Emulator and Rom Sites - Part 1

When we talk about emulation and ROMs, we also talk about the websites that spread this idea. And there are many of them. Here we will talk about the first major websites, the ones that have stood the test of time, and the new websites that have emerged in recent years. These include websites that tell the story of video games, with games and emulators for download, their own forums or wikis, constant updates on the world of emulation, links to the most well-known projects in the field, game walkthroughs (FAQs), their partner websites, and many themed websites focused on content related to a specific brand or video game system. I invite you to explore the world of the most famous video game homepages of all time.

VeryComputer

One of the first websites on the subject is Very Computer, created in 1990 by Thomas Ray Roberts to talk about computers. In fact, it was a forum. At the time of the emulation hype, in 1996, several of the great emulators were launched there. Many creators, such as Markus Gietzen, from GenEm and Marat Fayzullin from iNes, had accounts there, and shared details about their projects. For example, the launch of the first emulator of a portable computer and one of the first functional emulators of gaming hardware, the Virtual Gameboy, was launched on the forum in July 1995. Given the lack of websites talking about the subject, a computer forum served for this purpose for a few years. Very Computer closed its activities in 2024.

Damaged Cybernetics

The first major emulation site was created in 1995 by Donald Moore, aka MindRape, and Jeremy Chadwick, aka Yoshi, under the name Damaged Cybernetics, to develop the NES and Super Nintendo emulation scene. Alex Krasivsky, creator of the NES LandyNes, and Chris George, aka The Brain, creator of the Super Nintendo Virtual Super MagiCom, left the site's forum. Several documentations and knowledge of the scene were shared on the site. The site closed its activities in 1997, after losing credibility among people who participated in the forum, due to their low programming knowledge and the rise of NESticle, which changed the NES emulation scene.

Emulatrony

In 1995, the Spanish-language website Emulatronia was created, one of the first emulation websites in the world. It offered downloads of console and arcade emulators, with details about versions, release dates, operating systems, ratings and even versions in Spanish. It also made several patches available for download, as well as music players for the respective hardware. It also became very well-known between 1999 and 2003 for bringing first-hand news about the release of updates for dozens of emulators. In addition, it featured articles, chronicles, reports, documents, add-ons, translations, among others. There was also a section called Time Machine, which tells the story of the main consoles and portables from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64, covering their history, games and technical specifications.

Emulatrony

The site also had its own Forum, which was initially more of a message board. It existed until 2008, when in 2009 it became a full-fledged forum, which in turn survived until 2015. The site also hosted the page for the arcade emulation project, Nebula, in 2001. Its logo was changed in 2000, and remains to this day. Its layout was changed in 2009, and also remains to this day. Also in 2009, it added a games section to play online, with classic console and arcade games, browser ports of these games, and new browser games. On the same date, the site also began making emulators for smartphones and laptops available for download. The site was updated until 2015, going offline in 2022.

GameFAQs

The Video Game FAQ Archive was created in 1995 as one of the first major sites for tips, codes, reviews and walkthroughs of video games. In its early days, it covered consoles such as PSX, Saturn, Nintendo 64, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, 3DO, some arcade games and some other consoles. In 1997, it also brought FAQs for PC games. That year, it changed its name to just GameFAQ. By 1998, there were already 23 contributors to the site. As of 1998, it also included consoles such as Master System, Sega CD, Game Gear, 32X, NES, Gameboy, NeoGeo, Odyssey 1 and 2, Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800, Jaguar and others. In 1999, Intellivision, Colecovision, Dreamcast, and PCs from Apple, Commodore, Atari, Microsoft, UNIX, Linux and Macintosh were also included. In 2000, Playstation 2, GameCube, Disk System, Neogeo Pocket, Gameboy Color and WonderSwan arrived. In 2001, Gameboy Advance and XBox.

GameFAQs

In 2002, GP32. In 2003, PSP. In 2004, Nintendo DS. In 2005, Playstation 3, XBox 360 and GizMondo. In 2006, Nintendo Wii. In 2010, IPhone, Android and Nintendo 3DS. In 2011 Wii U and PSVita. In 2012, PS4. In 2013, XBox One. In 2016, Nintendo Switch. And finally, in 2020, PS5. In 2018, the website gamespot.com, a large and old portal that talks about games, series, cartoons, movies and games created in 1996, migrated its paid domain. Regarding its layout, it was changed in the years 1997, 1998, 2000 (changing only the logo in 2001), 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010 (minus the logo), 2012 and 2013 (changing only the logo in 2015, in honor of the page's 20th anniversary and returning in 2016 with the 2013 soon). The website is updated to this day, with the collaboration of hundreds of contributors.

Archaic Ruins

In 1996, Archaic Ruins was born, considered at the time one of the best emulation sites. It was created within the forum site Damaged Cybernetics, created by Chris Hickman, to promote the emulation projects that had been started there. It was one of the first sites to popularize the download of ROMs, making available games for Atari 2600, NES, Gameboy, as well as several demos and homebrews for Super Nintendo, and games for computers such as Commodore64 and Apple II. Updates on console and PC emulation projects were constantly reported, in addition to renowned interviews with creators of the time, such as Duddie from PSEmu Pro, Markus Gietzen from GenEm, Yoshi, among others. With the end of Damaged in 1997, the site migrated to Parodius, by Yoshi. Its activities ended in 1998 and the site remained online until 2002. In 2003, the site Patent Pending began hosting some of Archaic's articles. In 2017, Chris decided to create his own domain to host the site as a tribute to his work. One of the reasons for the end of the site was the lawsuit he received for illegally sharing ROMs, around 1996/97.

