The History of NES Emulators - Part 3

NESticle (1997)

NESticle

It was released on April 3, 1997 for MS-DOS by Icer Addis, from the Bloodlust Software team. It is simply considered the greatest emulator of all time, and the most used in the 1990s. It is the first free playable NES emulator. The emulator had many interesting functions for the time, such as save state, online play, editing game graphics and recording audio and videos of the games. Another difference of the emulator was the possibility of running on simple computers of the time, such as a 486, for example.

NESticle (Interface/Menus)

NESticle used NES.DOC, which was the console hardware documentation created by Marat Fayzullin for the creation of the iNes. In addition, Y0SHi and other influencers in the scene helped the project with the sound. Other people in the field also helped with the project, such as Neill Corlett, Neil Bradley, the website Zophar, among others. The Windows version of the emulator was released in August 1997, known as NESticle 95, because it ran on Windows 95, Microsoft's most current system at the time, and had three updates in total, the last one being in September 1997.

NESticle (Bubble Bobble Part 2)

An interesting fact about its name. It was a combination of NES (Nintendo Entertainment System, the little Nintendo) and testicle, from the English testicle (believe it or not). The name is as bizarre as the trashy visuals used in its emulators. A cracker named Donald Moore stole the emulator's source code, and since then Icer Addis decided to discontinue the project, which ended in August 1998, with the last version of the emulator in DOS mode, known as x.xx. In a survey conducted by the famous emulator website, Zophar in May 1998, it was found that 26.6% of the users who participated had had their first experience in the world of emulation through NESticle, followed by 20.7% by others and 20.5% by Virtual GameBoy.

xNes (1997)

xNes

xNes began to be developed in 1997 by Nicolas Hamel, known as Shin Gouky, alongside David Michel from Magic Engine, who in turn was one of those responsible for creating the source code and one of the most important for the first operation of the emulator. One of the first versions of the emulator was released around September 1997 for MS-DOS. At the end of 1997, Robert Rosario, known as Skeletor, and Brad Oliver, known as Bradman, joined the project and helped with the coding of the emulator. At that time, David was no longer part of the project. In October, the Linux version was released by Chuck Manson and in November for MacOS by Richard Bannister. Both were also part of the xNes team. Another person who was also part of the team was Jeff Mitchell, from the Retrocade and MAME projects, most likely trying to port the emulator to the UNIX system. xNes used Marat Fayzullin's 6502 emulator. Its emulation was good in terms of colors and had good compatibility, but it did not support sound and the emulation was accelerated (like most emulators at the time), so that it could run at a speed considered normal on very slow computers.

xNes (Dig Dug)

It ran well on a Pentium 1 computer with 8MB of RAM. On current PCs, it is almost impossible to play due to the speed of the games. It was a line-code game, but promised a GUI in the future, as well as sound support. Regarding the ROMs, it ran in the .NES format of Marat's iNes emulator. Its last version was released in November 1997. In January 1998, they announced the discontinuation of the emulator and released its source code. Despite this, the Linux version continued and was released in October 1998. The project had the help of important people. In addition to Marat, Shawn from the Allegro library, Yoshi with his nestech.doc documentation, Loopy for the color palette, and Zoop from the Meka SMS project for hosting the project's website. After the end of the project, Brad Oliver and Richard Bannister joined forces to create the MESS project for multi-emulation of computers, consoles and portable devices. The emulator was released in March 1998, and the first system emulated in the project was the NES, born from the old xNes code brought to the project by Brad and combined with Matt Conte's sound code. The xNes also had a fork released in June 1998, by Brazilian Fabiano Lopes, known as Fx3, called Rocknes. Bannister also ported this fork to MacOS.

