What was your first emulation experience?

[esadajr]

That, what was your first emulation experience?

For me it was Nesticle and Genecyst. Back in summer 98, I was talking to a long time friend on the phone and he told me he had NES and Genesis games on his 486.

I was like "no way dude, that's not possible". I paid him a visit a couple days later, he fired up the emulator and I was like "no way, this is not happening, pinche me, I must be dreaming".
I came back home with the "starter pack" (bunch of floppies) he gave me, copied everything, fired up Genecyst and I was still like "no way".

Back then, the cool thing was having and playing all these games on the computer, saving shelf space  and money.

I never would have thought I'd feel nostalgic for the original hardware. Today, I feel nostalgic for both.

[Dicer]

Shapeshifter on the Amiga, you could emulate a Mac, nifty but not terribly useful.

[BlueBMW]

Haha, I do remember Nesticle... lol  That horrible icon heh.

The most emulating I've ever done was actually on the PSP.  It seemed like the perfect platform for emulation.  Especially GB/GBC/GBA stuff.

[PunkCryborg]

I was 14 away for the summer at camp...

[esteban]

1999...my brother showed me a bunch of stuff...

MagicEngine and then MAME...

[Gentlegamer]

NESticle and GeneCyst for me too! It was awesome being able to play Rygar with save states. Then I discovered MAME, and my mind was melted by awesome. Playing arcade games on my PC was like some far future technology, space magic.

Fun fact: NESticle is still playable today... through DOSBox

Emuception:

[NecroPhile]

My emulation cherry was popped by Magic Engine on the ol' 486 in college.  It was so handy to have some turbobs with me when all the real stuff had to stay at home.

[slinkyturd]

I once emulated a woman or rather half of one with a midget blow up doll. That was my first.

[Gentlegamer]

Speaking of Magic Engine, for years I didn't know it was 'shareware' because in the old Wild West days of emulation sites, I must have downloaded a cracked/activated copy without knowing it.

[pulstar]

I remember using a few MS-Dos programs on PCTask on the Amiga around 1994, but the first console I ever emulated was the Nes with the venerable Nesticle around 1998 or so.

[cjameslv]

I remember wanted to play zelda ocarina of time really bad but didnt own a n64. These were the days i first heard of emulation. Sad day tho, my pc was so damn slow and the shit was so choppy trying to run ultrahle, that i gave up on emulation until way later when mame was in full swing and revived my interest in it.

Oh Shit!! Just remembered, this also brought about my first mod! Totally forgot that! I made a n64 to game port (used to be a port on audio cards) box and used some custom software some guy was just developing back in the day to play with. Damn memories lol

[ccovell]

Shapeshifter on the Amiga, you could emulate a Mac, nifty but not terribly useful.

It was useful!  I ran scanner software, Ph*t*shop, and Mosaic for web browsing in Shapeshifter at a time when the corresponding Amiga software was not quite up to snuff.

My first might be a C-64 emulator on the Amiga, absolute first would be the "100 Most Remembered C-64 Tunes" demo, but that emulated the C-64 partially (no video).  And PC-Task, Paso-Fami, Nesticle...

[Mishran]

I'm with everyone else with Nesticle and Genecyst. I remember the team who made them also made a cool Streets of Rage style beat em up game that I played the shit out of. Magic Engine was my third emu. I think it was version 0.8 at that time? Had the emus and bunch of games zipped up and filling up floppies. Memories...

[Paddyfitz18]

Yep, Nesticle.

[SephirothTNH]

It's neat reading everyone's experiences.  Mine was the very first release of ZSNES.  It ran like shit but I thought it was magic.  Shortly after that I got Nesticle and Genecyst.  I remember putting roms on individual floppy discs so I could insert them and feel like I was putting in a cartridge.

[TR0N]

Early 2000's mame.

[cr8zykuban0]

mine was with a disc that my friend made for me . it had a lot of arcade shmups like rtype leo, battle garegga, grind stormer, espgaluga, ketsui, etc. I play it with a usb snes pad and my experiences is good with the disc. sadly lots od neo geo and genesis games on the disc dont work but with the few games I can play, its a lot of fun

[ClodBusted]

That must have been Nesticle in the early 2000's. That was the first time I realised how many crap games there were on the NES, long before the Angry Video Game Nerd began talking about that. However, Nesticle started my interest for Mega Man, so I bought the NES games later on, some as cartridges and the rest with the classic Mega Man collection for the PS2.

I was fascinated how good Nesticle ran on my old Pentium I computer. I was not fascinated by how some games like Castlevania III were unplayable due to graphics glitching.


Today, I use emulators mainly along with original cartridges plugged into the Retrode, as well as for some PCE CD games, until my Duo gets fixed again.

[NightWolve]

I think because I met this group called RIGG being run by RPGFan's Stephen Harris (AKA Tenchi-no-ryu) which had CD BIN/CUE rips of the most popular PCE/TG-16 games, my first emulator use was probably MagicEngine. I learned a lot from the group and then the Whirlpool which housed all the fan translation patches. Since SNES was dealt with so much, I went through the RIGG library that Tenchi gave me access to in order to find a game that I could translate, give attention to PCE, and that's what led to the Xak III project. AND THEN! I found Falcom's Windows PC ports of Ys I & II Complete which led to MORE projects...and XSEED Games...