Dave's VideoGame Classics

Dave's VideoGame Classics was created in 1996 by Dave (not the emulator creator) as one of the most informative sites of its time. It provided information on emulation projects, downloads of a wide variety of emulators, from the 1st to the 5th generation of consoles, portables, Atari, Amiga and Microsoft PCs, and multi-emulators such as MAME, as well as several games for most of these systems. It was also one of the sites that provided the most ROMs at the time. In addition, it provided many other curiosities, such as music and sounds from arcade games, game icons (which was popular at the time), as well as technical information about consoles and arcades, and front-ends for emulators. Several utilities were also available for download, such as files for MS-DOS programs. At the end of 1998, it changed its layout and at the beginning of 1999 it lost its .com domain, thus looking for a new domain to host it. In late 1999, he obtained a new .com domain and changed his website to The Vintage Gaming Network, first with the address davesvgc and then as vintagegaming. Finally, he changed his website again, now to the address vg-network in 2001, as well as its layout.

The Vintage Gaming Network

At the end of 2001, it returned with its previous, revamped layout. Since its inception, it also maintained Language Mirrors, which were foreign versions of its website. Websites in French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Spanish replicated Dave's content. From 1999 onwards, it also began hosting websites on its portal, such as GB World, Gameboy and NES World. In 2004, it created its own forum and blog and changed its layout twice. It also changed its layout in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In this phase of 2005, it focused more on information about emulators, returning for real with emulators and ROMs in 2007, when it changed its layout to a blog standard. In December 2009, the website had its last update. Despite this, in 2010, it changed its layout once again. In 2018, he transformed the site into The Vintage Gaming Network – Archive, in an attempt to transform it into a collection of 13 years of history in the WordPress standard, but he never added any content. The site had three layouts in 2018 and one in 2020, but none of the archive exists.

Parodius Networking

Yoshi created Parodius Networking in 1996 to talk about the world of emulation. He redesigned the site in 1999, changing its layout and logo. There, he hosted the Nesdev site about documentation and technical content about NES and Super Nintendo, to which he contributed a lot. He also hosted other sites, such as NES World, Genecyst and NESticle for MD and NES emulators, and the aforementioned Archaic Ruins. In this phase of 1999, his work was mainly to host large projects, make technical updates to the server and report them, and also post his work in the world of programming, such as the FreeBSD operating system, which he worked on. His site served as a kind of personal blog. On Parodius, Yoshi posted alongside other colleagues. In 2002, the site changed its layout and logo once again. The site closed its activities in 2012.

Zophar

Another major emulation site also emerged in 1996, Zophar. Created by Brad Levicoff, its purpose was similar to that of its competitors, to talk about the world of emulation. Its main highlights are updates on projects, interviews and releases of emulators, as well as front-ends and other accessories and patches. Its releases included software in Windows, Macintosh, Linux, UNIX versions, as well as Android, iOS and portable versions in general for the main gaming hardware and PCs. It also made available SaveGames, or Save States of emulator games such as NeoRAGEx, NESticle, Callus, ZSNES, FCE Ultra, and others.

Zophar

It also had a section that released technical documents for various processors and consoles, including the M6502, M68k, Z80 processors and the MD, Super Nintendo, PC Engine, NES, Master System, Game Gear, Gameboy, PSX, Nintendo 64 and other consoles. It also released ROMs for consoles such as the Playstation, Super Nintendo, Mega Drive, PC Engine, Gameboy, and some PCs such as the Apple II and Chip-8, in addition to game translations. It also hosted several websites, including Bloodlust Software for NESticle and Genecyst from 2000 onwards, as well as websites with front-ends, utilities, romhacking and console-specific games. In 2001, it changed its logo, in 2008 it changed its layout, in 2014 it changed its logo a little and in 2021 it changed its layout again. The project is updated to this day, and over the years, several contributors have worked on it.

EmuUnlim

Emulators Unlimited, known as EmuUnlim, was created in 1996 by Stephen Richards. The site provided news about emulators, as well as articles and editorials. All of this was managed by over a dozen contributors. It was also the site that hosted the most emulation projects, reaching 50 in total, including Final Burn Alpha and Calice32 for Arcade, FreezeSMS for Master System, NeoPocott for Neo Geo Pocket, SNEeSe for Super Nintendo, AGES for 32X, FCE Ultra for NES, Nemu 64 and Blade 64 for Nintendo 64, StellaX for Atari 2600, among many others. In its early days, it also offered downloads of several emulators for PCs and consoles from Atari, Nintendo, NEC, Sega and others, as well as useful music, chat and performance applications for emulators in DOS and Windows mode.

EmuUnlim

In 1999, his website announced the launch of the Nintendo 64 emulator, UltraHLE, which innovated the emulation scene. The website became very famous, having been mentioned on several websites around the world, such as Wired, IGN, and also magazines, such as the British one, PC Zone. In 2001, he opened the website rompint.com, to host his games, but it did not last more than a year. Regarding his trajectory in domains, logos and layouts, he first had his website hosted on Demon Internet in 1996, in 1997 on ZTNET and in 1998 finally on a .com domain. In 1999 and 2001, he changed his logo and layout. In 2004, he changed his logo once again. In early 2014, the website stopped being updated.

