John Dullea
PCAE
John Dullea was the creator of one of the first Atari 2600 emulators, the PC Atari Emulator. The emulator was released in 1996 for MS-DOS and a Windows version in 2000. John helped other Atari 2600 projects, such as the z26 in 1997. In 2000, he is also known for creating IntvDOS, an Intellivision emulator for MS-DOS, with a Windows version in 2002 under the name IntvWin.
The project also became known as the ECS add-on emulator, the Entertainment Computer System, which transformed the console into a computer. Its two emulators were closed in 2002.
SourceForge and AutoREALM
In the same year, he became part of a project called AutoREALM, a program for creating castles, caves, cities, dungeons and other things for RPGs. He posted it on his SourceForge. After that, John was never heard from again. John was also part of a cycling group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Alex Krasivsky
LandyNES
Alex Krasivsky was the Russian responsible for one of the first NES emulators in history, the InterNes, known simply as iNes. At the time, in 1996, the project was called DC Nes, and only a prototype was released that ran simple games. Alex was interested in releasing it in its entirety under the name LandyNes, but he gave up on the project due to lack of interest and passed it on to Marat Fayzullin, who released it that same year as iNes, rewriting it. Alex also helped create the console's GameGenie. Alex and Marat formed a partnership in 1996 and created the disassembler and the M6502 emulator.
In the same year, he created the Adlib sound driver, present in the MS-DOS versions of Marat's SMS and GG emulator, MasterGear. Also in 1996, he made one of the ports of Marat's fMSX to MS-DOS. The other ports were by Marcel de Kogel and Igor Sharfmesser. In October 1996, Jeremy Chadwick's nestech.txt document (the second largest NES documentation after Marat's) mentions Alex, speaking of his importance, and recognizing him as the pioneer of NES emulation, in addition to considering him a friend. In 1997, Alex completely gave up on the emulation scene.
About his M6502 emulator, he was present in several emulators, such as NES, Darcnes, fwNES, FCE and Xnes in 1998, PC Engine, VPCE in 1997, FPCE in 1998 and Hu-Go! in 1999, in addition to the MAME emulators, used for various hardware between 1997 and 1998, E++ for the PC ZX Spectrum in 1997, Replay+ for Arcade in 1998, MESS in 1998, Laser for arcade in 1999, Pocket GB for GB in 2001, the TinyNSF player for NES sound files in 2012, among others. In 2014, he would have helped with some sound drivers for the OpenMSX emulator for the MSX system, but we do not know if it is the same Alex.
Markus Gietzen
Genem (MS-DOS)
Markus Gietzen became known for creating the Mega Drive emulator, GenEm, in 1996. It was the second emulator for the console and the first with greater popularity and sound support. It was an emulator with many speed, compatibility and sound problems, but it opened the doors for emulation of the Sega console. He also developed the XL-it! emulator for the Atari 5200 and the Atari 800, 800XL and 130XE PCs in the same year, known as the Atari 8-bit emulator. Markus also contributed to other projects, such as the Virtual Super System for the Atari 5200 in 1996, with ideas for improving emulation.
In 1997, he improved Bernd Schmidt's 68k processor, which was used in the System 16 Arcade Emulator in the same year and in MAME in 1999. His projects existed until 1997. At that time, he left the emulation scene, claiming that it had become just a scene of copying and making software available illegally, alluding to the cracker attacks that some paid emulators suffered at the time. After that, he no longer participated in it. In 2000, he founded a website and developed some applications for Linux, such as JClipboarder, among other works. He updated the website until early 2005.
In 2004, he created the DCC Signaler software, which is a communicator between a computer and a train locomotive. He even created his own website on SourceForge for this software. Markus is also a runner, and posted on the website the races and marathons he participated in, as well as the distances he covered. He even created a forum to talk about running, called Laufen Im Saarland, which meant Running in Saarland, the state where he lived. The website was updated until 2010. Until 2003, Markus lived in the city of Großrosseln, in the regional association of Saarbrücken, in the state of Saarland, Germany, before moving to the neighboring city of Völklingen. Markus has a degree in Computer Science.
RealityMan
Jagulator
RealityMan is the forerunner of two achievements in the world of emulation: the first Atari Jaguar emulator released and the first emulator to work with high-level plug-ins, the famous HLE. It all started in 1997, when he developed the Jagulator emulator. It was the only project that has remained alive since then.
While the project was on hiatus, in 1998, development began on UltraHLE, a Nintendo 64 emulator. The software was released in early 1999, and featured high-level graphics APIs, completely innovating the scene. They were able to run 20 games on the emulator from Pentium II computers with 64MB of memory. This release caught the attention of Nintendo, which filed a lawsuit against the project the month after its launch, preventing its progress. Throughout 1999 and early 2000, Reality talked about updates to the project, but this never happened.
From then on, several emulators made updates to the initialization file, adding more games, plug-ins and even hacks of the emulator itself. The most famous was UltraHLE2064 in 2002. After abandoning the project in 2000 at the end of the year, Reality found itself in another controversy, its emulator Jagulator, which had never been released, was considered a lie. Because of this, it released the first alpha version at the end of 2000. An interesting feature of the project was the use of HLE plug-ins for the graphics, as was used in the N64's UltraHLE.
