The History of Super Nintendo Emulators - Part 4

ZSNES (1997)

 

ZSNES

ZSNES was developed by the ZSNES Team, formed by Canadians zsKnight and _Demo_, in 1997. Knight began programming the emulator in Pascal, and later in Assembler. When he changed his programming to ASM, _Demo_ joined the project. It is worth remembering that this was the phase in which the project was not yet public, and had several test versions. In addition to Knight's programming knowledge since childhood, _Demo_ also brought his experience from his attempt to create his own SNES emulator. The first public release of ZSNES took place in October 1997 for MS-DOS. In September 1998, Pharos joined the team, who is also considered one of the creators of the project. In September 2000, Pharos left and in April 2001 Pagefault joined. The last to join the project was Nach, in December 2004. In addition to the permanent members, over time collaborators helped with the project, such as TRAC and theoddone33 from April 2001 to December 2006, being those who collaborated the most with the project, and ipher from December 2004 to December 2006, and staying until the end of the project, grinvader joined in December 2004 and Jonas Quinn and Deathlike joined in December 2006.

ZSNES (F-Zero)

Byuu from the BSNES project also helps out on a few occasions with the emulator, such as in September 2001 and December 2006. In its first version, it was able to run games with just 8Mb of RAM and a 386 processor, putting the competition at a disadvantage. In September 2000, the ZSNES Win version, or simply ZSNESW, for Windows was released, adapting to the emulation scenario that was already abandoning the use of emulators in DOS mode. In May 2001, it was time for the Linux version. In December 2004, versions for the SDL system began, allowing ports to various systems. And finally, in December 2006, ports for OpenBSD, MacOS X and Linux optimized to run on the Xbox console appeared. These were the official ports of the emulator. Its latest version was released in January 2007, for both Windows and MS-DOS.

ZSNES v0.18

Regarding the emulator's updates, its first version already supports SRAM, 16-bit graphics, 16-bit digital sound, SPC700 sound chip and DSP sound processor, in addition to supporting most SNES ROM formats. The emulator also came with joypad support, and over time it added support for DirectX, DirectSound and DirectDraw. Its first version also did not have an interface, being run only by command line. In November 1997, it added VSync mode, a simple GUI and stereo sound. At first the GUI worked in conjunction with line command and gradually it was simplified and completely replaced this system. In 1998, in January, they added Action Replay, Gold Finger and Game Genie cheats, snapshot in .pcx and .bmp formats, and in February, support for the Super Scope pistol. In April, they began developing Super FX, launching it in May of the same year, which supported the Star Fox game. They were pioneers in this support.

ZSNES v0.600

Information and help from the Snes9x group were important in creating this support. Also in May, a fast-forward key was added and support for Intel's MMX processors was implemented, bringing better processing and greater speed to games. Over time, this system also began to be implemented in the filters, sound and resolution of the emulator games. In September, they also pioneered the addition of the DSP-1 chip from the Super Mario Kart game, as well as implementing support for recording/playing movies in the .ZMV (ZSNES Movie) format, in addition to creating an entirely new GUI, as it became known until the project was closed, and the addition of the SPCPLAY sound engine with several sound improvements. In December, it was time to support the SA-1 chip from the Super Mario RPG game. They also implemented the .IPS patch, which allowed the execution of romhacks in the emulator. All that was needed was to rename the .IPS file with the name of the game it was changing to, without having to modify the original ROM.

ZSNES v0.985c (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)

This was a distinguishing feature of the ZSNES. Over time, IPS compressed in ZIP were also accepted. In 1999, in July, we had the implementation of the 2xSaI and Super Eagle graphics engine, and support for .ZIP ROMs. In August, we included the cwsdpmi.exe file with the ZSNES file, a file necessary to run the emulator via DOS. In November, we added TCP/IP mode for online games and changed the front-end background from brown to blue, as well as jumping the emulator's numbering from 0.963 to 0.985. And in December, we once again added the S-DD1 chip from the game Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the first time. In 2000, in September, we had the unprecedented addition of the CX4 chip, known as C4 from the game Mega Man X2, and the addition of MultiTap support. And in November, support for Save States in Netplay mode was added and rewind support for up to 8 seconds was added for the Windows version only. In April 2001, we had the addition of the SPC7110 chips from the game Super Power League 4, with Dark Force as the main mentor and S-RTC from the game Daikaijuu Monogatari II by John Weidman and Dark Force, the second chip being released first in the Snes9x in January 2001.