RetroUnlim

A year earlier, in 2013, Stephen created the website RetroUnlim to talk about everything retro, besides video games, as well as movies, comics, humor, television, podcasts and others, with basically video posts. In 2014 he also created The Retro Forum (which closed in 2016) and the YouTube channel RetroUnlim. The forum was linked from 2014 onwards to EmuUnlim and in 2016, on the 20th anniversary of the page, he posted the link to his YouTube channel RetroUnlim. EmuUnlim closed in 2017, when it went offline.

The Italian Emulation Place

The Italian Emulation Place was another important website. Created in 1996 by Ugo Viti, the main purpose of the website was to update projects and release emulators. It contained a lot of important information about these projects. It also had game reviews, save states for various games, articles, reflections, special features, game tricks, links to emulation sites, game music, its own forum, among others. It also had interviews with famous emulators, such as the creators of ZSNES, System 16 Emulator, PSemu, Project Unreality, MAME, Massage, MESS, Hu6280 and others. The site also has an extraordinary database of arcade games, called Classics Arcade Database, created by Paolo Corsini between 1998 and 1999. It basically divides games by year, genre, processor, audio system, producer and by seven famous emulators at the time, which were Callus, M72, MAME, NeoRage, Rage, Raine and System 16. When clicking on each game, an image of the game is shown, it tells you its CPU, audio, genre, year, producer, which emulators it runs on, the game quality, colors, sound and other information of each emulator, as well as listing the clones made of the game in question. There is another database on the site called StArcade, created by Jan AxHell between 1996 and 1999, cataloging the entire list of games released for everything from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo 64, as well as computers such as CPC Amstrad, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum, Amiga and others. The website stated at the time that this was the largest collection in the world to date. Despite the incisive work, the website only existed until the year 2000.

Eidolon's Inn

Eidolon's Inn was created in 1997 by Christian Schiller. Its main purpose was to talk about Sega consoles. The site provided information about the history of the company's consoles, as well as information for those who wanted to develop software for these consoles. It was basically what Damaged was for the Super Nintendo. This information included technical specifications, history of each console, images, emulators, original manuals for the consoles, processors, chips, bios and others, covering everything from the SG-1000 to the Dreamcast. This project was called WikiWiki. The site also provided some information on the history and emulation of non-Sega consoles, such as the Super Nintendo, NES, PC Engine, Gameboy and the PC Vectrex. Since 2004, Eidolons has hosted on its site the content of the SegaBase website, the first Sega database on the internet, created in 2000 by Sam Pettus. His content was much thicker than Christian's when it came to historical details about each of the brand's consoles. Christian and his website helped with some emulation projects with a lot of information, such as VGen, with information about the Sega CD, and the Gens, Genital, Genesis Plus and Xiga emulators, all for the Mega Drive. The website also talked about consoles and computers released in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998, Christian created a group with four other people, one of them Steve Snake, to translate Japanese Mega Drive games into English. Unfortunately, the project never really took off. In 2000, he created Special Feature, which was supposed to be a kind of library with history about Sega, talking about its hardware and software, including emulation. He even interviewed the creators of SMS Plus, AGES, KGen, Gens, Genital and others. In 2003, the company began hosting a page managed by Steve Snake, creator of Kega Lazarus and Kega Fusion, for the launch of its emulators. Regarding domains, one of its first was eidolon.psp.net, replaced in 2000 by Eidolons-inn.de. Both domains were active until 2003, when they were deactivated and in their place was the address Eidolons-inn.net. Regarding its layout, it was only changed in 2000. Its logo was never changed. From 2005 onwards, the website became inactive and was deactivated in 2014. In that year, the company created the Carpe Ludum website to post some information about emulation, but the project did not go ahead. It managed the Eidolons page on Facebook from 2012 to 2019, but it did not receive any more updates.

Emulation Names - Extras

Here I will post important names in emulation that I had only posted on the emulator pages, as each of them was linked to a specific console segment (SNES, PSX and N64), however, they have their stories far beyond that.

Jeremy Chadwick

Originally from Corvallis, Oregon, USA and born on January 24, 1977, Y0SHi (pseudonym of Jeremy D. Chadwick), also known at the time as Jer and Myriad, is a programmer, and was initially responsible for the TRaCER disassembler in 1996. Disassemblers are nothing more than programs that read machine code (such as processors, for example), and convert it to assembly language.

TRACE

TRACER disassembled the 65c02 processors (a popular and bug-corrected version of the 6502), found in consoles such as the NES, Atari Lynx and PC Engine, and the 65816 and 65c816, found in the Super Nintendo (in this case a version based on this processor called the Ricoh 5A22). These processors are also found in computers. At the time, it became the most popular disassembler for PCs and PC processors. It then managed to emulate the 6502, which helped it in its later written NES emulator, qNES. The program has helped several developers in the field. The Brain of the SNES emulator, VSMC, for example, used TRaCER to help in the development of its emulator. With his tool, Yoshi already imagined running possible SNES emulators on 386 computers, which ZSNES ended up doing two years later in 1998, most likely thanks to Yoshi's help.

