The History of Super Nintendo Emulators - Part 3

ESNES (1997)

ESNES

The ESNES project was created in October 1996 by the Spanish Carlos A. Lozano, Lord Esnes. Its first release took place in March 1997 for MS-DOS. Later it joined the Ishmair project. The real speed of the console was acquired from a Pentium 166MhZ with 8 Mb of RAM. The emulator supported 2, 4 and 6 button Joypad, Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, screenshot, loading ROMs in SMC, SFC, SWC, MGD II, GD3 and FIG formats (probably the first emulator that loaded more ROM formats).

ESNES Loader

In April 1997, Airds, the same creator of the front-ends for KGen and GenEM for Mega Drive, created the Esnes Loader, since Esnes worked by command line. The front-end had 7 versions, the last one being released in May 1997. Around April/May 1997 there was also another front-end, the EmuLaucher, which also supported the Magic Engine. The front-end was updated until October 1997. At the time it also supported other emulators, such as Snes9x, Magic Engine, GenEm, Virtual Gameboy and O2Em.

ESNES (Super Mario World)

In June 1997, Lord and Ishmair, with the help of Gary Henderson from the Snes96 project, who had finally developed sound for SNES emulation that month, helped the project to adapt the emulation of the SPC700, a coprocessor that coordinates the SNES sound, into the ESNES project. After much work, the emulator was released in August 1997. This was the last version of the emulator, with 14 releases in total. In addition to Gary, the ESNES project also had help from Jerremy Koot from Snes97, Ernesto Corvi from Virtual Super Wild Card, The Brain from Virtual Super MagiCom, as well as Yoshi from the SNES scene and the emuroms site Zophar. The last front-end to begin supporting the project was SnesGUI, in July 1998, which had already existed since January 1997, and ran several other SNES projects. ESNES was considered one of the best emulators of its generation.

NLKSNES (1997)

NLKSNES

The NLKSNES (Nerlaska SNES) project is another project from the SNES scene in Spain. It was created by Miguel Angel and Alberto de Hoyo from the Nerlaska group in March 1997. The Nerlaska group, among others, developed programs to create scenarios for video games, with a graphic library and even its own game, and were responsible for the good performance of the emulator and its own multimedia library, considered by them to be faster than the Allegro. The initial proposal was to develop an emulator for 486, a common computer at the time, since other emulators were developed for better computers. NLKSNES was also trying to develop sound for the SNES. Its first version was released in July 1997 for MS-DOS.

NLKSNES (Muscle Bomber)

The project had the help of Lord Esnes, who released his emulator in the month the NLKSNES project started, which was probably the driving force behind the project. Yoshi with the documentation, The Brain with its debugger and Pocket with various support, also helped, in addition to Trasher as a tester. In September 1997, the 15th and final version was released and the project ended. In that month, Miguel joined Lord Esnes and Ishmair, who had also recently ended their projects, ESNES, and decided to form the NLKE project. Despite trying to run SNES on a 486, the best he could achieve was 70% of the speed on that computer.

NLKE (1998)

NLKE

The NLKE project, formed by the creators of ESNES, Lord Esnes and Ishmair, and of the NLKSNES project, Miguel Angel, together with Pyrgo, began to exist in September 1997. Its main objective was to merge the speed and transparency of NLKSNES and the sound support and good compatibility of NLKE. Separately, the two projects already competed with the Snes96 and Snes97 projects, and now together they continued to compete with the evolution of these projects, which was the Snes9x project. The acronym is nothing more than the combination of NLK from NLKSNES with the E from ESNES, forming NLKE. Work began in October. Miguel built a new graphics engine, Ishmair fixed bugs in the sound and finished a graphics engine, and Lord fixed bugs in the emulator. With Ishmair unable to access the internet in January 1998, the sound status was not completed, and adding this, more tests at Lord and Miguel's school, plus other projects that came in, delayed the launch of the emulator which only happened in May 1998 for MS-DOS.

