The History of Super Nintendo Emulators - Part 5

SNEMUL! (1997)

SNEMUL!

SNEmul! was developed in 1997 by Archeide and v0x. It was released in late 1997 for MS-DOS, with one of its first known versions released in January 1998, 0.4, along with version 0.3, which debuted ports for Linux, still in the alpha releases. In February 1998, it released its first beta version, 0.4.5. It was the first emulator to support the French SNES language, in addition to the usual support for English. Right from the start, it supported the SPC700 sound coprocessor. In March 1998, the front-end, StarLaunch, began supporting the emulator.

SNEmul! (Interface/Menus)

Its last version was released in August 1999, and included support for the DSP-1 and Super FX chips, as well as support for the Super Scope pistol. In the beta phase, the project had 18 versions released in total. The last version for Linux was released in June 1999. The project had help from Yoshi, with documentation about the console, Lord Esnes with general information, among others. In 2006, the project returned, now with a port for the Nintendo DS handheld, called SNEmulDS, released in September. At that time, only Archeide participated in the project. The emulator used the CPU of bubble2k's SnezziDS SNES to NDS emulator, which in turn was a port of Snezzi, a SNES to GBA emulator.

SNEMULDS

It also used the sound engine from Gladius' PocketSPC program, which brought the SNES sound chip to the NDS via a GBA cartridge that the handheld supported, known as slot 2. With all this, it became an emulator for complete SNES playback in the NDS environment. To do this, all one had to do was run the file SNEmulDS.nds, which had the extension of an NDS ROM. The emulator was even translated by those interested in the project, including into Portuguese by Claudio Neves. The project ended in October 2007, with 6 versions released. An update to the last version came out the following month, supporting cartridges connected to slot 2, adding battery consumption and hiding the GUI.

SNESGT (2001)

SNESGT

SNESGT was created in 2001 by Japanese developers Gigo and Hii. Gigo had already created the NES emulator, G-NES, as well as the NSF sound player, based on G-NES emulation. Hii had already become famous for creating TGB, an emulator for GB, GBC and GBA. SNESGT was first released in May 2001 for Windows. It required support for DirectX 5 from the beginning. The emulator has a fast initial emulation, with good sound support and good emulation speed.

SNESGT (Interface/Menus/Sonic The Hedgehog)

It supports save state, reset, pause, FPS acceleration, 48,000 Hz quality sound, video filters, various screen resolution sizes, joypad and multitap support, and all the console's special chips. It also uses almost half the PC RAM used in its competitor, the Snes9x. In addition, it also supports the NES filter plug-in, VirtuaNES2, and the Mega Drive's Kega Fusion rendering plug-in.

SNESGT Ver 0.14 (English) (Interface/Menus/Isikoro Mario World)

SNESGT Ver 0.230 Beta 6 (About/DBZ: Hyper Dimension)

SNESGT is considered the best emulator for the Satellaview add-on, beating even Snes9x and ZSNES. In December 2003, they began releasing their versions in English as well. At the time, they also released a version in simplified Chinese, translated by Tiansun. In February 2004, it was the turn of the French version by Benjamin Siskoo, translator of emulators and plug-ins for the emu-france website and several Sega Saturn emulators. In July 2004, the emulator icon changed. 

SNESGT Ver 0.230 Beta 6 (Interface/Menus)

In February 2005, the Italian version was released by Vecna. At the end of 2005, they decided to release plug-ins with the languages ​​to be added to the emulator. At that time, versions in Traditional Chinese, German, Spanish and Portuguese were created, respectively by Nhlay, Jezze, Javier Patiño and MallevsMaleficarvm. The only language versions that already came with the emulator were Japanese and English. In June 2005, the emulator icon changed once again. Its last release was dated August 2008.

Super Sleuth (2004)

Super Sleuth

The Super Sleuth project began in August 1998 by Kris Bleakley, known at the time as Overload. At the time, the project had no name or releases, but by 1999, the source code backups totaled 2.4 GB in size. In October 2002, the emulator was released privately, only for SNES developers, under the name Super Player Deluxe (SPX) for MS-DOS. Since its inception, Super Sleuth had the proposal to emulate NES games in the future, which only happened when it became Kindred in 2013.

Super Sleuth (interface/Menus/DBZ: Super Gokuden: Kakusei-Hen)

In February 2003, he joined the group that developed Snes9x, in the Snes9x DSP project, to develop support for these chips. In the meantime, in April 2004, he changed the name of his private emulator Super Player Deluxe to Super Sleuth and began making several updates to it until its first public release in October 2004. At the time, he also helped with the ZSNES project. In December 2004, he left the Snes9x and ZSNES projects to dedicate himself to his emulator. He only participated once more in the ZSNES project in 2006 until the release of a version of the emulator in December.

Super Sleuth (Super Chase HQ)

In version 1.04 from September 2005, the emulator icon was changed. Super Sleuth had 5 versions released, the last one having several updates. These versions and updates were released between 2004 and 2006, 2008 and ending in September 2011. The emulator featured reset, pause, save state, screenshot in png format, state inspection, with console chip and processor settings, gamepak transfer, ripping games using Super Wildcard and Game Doctor SF III, accessory for ripping games from SNES cartridges, screenshot saving in BackupRAM, in .SRM (default), .BBD (Super Wildcard) and .B01 (Game Doctor) formats, gamepak directory configuration, save sate, screenshot and backupRAM, video configuration with brightness, contrast and color, frameskip, control via joypad, keyboard, mouse, Nintendo Scope, turbo file and super turbo file, various window sizes, real-time debugging system, support for Satellaview and DSP-1 and 2, OBC-1, S-DD1 and SA-1 chips, among others.

Super Sleuth (Interface/Menus)

Despite all this, Super Sleuth never had sound and its game compatibility was not very good. At the beginning, the minimum requirement to run the emulator was a Pentium 800Mhz with 32Mb of RAM, and later it asked for a Pentium 3 with the same MHz and the same amount of RAM. The recommended requirement was always a Pentium 4 with 1.4Ghz with 48MB of RAM. 

Kindred

In August 2013, Kris created Kindred (suggestive meaning of Kin), the continuation of Super Sleuth, which brought together several consoles, such as NES, SNES, GB, as well as PCs such as IBM PC AT and XT, Sega Master System and support without sound of the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color portables. It also promised to support in future versions of Mega Drive, SNES add-ons, such as the Pro Fighter, Game Doctor and Super Wild Card rippers (the latter having been accessible in Super Sleuth), the Super UFO flashcard, the GBC and GBA portables and the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga PCs.

Kindred 1.05 (Interface/Menus/Saint Seiya: Ougon Densetsu)

Kindred 1.12 (Interface/Menus/Saint Seiya: Ougon Densetsu)

In the first version of Kindred, on August 1.05, 2013, a new logo was created for the emulator, changing it for the last time in May 2015, in version 1.07. The emulator had everything that Super Sleuth had, and now also with sound support and good game compatibility, in addition to a pause button, screenshot in .BMP, shortcut keys for various functions, many more screen sizes, in addition to custom screen sizes, the NTT Controller control, graphical interfaces in GDI, OpenGL, DirectDraw and Direct3D, DirectSound audio in CD quality, NTSC and PAL system, mono and stereo sound channels, game acceleration, and others.

Kindred 1.05 (Ninja Gaiden)

Its last release was in November 2019, with updates until December 2020. The emulator had 8 versions, 9 updates, with 17 releases in total. Numerically it is considered the continuation of Super Sleuth.