NES and SNES Docs

Another of his great achievements was the creation of the SNES Document in 1994, known as snes.txt, which is nothing more than information about the hardware mapping of the device, understanding registers, sprites and sound chip. The repercussion of this was so great that Nintendo itself in America approached Yoshi for making company secrets freely available, when Yoshi only understood its hardware. Remember that this documentation was based on documents passed on by the programmer Dax, but that it was of little help to Yoshi's research. Yoshi's documentation helped in the creation in 1997 of the emulators ESNES, NLKSNES, NLKE, ZSNES and others. Yoshi also did something similar for the NES from 1997 onwards, with his documentation being used by emulators such as LandyNes, Nesticle and DarcNES. This documentation was called nestech.txt and was based on Marat Fayzullin's documentation, called nes.doc, which was the first NES documentation in the emulation world.

Jeremy Chadwick (2022)

Later, Marat himself shared Yoshi's version with people in the field. This is a leaner and easier-to-understand version, especially for programmers from generations after Marat's. Between 1996/97, Yoshi was also part of some project groups in the emulation world, such as Damaged Cybernetics, DAC, MTDS and OldSkoOL. Around 1997/98, he also contributed information to the websites EMUNews and Archaic Ruins. And regarding emulators, his first project was in late 1996, which he developed with his roommate, Mr. Snazz, called VeNES. Since he thought programming in another language would be more appropriate, he left the project around October/November 1996, and created the qNES project, alongside Riff's (pseudonym of Mike Perry). In April 1997, he left the project due to the prominence of NESticle in the emu scene.

Kid Ikarus (SNES)

He later joined the Super Kid Ikarus project, developing a homebrew of the game Kid Ikarus for the Super Nintendo, alongside VileWrath, and even releasing an alpha version. Around 1998, he moved away from the emulation world for a while. At the time, he deleted the yoshi.parodius.com page that he hosted on his portal, Parodius Networking, which provided network and security services in the region where he lived. Outside of the emulation world, he also provided work for companies such as E-ZNet, Electronic Arts, Full Market and Johnson & Associates. In July 1999, he returned to the emulation scene, now under the nickname Memblers/koitsu, revamping his Parodius Networking website solely for the emulation world and returning it as a portal. Within it, he hosts the Nesdev website, launched in December of the same year.

NesDev

Nesdev was intended to gather all technical content involving the NES and SNES consoles, including information on the 6502 processor that Yoshi disassembled and emulated for the QuickNES and the complete documentation of the SNES and NES consoles. The group that maintained the site with Yoshi was called NES Freaks, and over the course of 11 years, the emulators Tony Young, Ian Bell, Tennessee Carmel-Veilleux, Chris Covell, abonetochew, Quietust, Sergey Ryumik, among others, passed through it . They continued to work on the site until 2010. 

Parodius Network/Parodious

He was also a columnist on the Parodius Networking portal from October 1999, posting about the world of emulation and signing as JDC (the acronym for his real name). He alternated his nicknames over the years between JDC until the end of 2000, Yoshi until the end of 2002 and koitsu until 2010, and again JDC from 2010 until August 2012, when he closed the portal. The portal also hosted websites of emulator creators and content creators of the genre, such as Genecyst, NESticle, Demiforce, Nesworld, Archaic Ruins, among others. After that, in 2012, he created the Nesdev Wikipedia, making 729 articles about NES available in an easy and practical way. From 2017 onwards, he no longer updates the virtual encyclopedia. From 2001 until around 2005, he also had a website on the Crystalis portal. In 2018, he offered to help Bradley Smith of Infinite NES Lives in the creation of the NES game Lizard, also released for other systems, such as MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

GitHub

Yoshi also had a GitHub page. Among his projects, we have NSF Info in 2016, a data reader for NES/Famicom sound files, known by the .NSF extension, IPS.PL in 2016, a utility for creating and applying IPS patches based on the Perl programming language, hdmademo .smc in 2019, a demo created for the SNES in 1993, which he modified to work in new assemblers, among others. He also developed some programs for FreeBSD, a UNIX system for which he worked several times. Among the programs, we have Fortune Mod FreeBSD Classic in 2017, a tool that saves the classic files contained in the 'fortune' command used in FreeBSD and UNIX versions prior to 2017, which contained phases of humor, wisdom and historical reflections, to be used in recent versions of these systems, and BSDHwMon in 2018, a hardware monitoring program, such as temperature, ventilation and voltage. Yoshi also had some projects (authored and forked) related to the 6502, but nothing that was developed. He published 13 projects in total on his GitHub.

Corvallis High School and Oregon State University

Regarding his academic and professional life, he attended Corvallis High School in Corvallis, Oregon, from 1991 to 1994. There, he completed basic Mandarin and Chinese courses and computer science. His first job was as a volunteer at CSOS, the computer science extension services at Oregon State University, as an assistant UNIX systems administrator from 1991 to 1995. In 1995, he moved to San Francisco, California. His first paid job was as a technical support and administrative assistant for UNIX systems at MediaCity, between 1995 and 1996, in Palo Alto, California, near San Francisco. In 1999, he joined Surfsoft Consulting as a temporary employee in UNIX systems administration (once again working with this system), in Mountain View, California. One of the clients he works with is Verio, a company he joined that same year, also in Mountain View, and also as a UNIX systems administrator.

