Emulator and Rom Sites - Part 3

EmuForce

EmuForce was created in 1998 by Marco de Cesare and Mark Jackson alongside a team. In addition to the standard, reporting on the progress of emulation projects, it also talked about and made available for download emulators for various consoles and portables from Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Sony and others, as well as computers from Commodore, Atari, Macintosh and others. On each of the pages, it made an outline of the hardware, and left its emulators with a brief summary about it, as well as its main updates. It also made available pages such as utilities, front-ends, midis, articles and others. It had an active forum until 1999. It also did some interviews between 1998 and 2000, such as with the creators of PCSX, Corn, AGES, DGen, ZSNES, AdriPSX and others. In 2000, it hosted the emulation sites FPSE and PCSX for PSX and Gens for Mega Drive. In the year 2000, it also changed the layout and logo of the site. The site closed its doors in early 2001 and went offline in the middle of the same year.

In 1999, two major Brazilian emulation portals emerged, Emulação Online (later known simply as Emulação) and Emulando. At a time when few people in Brazil spoke English and online translators simply did not exist, and to have one you had to pay and still make a bad translation, having Brazilian websites explaining a little about the world of emulation was essential. 

Emulação Online

Emulação Online (Online Emulation) was created by Hugo Arts, and mainly featured news about the emu scene. It also provided downloads of emulators for the most popular arcade, console and portable systems, with a brief summary of each of these hardwares. As for ROMs, it had a search directed to third-party sites, also for the main emulated systems. It also provided some translations and tips for games (which was something very common for us Brazilians at the time) and midi versions of game music, another internet passion at the time. In 2000, it left the cjb.net domain and went to the .com.br domain, changing its name to just Emulação and updating its layout. It changed its layout every year, having done so between 2001 and 2007.

Emulação

Its banner changed between 2001 and 2005, ceasing to be used in 2007, and keeping only the website logo written emulação.com.br (emulation), which had been on the page since 2006, as a list. In 2000, the website was mentioned in the newspapers Folha de São Paulo and Jornal Informa, from Bahia. In 2001, it was also mentioned in the newspaper Jornal a Tarde, from Salvador, Jornal O Globo, from Rio de Janeiro, and in the magazine Start about computers. In 2003, it created its own forum, called EmuFórum. In 2005, it began to create articles about emulation and gaming hardware systems in general. That year, it also began to make online games available on the website. Among them were several classics adapted to the flash language, such as Tetris, Frogger, Megaman, PacMan, Street Fighter II, Sonic and others. The website ended in 2008, going offline in 2009.

Emulando

 

Emulando (Emulating) focused exclusively on emulators and ROMs for arcades, PCs, consoles and portables, with good summaries about each piece of hardware. Created by Reinaldo Siloto, the site grew over time and many new things appeared. In 2000, it created its own forum, in addition to a section for classic online games, such as Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and others. In the same year, a utilities section was also added, with programs for MS-DOS, downloads and music. The page's chat was created in 2001, the same year that Shop EMULANDO was created, which posted products and promotions for purchase.

Emulando

In 2001, the website was hosted on virgula.com.br, but kept the .com.br domain. In 2002, the website created a specials section, where it gave tips on adapting console controls to PCs, as well as talking about games and movies. From 2006 onwards, the website also had its own blog. In addition to all this, the website also gave away prizes, such as Gameboy Advances and even appearances on programs such as Pânico on Rádio Jovem Pan in SP, which was very popular at the time. The website changed its layout and logo once a year between 2000 and 2006, except in 2001. The website existed until 2006. In 2007, it was taken offline with the promise of being relaunched with a new look, but this never happened.

Emula Brasil

Still in Brazil, other relevant Brazilian emulation sites emerged in 1999, such as Emula Brasil (Emulate Brazil), which focused on downloading ROMs and emulators for consoles, arcades and portables, as well as special articles and interviews with emulation personalities, such as Zoop from the Meka SMS project and the creator of the Central Brasileira de Traduções (CBT) website. The site closed in 2000. JC Emulation News also emerged in the same year, with the same emulator and ROM proposal as Emula, but more extensive. They also made plug-ins, translations and utilities available for download. The site closed in 2002 and its content was taken offline in 2010.