Nofrendo (1998)

Nofrendo

Nofrendo was released by Matt Conte on February 8, 1998 for MS-DOS. In late 1997, Matt contributed to the XGS projects for Apple II and PCAE for Atari 2600. That's when he had the idea of ​​having his own project. Developed in partnership with DripWare Software, Nofrendo featured Neil Bradley's 6502 processor, .STA format for save state, compatibility with NESticle (and changed to .RTX format in the latest version of the emulator), gamepad and keyboard support, digital sound, volume control, five video modes, two types of selectable color palettes, screenshot, reset, frameskip, among others. Its distinguishing feature was its sound emulator, which was later used in other projects, such as MESS and MAME in 2000 and Squeem, Nester and UONester in 2001. Its palettes were also used in the Squeem emulator in 2001. In addition, the emulator had good speed and compatibility, and worked well on slow PCs, such as Pentium 1. Despite this, it had several bugs with the background images of some games. The creation of the project was quite unusual. Matt just wanted to show himself that he could create an NES emulator. His friends liked it so much that he was forced to make it available to the public. Matt always aimed for precision, trying to make the emulator as faithful as possible to the original console.

Nofrendo (Donkey Kong Jr.)

Its unusual name originated from the term No-Friend-o, known to refer to Nintendo addicts. The project had the help of several influencers in the scene, such as Neil Bradley, Sardu from NESticle, Marat Fayzullin from iNes, Jeremy Chadwick, Yoshi from Nestech.txt, John Dullea from PCAE, Paul Robson from A26, among others. In March 1998, it released its last version, but continued working on the project. Around June 1998, it was rewriting the project, and still released some updates during 1999. In 2000, it officially decided to close the project. In May 2001, a pre-version for Linux was released, known as Nofrendo SDL, created by Neil Stevens in partnership with Matt. It also came with its source code to be ported or forked. Because it was SDL, it allowed ports to several systems. Matt also became known for utilities from the NES scene, such as NEStoFAM for the .FAM format exclusively for the Famicom.exe emulator and CajoNES, the continuation of the same program expanded for the PRG/CHR formats of the Pasofami emulator, both respectively in February and July 1997, in addition to the NES music player in the .NSF format, called Nosefart released for DOS and Winamp in May 1999, and which also used his sound emulator. In addition, he also helped in projects such as XGS for Apple II and PCAE for A2600 in 1997 and the NES projects, LoopyNES, JNes and FCE Ultra in 1999. Around April 2001, he also created the Nes6502 (known as the fast 6502 core), an emulator of the NES CPU, used in the Squeem, RockNES and Nester emulators in the same year of its creation. This processor was never used in your Nofrendo.

 

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The History of NES Emulators - Part 2

Famicom Emulator (1996)

In 1996, another Famicom emulator was released in Japan, the Famicom Emulator, also known as DirectX Famicom Emulator, created by M. Kami. Its first known version was released in May 1996, version 2.4 for Windows 3.1 and 95. The emulator included some demos and only ran ROMs in PRG/CHR formats, extensions used in Pasofami, but it had low compatibility. There was a 50% English translation patch for this version made by Acey. A version 3.0 was released, but it required version 2.4a to work. We do not know if DirectX support began at the beginning or the following year. There is almost no information about this emulator. In May 1996, M. Kami also released an emulator for Super Famicom called Super Famicom Emulator for MS-DOS, with only version 1.01 being known.

LandyNes (1996) 

LandyNes

It was created by Alex Krasivsky, who released a beta version (a prototype in fact) on September 8, 1996 for MS-DOS, which ran only simple, slow games with no sound, and was also known as DC NES. An official version of LandyNes was never actually released. The project was left aside, and ended up helping the creation of Marat Fayzullin's iNes emulator. Alex actually gave up on the project in 1997, with the release of NESticle.

iNes (InterNes) (1996)

iNes

The project began in 1996, actually with Russian Alex Krasivsky, who found some Famicom programming information on the Internet and wrote the original code (it remains to be seen whether this leak was from the original Famicom hardware programming, or from the hacking that Pasofami suffered. Who knows?). As the project progressed, Alex lost interest in it, and Marat rewrote the code for him. Meanwhile, Marat encouraged Alex to copy features of the original Famicom hardware to transform into support for various cartridges, and add-ons for the emulator. His first version was released on September 9, 1996 for Windows, titled 0.5. Marat also brought versions for FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris and other UNIX systems. John Stiles and Marcel de Kogel made ports respectively for Macintosh and Linux. All of these versions in the year of release.

