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By the mid-1990s personal computers had progressed to the point
where it was technically feasible to replicate the behavior of some
of the earliest consoles entirely through software, and the first
unauthorized, non-commercial console emulators began to appear.
These early programs were often incomplete, only partially emulating
a given system, and often riddled with computer bugs. Because few
manufacturers had ever published technical specifications for their
hardware, it was left to amateur programmers and developers to
deduce the exact workings of a console through reverse engineering.
Nintendo's consoles tended to be the most commonly studied, and the
most advanced early emulators tended to reproduce the workings of
the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System (SNES), and the Game Boy (GB). Programs like
Marat Fayzullin's iNES (which emulated the NES) and VirtualGameBoy
(GB), the Pasofami (NES) and Super Pasofami (SNES), and VSMC (SNES)
were the most popular console emulators of this era.
Bloodlust Software's NESticle, version x.xx
In April 1997, Bloodlust Software released version 0.2 of NESticle.
An unannounced and unexpected release, NESticle shocked the nascent
console emulation community with its ease of use and unrivaled
compatibility with NES ROM images. NESticle arguably provided the
catalyst with which console emulation took off: More and more users
started experimenting with console emulation, and a new generation
of emulators appeared following NESticle's lead. Bloodlust Software
soon returned with Genecyst (emulating the Sega Genesis), and others
released emulators like Snes9x and ZSNES (SNES). This rapid growth
in the development of emulators in turn fed the growth of the ROM
hacking and fan-translation community. The release of projects such
as RPGe's English language translation of Final Fantasy V drew even
more users into the emulation scene.
As computers continued to advance and emulator developers grew more
skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial
release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink.
Many fifth generation consoles such as the Nintendo 64, the Sony
PlayStation, and the Game Boy Advance saw significant work done
toward emulation while still very much in production. This has led
to a more concerted effort by console manufacturers to crack down on
unofficial emulation. Because the process of reverse engineering is
protected in U.S. law, the brunt of this attack has been borne by
websites that host ROMs and ISO images. Many such sites have been
shut down under the threat of legal action. Alongside of the threat,
link rot has occurred at several links without update to the
webpages. On the other hand, commercial developers have once again
began to turn to emulation as a means to repackage and reissue their
older games on new consoles. Notable examples of this behavior
include Square Co., Ltd.'s rerelease of several older Final Fantasy
titles on the PlayStation, Sega's collections of Sonic the Hedgehog
games, and Capcom's collection of Mega Man games for the Nintendo
GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The most recent, and probably the
most notable example is Nintendo's Virtual Console, which will come
packaged with their new seventh-generation system, the Wii and will
allow for emulation of NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and
TurboGrafx-16 games. |
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