MediaCity, Surfsoft Consulting, Verio, CompuCom, Microsoft, Insight Global and Animoto

In 2001, he left the company and in 2002 he went to CompuCom in Mountain View, working with network and cyber security, providing services for Microsoft's Hotmail (e-mail) and WebTV Division (internet via TV). He left the company in 2003. As happened at Surfsoft, which provided services for Verio and was hired by the same company, he was hired in 2004 by Microsoft, where he provided services for CompuCom. Now, he works as an operations engineer, providing services for Tellme Networks, a company that offered automated response services in call centers, and was one of the largest in the US at the time. Unlike Jeremy's previous jobs, where he joined one company to provide services for another, and then was hired by that other company, in this case Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007, so Jeremy did not leave the company to work for the company he provided services for (laughs). He stayed at Microsoft until 2012, also in Mountain View. 

Demiforce, SmugMug and Proofpoint

In 2013, he joined Insight Global as a devops engineer, whose role is to integrate software development and IT teams to work together. He worked remotely, working for the customer service company [24]7 Inc. Insight is based in Campbell, California. In 2014, he joined the online video maker Animoto as a technical operations engineer, working remotely. The company is based in New York City. Demiforce followed in 2015, as a systems administrator and architect, working remotely, at a company based in San Francisco. The company managed the Trism app for iOS. In 2018, he got another remote job, this time at the photography company SmugMug in Mountain View, as an operations engineer. He left the company in 2021 and joined the cybersecurity company Proofpoint in 2022, in Sunnyvale, California, also working remotely, as a senior devops engineer, working on the infrastructure of a laboratory. At the time of writing, he was still working at the company.

Teriyaki Bento

In addition, he volunteered from 2008 to 2011 at Bento Teriyaki, a Japanese bento restaurant. He was friends with the restaurant's owners, the Yang family, so he helped them out on weekends in the kitchen, preparing food and doing general chores. It was during this time that he learned basic Korean during his weekly meetings. He currently lives in Mountain View, California, USA.

Dismantlers

TRaCER (65C816/6502) (1996)

Documentation:

Snes.txt (1994), Nestech.txt (1997)

Emulators:

6502 (1996), quickNES (1996)

Games:

Super Kid Ikarus (SNES) (1997)

Programs:

NSFInfo (2016), IPS.PL (2016), Fortune Mod FreeBSD Classic (2017), BSDHwMon (2018)

Demo Games:

hdmademo.smc (SNES) (2019)

Pete Bernert

Pete Bernert

Pete Bernert (BlueDove/BlackDove) was born in 1971 in Germany. After graduating in Computer Science in Mannheim, Germany, Pete worked as an MS-Windows programmer in the 1990s. Around 1998, he lived with his girlfriend Heike near Eberbach. Along with Kazzuya, Tratax, Duddie, Nik, Lewpy and Foxfire, Pete Bernert was the main developer of emulator plug-ins. With PSEmu introducing plug-in emulation in 1998, Pete was one of its first enthusiasts, creating plug-ins for video, sound and CD-ROM. The first of their plug-ins was Pete's TNT OpenGL for video in 1998, followed by Pete's OpenGL for video and Pete's Midas for sound in 1999, Pete's Soft and Pete's D3D for video in 2000, and Pete's DSound for sound and Pete's ASPI for CDR in 2001. Outside the PSEmu Pro project, other plug-ins were released, such as Pete's DX6 D3D and Pete's MesaGL Linux in 2000 and Pete's OpenGL2 PSX in 2003, both for video, and Pete's Linux Null in 2001 for sound.

Website Pete's Homepage (1998) and SourceForge

Pete's Domain Website: Home, PSX GPU, PSX SPU, PSX CDR, CGEmu and PSX Emu Frontends

What did all these plug-ins have in common? They worked on a variety of PSX emulators, including PSEmu Pro, Psyke, ePSXe, PCSX (and some of its famous forks), Xebra, and others. Pete also released plug-ins for PSX, which were later also used for the ZiNc arcade emulator, which ran Capcom's Sony ZN-1 and ZN-2, Taito FX1-A and FX1-B, and Namco System 11 boards, all based on Sony PlayStation software. These included PEOp.S. Windows Soft, Pete's Soft X11 Linux, PEOp.S. Linux Soft X, PEOp.S. Linux Soft SDL in 2001, Pete's OpenGL2 PSX, Pete's XGL2 Linux PSX in 2003, and Pete's Windows OGL/D3D PSX in 2005 for video, eP.E.Op.S. DSound (Pete's) and PEOp.S. Linux OSS (Pete's) in 2001 sound. In November 2001, he created the PEOp.S. (PSX Emulation Open Source) project, alongside Lewpy, lu_zero and linuzappz, to make his Windows and Linux PSX and PS2 plug-ins open source for anyone interested in coding them. Pete made the OpenGL/MesaGL plugins, Soft GPU forks, DSound Audio SPU and Pete's ASPI open source.