iNes (Unix/X)

Initially, the emulator already supported 85% of the console's games, which in fact makes it the first playable NES emulator. But this came at a price, US$35. Only the Windows version was paid. The MS-DOS version was reported to be under development between 1996 and 1997. It is not known when it was released, but from 2005 onwards it was reported on Marat's website that it came with the Windows version. Around June 1997, an online version was released on the Kagi website, also shareware. The emulator also had its own game format, .NES, which became the standard format used to this day. Due to piracy, Marat decided not to release the source code or freeware versions for MS-DOS and Windows, releasing only versions for the UNIX system. The Macintosh version was also freeware.

iNes 6.1

iNes (Menu/About)

Marat didn't like Windows programs, his origins were always with Macintosh. In addition, he had become frustrated with the piracy that had occurred a few hours after the first release of the emulator. Over time, the price of the DOS and Windows versions dropped, reaching $25 in 2006, $19.99 in 2008, and finally becoming free in 2015. The last version for MS-DOS came out in 2014. From 2015 onwards, he simultaneously released versions for Windows and Linux. His latest version of the emulator was released in March 2021. In 2011, he launched iNes-Android for smartphones. In 2019, he integrated iNes-Android into his multi-system emulator also for Android, called VGBAnext, which ran all three Gameboys. Marat already had classic emulators for these systems, and the well-known VGBA from which the multi-emulator originated. VGBAnext was last updated in August 2024.

NESA (1996)

NESA

Also in 1996, NESA (Nintendo Entertainment System In Assembler) was developed by Paul Robson, the same creator of the A26 for Atari 2600, using the same base to develop NESA. The project was launched in September 1996 for MS-DOS, having already released its beta version in the same month. The difference with iNes was not only that it was free, but also that it released the source code to help other developers in the field. NESA had no sound, joypad support and little game compatibility, but it promised all of this in future versions. Despite this, it ran well on simple PCs, such as 386 with 640kbs of RAM. In 1997, the project was discontinued and migrated to TNES, which was an emulator with more robust tools and resources than the old emulator. The sources of its programming survived and provided the basis for several other subsequent emulators. The project officially closed on January 1, 1998.

NESA (Ducktales)

An interesting fact. Paul said in an interview that CPU power was so limited that the first emulators reduced games from 60 to 10 frames per second. Imagine how difficult it would be to play something like that? Another interesting fact that Paul mentioned is that some Gameboy emulators hacked the PC's VGA card, that is, the video card of the time, to achieve a resolution similar to the portable one, without a drop in quality or frames like in the first NES emulation projects, such was the scarcity of virtual resources.

Famicom (Fami/Famicom.exe) (1997)

Famicom.exe

The Famicom emulator, known simply as Fami or Famicom.exe, was released in February 1997 by Japanese developers Taka2 and Nori for Windows. Its first version required the execution of ROMs in its own format, FAM, which required a NES format converter. This converter (called NEStoFAM) was developed by Matt Conte. In version 2 of the emulator, the FAM format was modified, becoming the emulator's default from then on. Only a few FAM format games from the first version were executed. The emulator came with real NES sound and competed with NESA in the freeware category. It had two advantages: speed and sound quality.

Famicom.exe (Menus)

Its first version was in Japanese, but from the second version SoM2Freak, Zofo and VmprHntrD (Vampire Hunter D) created EFamicom, which replaced the executable with an English version, serving for subsequent versions released. These modified versions were known as FamiE. In version 3, it began to have support for the joypad, in addition to modifications in the color palettes. In version 4, Famicom Disk System games began to work. From version 4.01e of October 1998, the authors began to include the English version in the original emulator, and develop one in parallel with the help of MEGABYTE. After a few more versions in English and Japanese, they released their own version, 100% in English and the last of the emulator, 4.04, in November 1998. Fami ran smoothly on a Pentium 1 100MhZ with 32 MB of memory. Despite the emulator's advantages, one of its main problems was the inability of 85% of ROMs with sizes above 64Kb to be executed. An erratum. Initially this emulator erroneously credited Seil as its creator, something that was denied in the emulator's own readme in later releases by the project's creators.

