition, it offers several technical options for changing the background, as well as saving sprites and palettes. In 1996, it competed with Virtual Super MagiCom, but was considered more advanced than its competitor. In version 1.3a from June 1996, it already ran 50% of the console's games and could be executed from a 386 computer.

Super Pasofami (Credits/Bomberman)

In version 1.7, released in August 1996, the emulator required at least 16MB of memory and a 90Mhz processor for its best performance. In December 1996, it released its first version with DirectX support, as 1.0b, which only worked on Windows 98 and later. Over time, several games were added, but the few that ran, ran at an accelerated rate and with several other problems. The last version of the emulator was 1.1a from April 1997, and it was possible to run games with a size of 32MB. I believe that Super Pasofami never supported sound. In September 2001, Nobuaki added Super Famicom emulation to his paid NES emulator, Pasofami. As of December 2000, Pasofami had already become a multisystem emulator, when it began to emulate Gameboy. Pasofami also became known for ripping ROMs from game cartridges using a device called Chameleon USB, extracting ROMs from 8- and 16-bit consoles from Nintendo and Sega, Nintendo handhelds, and MSX and PCE. Pasofami was continuously updated until March 2018. In May 2018, Nobuaki died of stomach cancer, an illness he had been battling since August 2017. After his death, his son Kouji Andou closed Pasofami's service and left the website active in honor of his father's work.

Super Famicom Emulator (1996)

Around May 1996, an emulator called Super Famicom Emulator for MS-DOS came to everyone's attention, with version 1.01 released, having been released most likely around the date in question. It was created by the Japanese M. Kami, the same creator of the DirectX Famicom Emulator for Windows, but apparently it did not evolve much and was never heard of again.

Virtual Super Wild Card (VSWC) (1996)

VSWC

was created by Ernesto Corvi in ​​1996 exclusively for Macintosh, with a specific code for the machine, written by Richard Bannister. Its name was inspired by the game ripping accessory, Super Wild Card, released two years earlier. VSWC (as it is known) is considered by most emuscene to be the first functional Super Nintendo (SNES / SFC) emulator. Its first beta version was released in October 1996 for Macintosh and DOS. The video part and general optimizations of the program were taken care of by Vince Vu. Vince and Ernesto were also responsible for the MS-DOS versions. A fast PC was required, with SVGA monitor, VESA-compatible video card and 8Mb of RAM, an advanced configuration for the time. 

VSWC (Super Castlevania IV)

From the launch onwards, the emulator was only developed for MacOS with the help of Bannister. Later it emulated several games, such as Super Mario World, Turtles IV, MS-Pacman and Super Off Road. An interesting fact: its games had the .SWC extension, originating from the Super Wild Card accessory. The creator of Virtual Super MagiCom, The Brain, helped Ernesto with many tips for his emulator. The project was discontinued in April 1997 due to lack of time on Ernesto's part, with the release of version 0.0.8r3. After that, its complete source code was sent to the creators of the Snes97 project, later known as Snes9x.