GPU: TNT OpenGL, OpenGL Windows and Windows Soft / SPU: MIDAS and DSound / CDR: ASPI

The PEOp.S. project inspired the creation of the SexyPSF player in 2003 by Xodnizel, which plays .PSF (Portable Sound Format) files of PSX game music. SexyPSF was also inspired by the PCSX emulator. In 2012, the Android SexyPSF Player was released, a similar player using the SexyPSF core, created by Lei Yu for Android. Pete has also created PS2-specific plug-ins, such as the PEOp.S. DVD plugin in 2003, and the PEOp.S. PS2 SPU2 and PEOpS SPU2 OSS sound plug-ins in 2004, for emulators such as PCSX2. Several of his PSX plug-ins have also been updated to work on PS2 emulators. Pete updated his plug-ins until 2009. In addition to the plug-ins, he also developed pixel shaders, which are programs that manipulate the pixels of images, adding shading, reflections, and color adjustments to games running with the OGL2 and XGL2 GPU plug-ins. However, this method will only work on graphics hardware that supports GLslang (GLSL), a programming language used to write shaders within the OpenGL ecosystem. 

Guest(r)'s Shader Collection

Pete Bernert

Shader effects include broken glass, texture layers, overlays, black and white, grayscale TV-like effects, blur effects for smoothing, brightness enhancement, 90-degree rotation, resolution enhancement and image refinement (scale2x), noise and contrast enhancement, more vibrant luminance and colors, and smoothing edges and improving the appearance of graphics (anti-aliasing). In addition, it also released a specific shader package, Guest(r)'s Shader Collection, with screen smoothing, visual enhancements, color interpolation (smooth transition between two known points), observation of the render buffer (where images are stored before being displayed on the screen) to determine resolution, color adjustment, brightness, contrast and saturation, color adjustment with anti-aliasing to improve 3D graphics, artistic texture for 3D graphics and cartoon style for 3D graphics.

PCSX

        

amaZiNc and ePSXeCutor

Many of the shaders in this package increase the screen resolution for games. With his work with plug-ins, he was called to be part of some emulation projects. Among them, in 2000, the PCSX project, an important PSX emulator, where he worked on the GPU plug-ins and the emulator's GUI (interface). He was on the project until 2001. In 2005, the ZiNc arcade project, working on the rendering part of SPU plug-ins. And in 2005, the CGEmu GameCube project, working on some graphics plug-ins. Pete also created front-ends for some emulators, such as ePSXeCutor for the PSX ePSXe and amaZiNc for the ZiNc arcade, both in 2004.

    

PSSwitch, NVColorProfiler and Pete's Media Player

In addition to plug-ins, he also developed programs such as PSSwitch, which was released in 1998 to support game configuration in PSEmu, saving the plug-in configuration for each game, since the plug-ins were very precarious and not all of them worked with all games; Pete's Media Player in 2008 to play MIDI files, which were famous at the time, all because the player he downloaded had problems (imagine creating a program because the one you downloaded doesn't work? It's not for everyone [laughs]); PsxGpuCheck in 2000, an application to test the Linux GPU Plugin; and NVColorProfiler in 2005, a tool to fix a bug in NVidia drivers, which messed up saved color patterns to work in certain games after the computer was restarted. More than twenty years after the creation of his plug-ins, they are still used to emulate games. Pete was undoubtedly one of the great innovators in the world of emulation.

Emulators:

PSEmu Pro (1998), PCSX (2001), CGEmu (2005)

Applications:

PSSwitch (1998), Pete's Media Player (1998), PsxGpuCheck (2000), NVColorProfiler (2005)

GPU Plugins (Windows):

Pete's TNT OpenGL GPU (1998), PEOp.S./Pete's OpenGL Windows PSX GPU (1999), Pete's Soft GPU (1999), Pete's D3D GPU (2000), Pete's DX6 D3D GPU (2000), Pete's PSX GPU (2000), Pete's PSX GPUs (Pete's OpenGL, D3D and Soft) (2000), PEOp.S. Windows Soft GPU (2001), Pete's OpenGL2 PSX GPU (2003), Pete's Windows OGL/D3D PSX (Pets's OpenGL, D3D and DX6 D3D) (2005)

GPU Plugins (Linux):

PEOp.S./Pete's MesaGL Linux GPU (2000), Pete's Soft X11 Linux GPU (2001), PEOp.S. Linux Soft X GPU (2001), PEOp.S. Linux Soft SDL GPU (2001), Pete's XGL2 Linux PSX GPU (2003)

SPU Plugins (Windows):

Pete's MIDAS Audio SPU (1999), PEOp.S./Pete's DSound Audio SPU (2001), PEOp.S. PS2 SPU2 DSound (2004)

SPU Plugins (Linux):

PEOp.S./Pete's Linux OSS Audio SPU (2001), Pete's Linux Null Audio SPU (2001), PEOp.S. SPU2 OSS (2004)

CD-R/CDVD Plugins:

Pete's ASPI/PEOp.S. CDR (2001), PEOp.S. CDVD (2003)

Pixel Shading (OGL2/XGL2):

Pete's "Gray" Shader (2004), Pete's "Simple Blur" Shader (2004), Pete's "Brightness" Shader (2004), Pete's "Rotation" Shader (2004), Pete's "Scale2x" Shader (2004), Renee Cousins' " Pseudo Median" Shader (2004), Renee Cousins' "Pseudo Median + Luminance" Shader (2004), Luigi's "Blur AA" shader (2004), Pete's "Broken Glass" Shader (2005), Pete's "Multitexture Demo" Shader (2005), Guest(r)'s Shader Collection (2006)

Front-ends:

ePSXeCutor (2004), amaZiNc (2004)

Specific Plugins (PSEmu Pro) [Replay]:

Pete's TNT (1998), Pete's OpenGL (1999), Pete's MIDAS (1999), Pete's Soft (2000), Pete's D3D (2000), Pete's DSound (2001), Pete's ASPI (2001)