 

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The History of NES Emulators - Part 1

Family Computer Emulator (Famicom Emulator) (1990)

Famicom Emulator (English Docs)

The first NES and console emulator was the Family Computer Emulator, developed in 1990 by Haruhisa Udagawa. Udagawa was a developer who worked for Namco, Sonic Team, and KAZe. For Sonic Team, for example, he helped program Sonic Jam in 1997. Released on December 12, 1990, the Family Computer Emulator ran only a few games, such as Donkey Kong, Xevious, Famicom Tennis, Mario Bros, and Space Invaders (these were games that Udagawa tested).

Famicom Emulator (Original Docs)

Despite this achievement, the emulator ran slowly, without sound and required a certain amount of ROM size, pixel size and graphic quality to be executed. Something very primitive. It also only ran ROMs in .bin format. The version released in December 1990 was prominently 0.35, which leads us to believe that there were many other versions of the emulator before this stable version. The system only ran on the Sharp 68k computer. Other sources say that it only ran on a Japanese computer called FM Towns. The author said that it ran on FM Towns and MS-DOS. The project was not taken forward.

Famicom For Mega Drive (1991)

Yuji Naka

The following year, an NES emulator for the Mega Drive began to be developed. It was one of the first video game emulators in the world and the first to run on another console. The person responsible for the emulator was Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog. Yuji's intention was simply to show his peers what he could do. The project never went ahead. Yuji has a long summary. He programmed the four Sonic games for the Mega Drive, as well as the two Nights for the Sega Saturn, and the two Phantasy Star games for the Master System. Space Harrier, OutRun and Black Belt for the Master System were also programmed by him.

Pasofami (1993)

Pasofami

The third NES emulation project, and what is officially considered the first, was developed in 1992 by a Japanese man, Nobuaki Andou, and released in April 1993 for the FM Towns computer and MS-DOS system. It requires 2MB of RAM to run. Despite its history, it was also a very deficient emulator, with MIDI sound and limited instrumentation on each channel, which resulted in low sound quality, and only sprite emulation that limited the quality of the games. Over time, the emulator was improved, but very slowly. In addition to being a paid program, with a free game time limit of 5 minutes and all in Japanese, it also requires technical knowledge to run the games. In conclusion, his system was pirated and distributed worldwide. In return, Nobuaki allowed sales only to Japanese people, and installed malware in the program to format the hard drive of anyone who obtained the program illegally. Around 1996, it began to support Windows 3.1 and 95. One of the first versions of this phase was 2.6b from July 1996. This version included the ability to record images in BMP and sound in MIDI. Around 1997, a version with support for DirectX began to be released. One of the first was released in February 1997 at 1.1a. From the DirectX versions forward, thanks to the support of DirectSound, it began to make sound channels available in PCM as well. The releases continued until version 2.8e in October 1998. In December 1998, Pasofami '99 was released. This version became 32-bit, unlike the previous one which was improved to 32-bit thanks to DirectX. It runs on both Windows and FM-TOWNS. Still in 1998, version 0.0j was released, which accepted ROMs compressed in ZIP and LZH with extensions .NES, .NEZ (with Z) and .PSO. In January 1999, version 1.0a was released with support for Windows NT and the English language, although the documentation and part of the menus were still in Japanese.