NLKE ( SSF II, Puzzle Bobble, Super Starwars 2, Star Fox, DK Country 3 and Super Aleste )

The project had all the advances mentioned above in ESNES and NLKSNES, including support for ESNES ROM formats. In its second version, in July 1998, they began to support stereo sound and the console's 16 sound channels, in addition to a front-end and scanline modes. In the third version, in December 1998, they added support for DSP1, a chip for running games like Super Mario Kart and others, thanks to the ZSNES emulator. In the fourth version, in October 1999, they supported several joypads, such as those from SNES and N64, for example, in addition to adding the Eagle and 2xSai filters. Its latest version was released in January 2000, and it supported the Super FX chip, from games like Star Fox and Doom, brought thanks to the creators of ZSNES. They also began to support the save states of the ZSNES emulator, with their .zst and .zs0 formats. The project was supported by the Nerlaska group, Gary and Jerremy from Snes9x, Ernesto from Virtual Super Wild Card, zsKnight and _Demo_ from ZSNES, Yoshi from the SNES scene, the Allegro multimedia libraries, Seal sound and Eagle arcade graphics, as well as MAME scanlines and 2xSai modes from Derek Liauw Kie Fa, among others. Despite all its performance, ZSNES surpasses it, becoming faster and more compatible.

SNEeSe (1997)

SNEeSe

The SNEeSe Project was developed by Lee Hammerton, known as Savoury SnaX, and Santeri Saarimaa, known as Gridle, releasing its first version in September 1997 for MS-DOS, the same month as the release of Snes9x. Despite its release in 1997, its stable version is considered to be 0.16f from September 1998. Lee was the founder of the project and Gridle was responsible for improvements to the GUI and testing of the emulator. In addition to the duo, other emulators helped in the project, such as from February 1998 Charles Bilyue, known as TRAC, as developer and creator of the DOS and Windows ports and also in 1998, Brad Martin, known as Butcha, as developer of the emulator's sound emulation along with Lee. Its first versions released in 1997 and early 1998 most likely had no sound. TRAC became responsible for the development of SNEeSe with Butcha taking care of the sound part from mid-1999.

SNEeSe (Interface)

TRAC is also known for helping in 2001, 2002 and 2005 with the ZSNES project and in 2002 with the Snes9x project. Daniël Hörchner, BDJH, joined the project in 2003 and was responsible for the UNIX, Linux and BeOS ports. The last to join the project was Nach in 2004, bringing improvements to the ROM loading code and support for the .IPS patch. At the time, Nach was working on the Snes9x and ZSNES projects and was behind, along with others, the emulation of the main SNES chips, such as DSP-1 and 2, C4, S-DD1 and ST010, and was solely responsible for the Sufami Turbo add-on. Despite this, he only brought Sufami to SNEeSe. Brad left the project in 2003, Daniel in 2004 and Nach in 2005, leaving only TRAC, who stayed until the end of the project. Other people also helped in the project, such as grinvader, zones, and others. In its beginning, the project had help from many of the main developers of the Super Nintendo emuscene, with the Snes9x and ZSNES teams mainly.

SNEeSe (Pipe Dream)

Since the beginning, it has always released its source code. To run the emulator, it was initially recommended to have a minimum processor of 486, with 4 to 8 MB of RAM. In the beginning, it did not have a front-end, which led third parties to support the emulator in their front-ends, as was the case around March 1998 with Universal StarLaunch, and from December 2000 with Offend. In June 1999, the emulator released its first front-end for MS-DOS, in version 0.25b. In March 2000, the front-end skin was changed. In September 2000, it began to support sound. In April 2002, the front-end skin was changed once again. From June 2002, the minimum configuration of a 586, Pentium or K6, with 6 to 10 MB of RAM, began to be requested. In March 2003, it released its first version for Windows, which had three more versions after that, all released in August 2006. The Windows version is known as SNEeSeW, and comes with the same front-end used until then in the MS-DOS version.

SNEeSe (MS-DOS)

SNEeSeW (Windows)

In May 2003, it gained versions for UNIX/Linux and BeOS. The emulator does not run any of the extra chips, running only the Sufami Turbo add-on. Its GUI is simple, with a single menu bar. The list of ROMs is by directory key, without the possibility of choosing by initial letter or accelerating the selection of ROMs in large lists. It also has no cheats or any other gimmicks. It supports 16-bit stereo sound, joypad configuration, frameskip and stretch modes. Its latest version was released in August 2006, changing once again the front-end of its emulator, both in the MS-DOS version and in the Windows version. In the MS-DOS version, it starts to require execution from a 586 or later. Interestingly, Lee, the founder of the project, took SNEeSe to the MESS multi-emulator in 2000, being responsible for the beginning of SNES emulation in the emulator.