ZSNES (Interface/Menus)

Also in April, the emulator's source code was released, and Matthew Kendora began helping with the project, staying until July 2001. Matthew became known for reviving Snes9x in 2002. In May, the OBC-1 chip from the game Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge was added to the emulator, along with .PNG format for snapshots and save states for games using the SA-1 chip. In July, one of the leaders of ZSNES, zsKnight, left the project due to the death of his father. Because of this, he had to work to support his family, leaving no more time for the project. Version v1.337 released in September 2001 was dedicated to him and his family. After that, the project practically ended, with seven more updates from June 2002 to January 2007, with updates basically coming from members of the Snes9x Forum and Snes9x himself. In June 2002, support was added for the 1991 Nintendo Super System arcade, which ran 12 SNES games, such as F-Zero, Robocop 3 and SMW. Also in June, the numbering of the MS-DOS and Windows versions, which were different because they were launched at different times, was aligned.

F

ZSNES v1.50

This alignment occurs in version 1.35. In December 2004, the DSP-2 and ST010 chips from the Dungeon Master and Exhaust Heat II games of the Snes9x emulator, which first brought it in July 2003, were added, HQ2X, HQ3X and HQ4X graphic filters, compatibility of the Windows version with Windows XP and preliminary support for the Sufami Turbo mode, which allowed the execution of specific games, such as Carranger and SD Gundam. In December 2006, the DSP-3 and 4 chips from the SD Gundam GX and Top Gear 3000 games first brought to the Snes9x in July 2006, and the ST011 from the game Hayazashi Nidan: Morita Shougi were added.

SourceForge and ZSNES Tutorial

In addition, the ZMV format can now be converted to AVI and WAV video and audio formats, and the emulator's Netplay functions are removed. Also in December, the front end background was changed again, to a dark gray animated background with falling snowflakes. In its latest release in January 2007, video recording support was added for direct AVI recording, and the same front end background was changed, only changing its color to dark violet. The project also had a page on the software development website, SourceForge, starting in February 2001. An interesting fact. In December 2006, a week before the release of version 1.50 of the emulator, Brazilian Filipe Antônio Marques Falcetta created a tutorial on how to configure the emulator, telling a little about the project's history. Interestingly, the real names of the project's creators were revealed for the first time: James Saito, known as zsKnight, and _Demo_, known as Jean-Francois Thibert. James went into the gaming industry, releasing games primarily for Nintendo's Wii and Wii U consoles. Jean-Francois developed TV software, later going to work for Google.

Z-GUI

Nitrolic

Over time, the project has received help from many influencers in the scene, such as Gary Henderson of Snes9x with sound decompression along with Steve Snake of the MD emulator Kega. Other people from other emulation projects have also helped ZSNES, such as Yoshi with his SNES documentation, Sardu from MD Genecyst, Lord Esnes from NLKE, the Nerlaska game software development group with optimization information, Neill Corlett with help with the .IPS romhack format and help improving the sound engine, among others.

UZI (Ultimate ZSNES Interface)

Several front-ends were created to support the emulator, sixteen in total. Seven of them were released exclusively for the emulator, ZSNES RearEnd in April 1998, Nitrolic and Z-GUI in May 1998, JPearce ZSNES Frontend in November 1998, UZI in December 1998, Xero in August 2001 and ZFE (ZsnesFrontEnd) in September 2001. Many of these started in the period from January to July 1998, when the emulator only had a simple front-end.

ZFE, ZSNES Frontend and Zsnes' Rearend Version

Regarding additions to these front-ends, we have Nitrolic, which brought support for the SPCPlay sound engine, and Z-GUI, which brought support for ROMs in .ZIP format, something that only occurred later in the emulator. From 1998 to 2004, several front-ends were also created that ran several SNES emulators together with ZSNES. An interesting fact. There was an application called Z-Net I written by DarkAkuma in 2012, which served as a Netplay server like Kaillera, to connect to other players for online games. In it, you chose your name, the game and the emulator executable.

ZsnexBox

In addition to the official ports mentioned above, several unofficial ports have emerged over time, such as for BeOS in 2004 (by Caz Jones), ZsnexBox for Xbox in 2006 (by Madmab), for MacOS X in 2009, Debian in 2010 on top of the Linux version, for Linux in 2011 with support for TCP/IP Daemon on top of the last version that supported netplay, 1.42, implementing servers for online gaming, and for Machintosh systems in 2014 with support for netplay and for IBM's system, OS/2, in 2016. Regarding forks, there was bZSNES released on April 1, 2011 by Byuu, creator of BSNES, as an April Fool's joke.

bZSNES

The project was simply an experiment in merging ZSNES and its features with the BSNES user interface. It also supported romhacks made specifically to run on ZSNES. Its only release was inspired by ZSNES version 1.51 and was released for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. In 2018 and 2020, Nephil1m and Mudlord, each in their respective projects, attempted to create forks of bZSNES for LibRetro to run on RetroArch, but none came to fruition. In 2013, the ZMZ emulator was released, which uses versions of Snes9x and BSNES as its core and the ZSNES GUI and its ZMV video recording function.