The project had two more versions released in 2001 and was then discontinued. At the end of the year, his project was taken over by third parties. After that, Reality, who was already tired of the project and had a family to take care of, left the world of emulation. Regarding his real name, in early 2001 his daughter Emma Louise was born, so we only know what her last name would be. We also know that years later, he changed his pseudonym to SubQMod.
Tratax
Henk Jan Ober, also known as Tratax (also known as DynaChicken), is a prominent creator of emulators and plug-ins for fifth-generation consoles and arcades. He was born in the Netherlands in 1979. Around 1998, he lived near the city of Uithoorn, near Amsterdam. He began programming at the age of eight. He began working with software development in 1994. In 1997, he worked as a programmer for internet and database software at Planet Internet Holding. To do this, he used SGI computers, which used MIPS series processors, and that was when he became interested in emulating them.
At the time, the PSX was considered the impossible console to emulate, and it happened to use a MIPS processor. It was at this time that he became interested in emulation. His first project involving emulation was the port of Marat Fayzullin's fMSX to the PSX, called PlayStation Net Yaroze Version and known as fMSX v0.5. The following year, a Polish guy known as Duddie asked for help with his PSX emulator, and Tratax approached him. It was then that he joined the pioneering PSEmu project. In it, he began developing graphic plug-ins for it, an innovation that the project brought to the emulation scene.
Among them, he developed GPUGlide and a plug-in for SCSI CD-ROM. Lewpy's 3Dfx plug-in, made for the project in 1998, was based on Tratax's Glide plug-in. His plug-ins also helped in the ePSXe projects in 2000 and PCSX in 2001. In PSEmu, he also helps in dynamic recompilation for better emulator CPU speed. He was known as an excellent recompiler (perhaps the nickname as he was known at the time, DynaChicken, has something to do with this).
In 1999, with the end of the PSEmu project, he formed the Impact project with Duddie to emulate the Capcom Sony ZN-1 and ZN-2 arcade machines and the Taito FX1-A, all based on the PSX hardware of which they both already had knowledge, launching it in 2000. In 2001, they expanded the project, adding emulation of the Taito FX1-B and Namco System 11, forming the ZiNc project, launched in 2002. In the same year, Tratax left the project along with Duddie and began developing the GameCube emulator, GCEMU (GameCube Emulator), launched in 2005.
Both Impact and ZiNc were part of the Emuhype development group. Tratax also helped several PSX emulator projects with various contributions, such as PSyKe in 1998, ePSXe in 2000, PCSX and Modeler (this one for Sega Model 1) in 2001, PSXJin in 2011, among others. In the MAME project, he helped indirectly through smf and Richter Belmont, former colleagues in the Emuhype project, who brought the Namco System 12 driver (this one created by smf in the ZiNc project) to the project, as well as his sound processor, the Hitachi H8 3002, in 2004.
In his professional life, from 1994 to 1997, he attended the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. In 1997, he was hired by Planet Internet Holding as a support engineer in Amsterdam. At the company, he developed a Pay Per View internet module for the Netscape server (recently acquired by Netscape), aimed at business applications and for InterNetNews (INN), a news service, where internet providers would charge for it in a partnership with these servers. In 1999, he left the company and moved to Tiburon, Florida, USA, and went to work at Electronic Arts-Tiburon (formerly Tiburon Entertainment). At the company, he was part of the group of programmers for the games Madden NFL 2000 for PC, PSX and N64 in 1999 and Madden NFL 2001 for PSX and N64 in 2000. At the end of 2000, he went to Zhuhai, China, where he joined ALI Corporation as manager of the software department.
At the company, he was responsible for managing the DVD and VCD game development team, the software development team for electronic devices that contain integrated chips (SoC), such as DVD players and hard drives, and the Intel standard software solution team (Intel NMPR), also such as players and others. He remained at the company until 2004, when he returned to the US, working at Zoran Corporation in Sunnyvale, California, as an application team leader. His main job was to manage a team that developed software (firmware) responsible for correctly recording data on DVDs and hard drives. In 2007, he became a team software engineer, working on the creation of software (middleware) responsible for communicating the American digital television system (ATSC) with a DVD recorder that would save the images played there. Henk left the company in 2007.
Back in Amsterdam in 2008, he was hired by MYLAPS Sports Technology, in Haarlem, the Netherlands, a city near Amsterdam, as a senior research and development member. First, he became responsible for developing software (firmware) that would control the functions of equipment for high-performance sports competitions, such as races and marathons. In 2009, he became a senior research engineer. At the time, he implemented firmware responsible for detecting and storing 10,000 fps camera images at the finish line in races, implemented a custom radio protocol and firmware (controlling data through microcontrollers) in the MYLAPS X2 Link system, which is a communication device created by the company for precision in races (a kind of stopwatch), and implemented a security model for the X2 line of devices so that they could only be used by trained people, in addition to using encryption systems and algorithms for their security. As of the writing of this article, he is still working at MYLAPS.
Emulators:
fMSX (PlayStation Net Yaroze Version) (1997), PSEmu/PSEmu Pro (1998), Impact (2000), ZiNc (2002), GCEMU (2005)
Plugins:
GPUGlide (1998), SCSI CD-ROM (1998)
Games:
Madden NFL 2000 (PC, PSX, N64) (1999), Madden NFL 2001 (PSX, N64) (2000)