Pasofami

The following versions released throughout 1999 and early 2000 also added several improvements, such as improved sound, playback speed, improvements in MIDI sound, with the possibility of saving sound files in .MID, improved save state and expanded to 10 recording slots, player for playing NSF files, which are sound files from NES games, support for Famicom Disk System, improvements in the front-end, display of 16 sound channels, support for netplay, as well as several improvements in menus and ROM folders. One difference in the emulator was that it had ROMs in its own formats created by Nobuaki. They were divided into two files, usually .PRG and .CHR, but there were also .PRM and .700 formats. These were the first NES ROM extensions created. In March 2000, it began to support loading save states from the famous NESticle emulator, in addition to the possibility of saving sprites in BMP format. In June 2000, it introduced the ability to set the volume of each sound output channel in real time, as well as mixing the MIDI and PCM sound output channels. In July 2000, it began supporting video recording in AVI format and support for extracting/sucking NES cartridges and saving them in .NES format to be played in the emulator. All the user needed was a convert to do so. This support for extracting ROMs, the famous ripping or dumping, became one of the emulator's main tasks over the years. In September 2000, it released its latest version as Pasofami 99 and in December 2000 it went back to being called just Pasofami, and began to preliminarily add Gameboy emulation. Around September 2001, it began supporting the Super Nintendo, four years after discontinuing its Super Pasofami emulator. In February 2002, it stopped supporting the English version. In June 2002, he created another player, now with the ability to play sound files (non-NSF) in WAV, MP3 and MID formats. In December 2002, he developed Pasodisk, a floppy disk for the Famicom Disk System to rip games from the Famicom add-on, costing 2,900 yen including shipping. This service was limited to users with a Pasodisk registration.

Chameleon USB

In February 2003, it added support for Chameleon USB, a device created in January 2002 by the company Optimize that allowed games to be extracted from cartridges. Over time, Nobuaki was able to detect cartridges from different consoles and rip them via Pasofami. In 2003, the emulator was able to extract (the famous ripping) cartridges from SFC, GG and MD in March, SMS in April, PCE, GB, GBC, GBA and MSX in May, 32X, Sega Mark III, SC-3000, SG-1000, MSX2 and Neo Geo Pocket in August and Nintendo 64 in September. Over time, it also increased its ability to rip cartridges with larger ROM memory, as well as special cartridges from Super Nintendo and others. In March 2005, it made the recording output of the NSF player saved in MIDI, MP3 and WAV formats. In April 2005, cheat codes were added. The emulator has its own extension, .XTM. In February 2007, it began supporting ripping games from the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color handhelds. In September 2010, the Chameleon USB drive was updated for 64-bit systems. From 2010 onwards, updates were basically about the function of extracting NSF sound from ROMs and the process of ripping cartridges and fixing bugs related to this. At one point, the emulator had compatibility with over 2,000 NES titles. The emulator was continuously developed until 2018, with the last version released on March 25, 2018. Nobuaki Andou passed away on May 5, 2018, from stomach cancer, a disease he had been battling since August 2017. After his death, his son Kouji Andou ended the emulator's services and left the website active in honor of Nobuaki's work.

 

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The History of the NES

NES

The Nintendo Family Computer, the Famicom or Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES in the US, was released in Japan in 1983. Having enjoyed success in arcades since 1978, with games such as Space Fever, Donkey Kong, Popeye and Mario Bros, the company decided to release a home console. The console was re-released in 1985, correcting several hardware errors and was also released in North America. The Famicom is considered the savior of the console industry, which had been in decline in the US since 1983.

NES Hardware

The console's hardware consisted of a 1.79 MHz Ricoh central processor, based on the MOS 6502 that was present in computers and consoles of the time, such as Atari, for example. It had five PSG sound channels and a PPU (image processing unit) also from Ricoh and support for 48 colors, with up to 25 simultaneously. It also had 2kb of RAM and 2kb of video memory. In 1986, the Master System came out, and given Nintendo's advantage with exclusive contracts with game companies, the Sega console was isolated, unable to compete with the Famicom. Despite this, SMS had its advantages over its rival, such as having a VDP video chip (which is superior to a PPU), support for 64 colors, with 32 simultaneously versus 48 and 25 of Nintendo's competitor, and its 16kb of RAM and 8kb of video RAM, versus 2 of RAM and 2 of video of the NES. Despite this, the Famicom had the advantage with its 5 sound channels versus the Sega console's 4 and had a central processor equally strong to that of the SMS. 

