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.