Specific Plugins (ZiNc) [Replay]:

PEOp.S. Windows Soft (2001), Pete's Soft X11 Linux (2001), PEOp.S. Linux Soft X (2001), PEOp.S. Linux Soft SDL (2001), PEOp.S. DSound (Pete's) (2001), PEOp.S. Linux OSS (Pete's) (2001), Pete's OpenGL2 PSX (2003), Pete's XGL2 Linux PSX (2003), Pete's Windows OGL/D3D PSX (2005)

Zilmar

Project64 Website

Nicholas Zilmar was one of the most important figures in the Nintendo 64 scene. He knew a lot about the console's hardware, as well as the development of its plug-ins. He helped the N64 scene since 1999, such as in August 1999 with the 1964 emulator and others. That same year, he also gave information to the same emulator regarding the RSP coprocessor.

Due to his general knowledge of the console, the following year he released three text files explaining the best specifications for creating video, audio and control plug-ins for the console. These files became very well-known among the scene, which began to adopt them. These text files were updated and the plug-ins released under these specifications mentioned which versions of Zilmar's texts they had been created on. The source code for the specifications in question was open and free, free to be modified and added to plug-ins by anyone who wanted to, but with the requirement to include the name of their creator in the credits. These common plug-in files, as they were known, influenced the closed-source plug-in system of Nemu64, added to the emulator from April 1999 onwards.

The first emulator to use the Zilmar Spec standard was 1964 in July 2000, with the NooTe D3D video plug-in ported to it in May 2000. Other emulators to begin supporting the plug-ins were TR64 in October 2000, Apollo in December 2000, Daedalus in April 2001, Project64 in May 2001, Blade64 in September 2001, UltraHLE 2064 in December 2002, Nemu64 in March 2003, and Nice64 in 2011. Some emulators were not fully Zilmar Spec, such as Nemu64 and Nice64.

Plug-ins: Basic Keyboard, Basic CFB and Basic Audio

Zilmar mainly created basic plug-ins, such as the video plug-ins Zilmar's Basic CFB Plug-in in October 2000 and the Direct3D version in 2001, the audio plug-ins Zilmar's Basic Audio Plug-in in October 2000 and Zilmar's No Sound Plug-in in November 2000, and the control plug-ins Zilmar's Basic Keyboard Input Plug-in in December 2000.

Project64 and RSP Plug-in

Project64, as previously mentioned, was a project by Zilmar with Jabo, also a plug-in creator like Zilmar. It began in May 2001. The following month, he created the first RSP plug-in on the N64 scene, Zilmar's RSP LLE or just RSP Plug-in, which worked in conjunction with Jabo's DirectSound video plug-in. Before this, emulators used closed configurations of the coprocessor in question.

Throughout the 2000s, only the Project64, 1964 and Mupen64 emulators remained. With the end of 1964 in 2004 and Mupen64 in 2005, only Project64 remained, which in 2007 received competition from Mupen64Plus, a fork of Mupen64 that stopped using the Zilmar standard. Mupen64Plus stopped using many popular plug-ins that were released for Project64 because of this. One of the few Zilmar Spec plug-ins used in Mupen64Plus is GlineN64 from April 2015, as it also had functionality in the emulator's own system.

A curiosity. In December 2013, the HatCat's MLE RSP plug-in was released for Mupen64Plus and PJ64, also in Zilmar Spec. Its difference was that it was the first MLE (medium level) plug-in. Unlike the previously mentioned HLE and LLE, this was a type of plug-in only released for RSP (the N64 coprocessor), and unlike the classic plug-ins that needed video and audio plug-ins specific to their development levels, the MLE mixed HLE video plug-ins with LLE audio plug-ins, being highly regarded for N64 emulation in general.

Video plug-ins:

(1964) NooTe D3D in July 1999 (converted to Zilmar Spec in May 2000)
(1964/Apollo/PJ64) 1964 OpenGL Graphics in May 2000 (converted to Zilmar Spec in July 2000)
(TR64/1964) RCP Direct3D in October 2000
(TR64/Mupen64) TR64 OpenGL in October 2000
(1964/PJ64/Apollo/Mupen64) Zilmar Basic CFB Plug-in - plays 2D color framebuffer demos in October 2000
(Daedalus/1964/PJ64) Rice Video Graphics Plug-in 2001 (What Month?)
(PJ64/TR64/Apollo/1964) Jabo's Direct3D6 in January 2001
(Apollo) Azimer OpenGL in February 2001
(PJ64/TR64/Apollo/1964) Jabo's Direct3D7 in December 2001
(PJ64) Jabo's OpenGL in May 2001
(Daedalus) Daedalus Graphics October 2001
(PJ64/Mupen64/Mupen64Plus) Gonetz Glide64 in December 2001
(1964/PJ64) Zilmar Basic CFB D3D in 2001
(PJ64) NiGL (Nintendo Graphics Library) in April 2002
(Mupen64) Mupen64 GFX in July 2002
(Daedalus/1964/PJ64) RiceDaedalus/DaedalusD3D8 in July 2002
(TR64) Icepir8's Texture Dumping Plug-in in October 2002
(PJ64) RiceVideo Community Version (fork of Rice Video) in December 2002
(TR64/Mupen64) TR64 Direct3D in February 2003
(PJ64/Mupen64) Orkin glN64 plug-in in February 2003
(TR64) Icepir8's TR64 D3D plug-in in February 2003
(PJ64/Mupen64) Orkin Direct64 (based on glN64) in May 2004
(Nemu64) Lemmy's D3D8 plug-in in May 2004
(1964/1964 Unofficial) 1964 Video LLE Plug-in in November 2004
(PJ64) Jabo's Direct3D8 in March 2005
(PJ64) Rice's HiRez Texturing Plug-in (continuity from Rice Video) in April 2007
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Z64/Ziggy's LLE OpenGL in April 2007
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Arachnoid in June 2007
(1964 Unofficial) 1964 Video Plug-in (based on Rice Video) in April 2008
(1964mod/NICE64/ICE64) MyGlide64 in January 2012
(1964mod/NICE64/ICE64) MyGlideHQ in January 2012
(PJ64) Angrylion RDP in February 2012
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Gonetz GlideN64 (continuity from Glide64) in September 2014
(PJ64) Z64GL in February 2016 (forked from Z64)
(Mupen64Plus) "Static" RSP Interpreter / CXD4 RSP in March 2018
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus/P64) ParaLLEI N64 in June 2020
(PJ64) Project64-Video in May 2021