Famicom and Nintendo Disk System

Also in 1986, the Nintendo Disk System add-on was released, which was fitted below the console and allowed games to be played on 112kb floppy disks (a popular recording card in home computers at the time). The accessory came with 32kb of memory to store the disk cache, 8kb of RAM for games and an FM audio channel, greatly improving games on the console. Despite this, it had its disadvantages, such as being easily damaged, inconvenient to remove the disk from the drive and invert it in the middle of the game and easy to pirate. These difficulties were probably what prevented the support from being released in the US, which already had a slot for a possible version of the American NDS on its console (the NES). More than 200 games were released for the Disk System, most of which were ports or alternative versions of NES games and arcade ports. Only 17 games were released exclusively for the add-on, and they were from a wide range of genres, such as puzzles, platformers, educational games, shmups, RPGs, musicals and even anime. Returning to the Famicom and its cartridge games, the console was the first in history to start region locking, meaning that American games would not work on Japanese consoles and vice versa. In this case, the American cartridges, with 72 pins, were larger than the Famicom's slot. The Japanese cartridges, on the other hand, were smaller than the American console's slot, with its 60 pins. However, what prevented a Japanese cartridge from fitting into the NES was its short length, which prevented it from reaching the console's slot.

NES Games

Regarding its releases, several franchises had sequels on the console, such as Bomberman, Mario Bros and Donkey Kong, and many others were born on it, such as Metroid, Zelda, Contra, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Megaman, Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dragon Quest and many others. Regarding its games, we separated them by style. Starting with the shmup, such as Gradius, Twin Cobra and 1942. Run And Gun, such as Gunsmoke, Smash TV and Contra. Puzzle, such as Solomon's Key, Dr. Mario and Wrecking Crew. Sports, such as Tennis, Soccer and Volleyball. Platform, such as Kid Icarus, Ghosts 'N Goblins and Shinobi. Racing, such as Super Off Road, Spyhunter and Chase HQ. RPG, such as Dragon Ball Z, Crystalis and Dragon Warrior. Anime, such as Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa and Yu Yu Hakusho. Beat'em Up, such as Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon and Phantom Fighter. From Disney, such as Aladdin, Mickey (as Mickey III and Mickey Adventures) and Darkwing Duck. From Warner, such as Bugs Bunny, Road Runner and Tiny Toons. From DC, such as Superman and Batman (as Return and Return of The Joker). From Marvel, such as Wolverine, Spider-Man and Captain America and The Avengers. In addition to arcade classics, such as Dig Dug, BurgerTime, Bubble Bobble, Galaga, Galaxian, Gyruss, Ice Climber, Karate Champ, Pac-Man, Volleyball, Xevious, Rygar, Popeye, Arkanoid, Karateka, Duck Hunt and many others. The console ended its activities in 1995, and until that moment, even with the competition from 16-bits, it was considered the best-selling in history, being later surpassed by the PSX. The NES has sold 60 million units throughout history, and in 2022, it was the 8th best-selling console in history and the 13th best-selling among consoles and portables.

Shmup: Gradius, Fantasy Zone, Twin Bee, Defender, Twin Cobra, 1942, Blade Buster and Life Force

Puzzle: Yoshi, Solomon's Key, Tetris, Adventures of Lolo, Dr. Mario, Wario's Woods, Castlequest, Wrecking Crew and Pipe Dream.

Sports: Mike Tyson, Tennis, Ice Hockey, Soccer, Tecmo Soccer Bwol, Pro Wrestling, Baseball, Volley, Punch-Out!!, Baseball Stars, Excitebike and Double Dribble.

Platform: Ghosts 'N Goblins, Duck Tales, Megaman, Mario Bros, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Donkey Kong, Kirby's Adventure, Shatterhand, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Rush'n Attack and Shinobi.