CBT – Central Brasileira de Traduções

Last but not least, there was the CBT website – Central Brasileira de Traduções (Brazilian Translation Center), created by EAR_CLOCK in 1999. This was the first Brazilian website dedicated to translating ROMs. The first game translated was Chrono Trigger in 1999. Also in 1999, translations were released for games such as Captain Commando, Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy 5 for Super Nintendo, Pokémon Blue, Red and Yellow for Gameboy Color, Final Fantasy I and Dragon Warrior I and III for NES and Ales Kidd, Zillion and Golden Axe Warrior for Master System. They also released translations for Mega Drive and Game Gear. The project also included handouts written by the group members with step-by-step instructions for translating a ROM, utilities to help with translations, contact information for translators, ongoing projects, links to similar websites, among others. Here are some interesting facts about the members. Omar Cornut, aka Zoop, a Frenchman who created the Meka emulator for MASTER SYSTEM, was also part of the project. Another well-known figure was Emuboarding, famous at the time for creating one of the biggest Mugen projects on the internet, Dragon Ball Z – Mugen Edition, which used characters from Super Nintendo and Mega Drive games, as well as instrumentals, sound effects and scenarios. The site even started translating Final Fantasy 3 for NES and Zelda64 for Nintendo 64, but never finished them or released them. They also had several other translations for the aforementioned consoles, including Playstation, but they never released them either. The site closed its doors with 42 translations in total in the year 2000. Its content remained online until around 2003.

Emuita

Outside of Brazil, other relevant websites emerged in 1999. The Italian Emuita also became famous. Founded by Antonio Sacchetti, Spino focused not only on updates on video game emulators, but also on computers. From the beginning, it also made available downloads of emulators for consoles and portables from Atari, NEC, Sega, Nintendo and Sony, as well as arcades and PCs. Another section of the website was the interview section. Created in 2001, it featured interviews with people such as David Raingeard from the Calice emulator for CPS-1 and 2 and Razoola from the CPS2Shock project. In 2000, it created a chat, its own forum and a utility page with bios, MS-DOS files, front-ends, compressors, and the RomCenter and Good Tools ROM checkers, for DOS and Windows respectively, for various console, PC and portable emulators.

Emuita

In 2000, he also created a section for ROMs of the main gaming hardware and PCs, but took it offline shortly after, most likely due to copyright issues. Because of this, the following year, he created a search engine for ROMs on Italian sites of the genre. Also in 2000, along with the ROMs section, he created a section for rare arcade ROMs, such as games like X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Vendetta, Shinobi, Pang! 3 and others. This section remained on the site. In 2011, he began to support online arcade game rooms. From 2012 onwards, he also began to advertise an Italian Wikipedia, called EmuWiki, created in 2010. Perhaps members of the group participated in it. Its layouts were changed in 2002, around 2010/2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The logo was changed only once, in 2002, placed on different banners in subsequent layout updates. The site went offline in 2017.

Emulation64

Emulation64 was another relevant website. Created to promote the Nintendo 64 emulation scene by Martin in 1999, it reported on the progress of all emulation projects and plug-ins for the console, as well as making them available for download. It also made available the game compatibility list for each project. In addition, it published all the websites of the projects and those linked to Nintendo 64 emulation. In addition, it also featured some demos for download. In 2000, it began to feature interviews, articles, documents and other content, as well as reviews of games, software and hardware, utilities and much more. Regarding interviews, in 2000, it spoke with those responsible for projects such as TRWin, 1964 and Nemu64 and in 2001 with the Apollo project. It returned in 2004, interviewing leaders of projects such as PCSX2 for the Playstation 2, Saturnin for the Sega Saturn, and FPSE for the PC Engine.

Emulation64

In 2005, the Yabause projects for Sega Saturn, Gens for Mega Drive, Mupen64 and Project64 for Nintendo 64 and others. The interviews ended in 2006. In 2001, they began to address the Dreamcast, Playstation and Gameboy Advance projects in the same way, with a page about each project, etc. But they also addressed other emulators in the news, such as Playstation 2. At the end of 2001, they stopped focusing on Playstation, and in 2002, they returned to focusing on Nintendo 64, not failing to talk about projects for other consoles in their news. From 2003 onwards, they began to increase their focus and talk about several other projects in the site's news. In 2004, they began to be part of a network, which had the DCEmu sites, which talked about Dreamcast and the EmuTalk forum, which also had as its main focus the emulation of Nintendo 64.

Emulation64

In 2005, the site underwent a major upgrade and began to make available for download emulators for nearly five dozen systems, including consoles, arcades, handhelds, PCs, cell phones and others. From consoles, handhelds and arcades, it made available emulators from the first generations to the most modern ones, such as Playstation 2, XBox, GameCube, Nintendo DS and PSP. Regarding its layout updates, it always did so at the end of each year, having made these changes in 1999, 2000 and 2002. At the end of 2003, it returned to using its 2001 layout. In 2005, it created a new layout again, and in 2006 it created its definitive layout, which is used to this day. Its logos were modified in 2000, 2001, 2002 (twice), 2005 and 2006 (which became the definitive logo). In 2003 and 2004, it returned with the 2001 and 2000 logos. Its last update was at the end of 2020. As of April 2021, the site is closed, and its address redirects to the EmuTalk website.