Audio plug-ins:

(1964) Steb Audio in January 2000 (converted to Zilmar Spec in October 2000)
(1964) Null Sound in October 2000
(1964/Apollo/PJ64/Daedalus) Zilmar's Basic Audio Plug-in - plays audio for demos in October 2000
(1964/PJ64/Apollo/Mupen64/Blade64) Zilmar's No Sound Plug-in in November 2000
(TR64/1964/Blade64) TR64 Audio UCode1 Plug-in in November 2000
(Daedalus/Apollo/Mupen64) Azimer's Audio Plug-in / HLE Audio Plug-in in April 2001
(PJ64/1964) Jabo's DirectSound in May 2001
(PJ64) Project64-Audio in May 2021
(TR64) TR64 HLE Audio Plug-in in September 2001
(1964/PJ64/Mupen64) Audio Beta in January 2002
(Daedalus/Apollo) Azimer's LLE Audio Plug-in in December 2002
(PJ64/1964) Schibo's Audio Plug-in in October 2003
(1964 Unofficial) 1964 Audio Plug-in in April 2008
(1964mod) 1964mod Audio Plug-in in January 2012
(NICE64) NICE64 Audio Plug-in in April 2012
(ICE64) ICE64 Audio Plug-in in October 2012
(PJ64/1964/Mupen64) Shunyuan's HLE Audio Plug-in in April 2013

Input plug-ins:

(1964/Blade64) NooTe DirectInput Plug-in in May 2000 (converted to Zilmar Spec in October 2000)
(TR64/1964) TR64 Input Plug-in in October 2000
(1964/Apollo/Mupen64) Zilmar's Basic Keyboard Input Plug-in in December 2000
(TR64) TR64 DirectX8 Input Plug-in in January 2001
(PJ64) DesktopMan's Basic Keyboard in January 2001
(PJ64/1964) Orkin's Input Plug-in in February 2001
(PJ64/Apollo/Blade64/1964/TR64) SJR's Adaptoid Interface Plug-in/Adaptoid Plug-in in April 2001
(PJ64/1964) Jabo's DirectInput/DirectInput7 in May 2001
(PJ64/Apollo/Blade64/1964/TR64) SJR's N64 Virtual Pad Plug-in June 2001
(PJ64/1964) Def's N64 Direct Input in July 2001
(PJ64/Apollo/1964/TR64/Mupen64) N-Rage DirectInput8 / N-Rage Input in August 2001
(Blade64) Blade64 Input Plug-in in August 2001
(TR64) TR64 LLE Adaptoid Plug-in in January 2002
(PJ64/Mupen64) Darkman DirectInput Plug-in / Pad Plug-in in August 2004
(PJ64) Billard's Xinput plug-in in February 2008
(1964 Unofficial) 1964 Input Plug-in (based on N-Rage Input) in April 2008
(PJ64) NetPlay Input Plug-in (runs in conjunction with N-Rage) in November 2010
(1964mod) 1964mod Input Plug-in in January 2012
(NICE64) NICE64 Input Plug-in in April 2012
(ICE64) ICE64 Input Plug-in in October 2012
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Pokopom PSX Pad Plug-in in February 2012
(PJ64) Shunyuan's Directinput Plug-in in August 2013
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Raphnetraw in January 2017
(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) N64 Input Serial Plug-in in March 2018
(PJ64) Project64-Input in May 2021

There was supposedly a control plug-in called DesktopMan's DirectInput Plug-in, but this information has not been confirmed.

RSP Plugins:

(PJ64) Zilmar's RSP LLE/RSP Plug-in (was required for Jabo's DirectSound video plug-in) in July 2001

(Mupen64/PJ64/1964) Hacktarux-Azimer HLE Mupen64 HLE RSP in January 2002

(PJ64/Mupen64Plus) Z64 RSP LLE/Ziggy RSP LLE (required for Z64 video plug-in) as of April 2007

(1964/PJ64/Mupen64Plus) HatCat's RSP Plug-in with SSE in August 2013

(1964/PJ64/Mupen64Plus) HatCat's MLE RSP in December 2013