Run And Gun: Gunsmoke, Smash TV and Contra.

Racing: Road Fighter, Turbo Racing, Excitebike, Cobra Triangle, Rad Racer, Super Off Road, RC Pro-AM, Spyhunter and Chase HQ

RPG: Final Fantasy, Zelda, Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball Z, Crystalis, Dragon Warrior, Faxanadu and Destiny of an Emperor.

Anime: Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball, Captain Tsubasa, Transformers, Patlabor, Shin-Chan, Yu Yu Hakusho, Akira, Maruko-Chan, Doraemon and Hello Kitty.

Beat'em Up: Mighty Final Fight, Double Dragon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Phantom Fighter.

Disney: Aladdin, DuckTales, Mickey (Mickey III and Adventures), Chip and Dale, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Darkwing Duck, Mogli, Screw Squadron, Donald Duck and Roger Rabbit.

Warner: Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Tiny Toons.

DC: Superman, Batman (Return and Return of the Joker) and Swamp Thing.

Marvel: X-Men, Daredevil, Silver Surfer, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Captain America and The Avengers.

Arcade: Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, BurgerTime, Bubble Bobble, Galaga, Galaxian, Gyruss, Ice Climber, Karate Champ, Pac-Man, Mario Bros, Volleyball, Xevious, Rygar, Popeye, Qix, Arkanoid, Commando, Gauntlet, Karateka and Duck Hunt.

 

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The History of Odyssey 2 Emulators

Odyssey 2 Emulator / O2EM (1997)

O2EM

O2EM, or Odyssey 2 Emulator, was first developed in 1996 by Dan Boris, and was first released for MS-DOS in July 1997. The first version of the project was written with almost no technical documentation, and the system had to be reverse engineered . In May 1998, Erik Winblad created a front-end for the project, called Oxygen, with three versions in total, all released in the same month. Dan updated the emulator until September 1998, when he finished the project. In June 2001, O2EM was ported to MacOS X by Richard Bannister. The emulator was revived in June 2002 by Brazilian André de la Rocha. He maintained the DOS version and began creating Linux and Windows versions. Although there is a Windows version, it needs to be loaded via the MS-DOS prompt.

Oxygen and O2EM Launcher

Heitor Barcellos, a friend of André, also created a front-end in June to facilitate the execution of the Windows emulator, called O2EM Launcher, which was updated until January 2005. André released nine versions of the emulator in total, releasing its last version in December 2004 alongside fellow Brazilian Arlindo M. de Oliveira, who began to take care of the emulator from then on. Arlindo, in turn, released only two versions of the emulator, in May 2005 and January 2007. In January 2011, O2EM received another update, this time from developer Labbe Corentin, using version 1.5, the penultimate version by André de la Rocha, as the base.

O2EM v1.16 (Super Cobra)

The emulator has a single release, now called O2EM2, or Odyssey 2 Emulator 2. O2EM was created based on the Allegro game library, and became open source some time after its creation. In addition to emulating the ROMs, it also emulated The Voice module, which was an adapter connected to the console to fit games that supported it, and reproducing voices and special sound effects that the console did not reproduce. The original module had a 2 KB memory that stored the voices.

O2EM v1.00 (KC's Krazy Chase)

In the emulator, you had to download a set of these voice samples to be played. O2EM is also ported to systems such as MacOS, MacOS X and BeOS, consoles such as Dreamcast, Wii and Xbox, and portables such as GamePark GP2X. In 2015 it became part of the OpenEmu multi-system emulator for MacOS. Richard Bannister updates the emulator to this day, with the last update in November 2022.

MESS (2004)

MESS

The Odyssey 2 console also had support in the multi-system emulator, MESS, from January 2004, and later in January 2013 it was integrated into the multi-emulator MAME. Unlike O2EM, MESS does not need voice samples to play in the emulation of The Voice module. This may be done by some synthesizer that can reproduce voices and special effects by itself. But this is just a guess on my part.