Emulation HQ

The Emulation HQ website, known as EmuHQ, was created by American Ben Welch-Bolen in early 1999. It was inspired by Ben's old website, The Unofficial UltraHLE Project for Nintendo 64. Its purpose was to cover only the new generation of consoles, known at the time as NextGen, but later began to cover emulation as a whole. The website had the help of partners Nach, Peter, Eric, Kazuya and Scav. In the beginning, the website reviewed games, peripherals, such as joysticks, and conducted interviews, mainly on the Nintendo 64 scene, which it was close to, as well as updates on various emulation projects of the time. In addition, it made available several emulators for arcades, consoles and portables, from Sega, Nintendo, Atari, Sony and others, as well as emulator and music applications. Another thing it was known for was hosting.

Emulation HQ

Among them, there were TrueReality, TRWin, Corn and 1964 Nintendo 64 emulators, VisualBoy Gameboy, Bleem Playstation, as well as emulation sites such as RomCenter in 1999. In 2000, it hosted SleepNES and SadNES for NES and Impact for Arcade. VisualBoy Advance for Gameboy Advance, Nemu64 and UltraHLE for Nintendo 64 and CD-ice for Phillips CD-I in 2001. Among other emulators over time, it hosted Atari Jaguar, Playstation, MAME, NeoGeo, Saturn, Nintendo 64 and Master System. It was considered one of the sites that hosted the most emulation projects. Around 2002/03, it restricted itself more to articles, reviews and information about emulation projects. It returned with download in 2004. Regarding its layouts, it changed in mid-1999, 2001, between 2002/03, in 2004, when it returned with the layout of 2000, 2005 and 2008. The site existed until the end of 2009.

Geoshock

The Geoshock website was created in mid-1999. Its content included downloads of emulation utilities, patches, bios, and more. It also included emulators for Arcade, Nintendo 64, Playstation, Saturn, Super Nintendo, and NeoGeo Pocket. The ROMs were mainly for arcade games, as well as for NG Pocket and TurboGrafx 16. In early 2001, the ROMs section was removed due to legal issues at the time. It also provided several reviews of arcade games, some articles, SNK scans, and more. In 2001, it also gave a slight update to its layout, and a slight modification to its logo in 2002.

Geoshock

From mid-1999 to 2000, he also conducted several interviews with influencers in the scene, such as webmasters of important sites, dumpers, creators of game FAQs, as well as creators of emulators, such as Hu-Go!, NeoRage and MAME, among others. In 2007, he changed his layout and logo, reducing his site to Nintendo 64, NeoGeo, Super Nintendo, ROMs of these and other systems, Playstation bios, some CD and DVD utilities and others. In 2009, there was another update of sections, adding MAME games. The site had another change of layout/logo in 2010, leaving only an inexplicable review text of the game Metal Slug X and no other sections on the site. This remained online until 2021. The last actual update of the site was in 2009.

Emu-France

The Emu-France website was an important French emulation portal created in 1999 by Rico2000. Its beginnings covered the basics of emulation, with news, downloads, articles, utilities and ROM demos. In addition to the good collection, information and rare versions of emulators, its other distinguishing feature was the translations. The website was responsible for translating several games for Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Master System, PC Engine, Playstation, NeoGeo, NES, among others. Several emulators were also translated, such as Super Nintendo, Playstation, Nintendo 64, NES, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Arcade, Mega Drive, Atari and many others.

Emu-France

The translations were not only done by the site's team, but also by third parties and placed there. Early on, in 2002, it also became known for hosting several emulation sites, such as the Calice arcade emulator and another version of the CPS2 Shock project site. In 2013, the layout and logo were changed to the standard we know today. The French portal originated from another project, RC-Roms, a site created by Rico in 1999, which already featured emulators, ROM demos, translations and utilities. Regarding its domain, it started using emu-france.info, and around 2002, it changed its domain to emu-france.com. The Emu-France portal is updated to this day.

FreeRoms

The last site from 1999 that we will talk about is the FreeRoms site. Much better known today, the site started out talking mainly about Nintendo 64 emulation, then expanding to download ROMs for Mega Drive, Atari, PC Engine and Arcade. In 2000, it posted ROMs for NES and Super Nintendo and in 2002 for Nintendo 64. In 2005, the site started to receive a lot of traffic. In 2007, the site boomed, posting ROMs for other Sega consoles, Atari, Arcade and even PC. In 2009, it expanded its range even further. At the end of 2009, it gave its layout a slight update, in 2010, it changed its layout and logo, and in 2017, it changed its layout, remaining that way to this day. Today, it is considered one of the largest ROM download sites in the world.