But yeah, I remember NESticle too. Heh, now that's how you wrote an emulator! I think before MAME, I found Callus which played the Capcom ROMs like SFII Turbo etc. Used to play with that for quite a bit. I remember thinking it so cool that I got to speak with the ZSNES emulator author, we put them up as superstars for a while back then. ;)

[graffias79]

The first emulator I ever used was AmiMasterGear for the Amiga.  It ran pretty well!

[esteban]

OK, the next step in this is probably going to be boring, but I used a MICROSOFT SIDEWINDER (back when USB was NEW!) pad to play emulated games on the computer.  It replaced my older pad that was a 15? Pin serial port connector)

I know a lot of folks will admit to using the keyboard, too. I tried playing lots of games with the keyboard.

I also had a BARBIE controller w/ 15-pin serial connector. It was packaged with an awesome  "PlayStation Barbie" doll that had a tiny PS1 that Barbie carried in a cute pink briefcase.

[BlueBMW]

I always used one of these bad boys...

[MrFulci]

That was my, "Commander Keen" bad boy. I think it came as a pack-in, or the other way around.

[MrFulci]

It also rocked, "XARGON"!

modifying this, to not deal with wrath of... Nekro.

Nesticle and IHOR was my rom fun time, years ago.

gravis game pad and Keen+jackrabbit+Xargon was legit.

[cjameslv]

OK, the next step in this is probably going to be boring, but I used a MICROSOFT SIDEWINDER (back when USB was NEW!) pad to play emulated games on the computer.  It replaced my older pad that was a 15? Pin serial port connector)

I know a lot of folks will admit to using the keyboard, too. I tried playing lots of games with the keyboard.

I also had a BARBIE controller w/ 15-pin serial connector. It was packaged with an awesome  "PlayStation Barbie" doll that had a tiny PS1 that Barbie carried in a cute pink briefcase.

I had that but ended up loving the gravis exterminator. It was game port connector but had a usb adapter with it and it was the best controller for pc by far! I had this for a long time and don't remember what happened to, must have lost it moving sometime...

[SephirothTNH]

I know a lot of folks will admit to using the keyboard, too. I tried playing lots of games with the keyboard.

I initially used the keyboard.  And got quite good at using the numpad with just one hand.  My desire to have a controller though is what lead me to start doing modding and stuff.  I took the controller ports off of a broken playstation and wired it to a printer port connector and used the original non dual shock playstation controllers. 

I used way to thick of wire on it though so it looked ridiculous.  When I go visit my parents for the holidays I'm going to see if I can find it and take a pic.  It is seriously ridiculous.

[PukeSter]

While I had the old Mario games on my GBA, I never had straight emulated games...

Though, I got a Bomberman collection disc from Five Below when I was 7 years old. My first exposure to the Turbografx. Almost beat Bomberman 93, but didn't clear it till I was 12 or so.

Later, I downloaded a Genesis emulator, and only got 2 games. One was Bomberman 94 (Mega Bomberman).

I discovered the Virtual Console years later on the Wii, and that's how I got interested in retro games.

[Digi.k]

I always used one of these bad boys...

I used to own that gravis game pad and I also at some point fell in love with the gravis utrasound sound card.

I think MAME was my first taste in emulation just for Mr DO!

[jeffhlewis]

My first emulator experience was an old Windows Famicom emulator called PasoFami...it was so insanely primitive and was buggy as shit - barely played anything. But I remember having my mind blown when Super Mario Bros. fired up for the first time.

I played a ton of Nesticle, Genecyst and Callus (CPS-1) when those came out. Played early MAME a ton, too back when it was DOS-only.

That gravis gamepad sucked ass - but back then that was all there really was, haha. The sidewinder was a bit better, though still not great.

[BlueBMW]

Real men use Gameport joysticks ;)

[SamIAm]

I first tried emulation back before I knew anything about how much data was actually stored in cartridges. I remember downloading Chrono Trigger and one of the earliest versions of ZSNES. The ROM was zipped, and I didn't even think it was the actual game. I though there was just no way this huge RPG could packed down to the size of a two-minute MP3. Even after starting it, I think I was in denial for like 10 minutes.

[thesteve]

magic engine for me on a 486
then a Pentium 100 laptop

[esteban]

The Sidewinder controller had a problem: the direction pad was "angled", IIRC, which I never got used to and always annoyed me.

[Gentlegamer]

I first tried emulation back before I knew anything about how much data was actually stored in cartridges. I remember downloading Chrono Trigger and one of the earliest versions of ZSNES. The ROM was zipped, and I didn't even think it was the actual game. I though there was just no way this huge RPG could packed down to the size of a two-minute MP3. Even after starting it, I think I was in denial for like 10 minutes.

I was astounded that many of my favorite NES games were like 128kb

[EvilEvoIX]

For me it was and Still very much is a NES Emulator on my Dreamcast.  Looks great on my CRT Via S-video (VGA does NOT work )  Too bad the Dreamcast controller is shit.  I do have a converter that allows a PS1 controller to be used which I use a launch PS1 controller which is much better.

[geise]

For me it was Power PC Engine in 97' on one of the first Mac Power PC's that came out in late 1994.  The emulation was decent with almost all games working with little to no frameskip.  It didn't emulate the cd games though.  The late 90's was an exciting time for console emulation.  It was basically free gaming and finding games you never would have been able to if it wasn't for emulation.  Especially when it comes to arcade stuff.

Oh, I also remember messing with MySNES on my Amiga around 98'   Didn't run very well but was funny to see it running on the Amiga.

[Opethian]

pasofami win-g and superpasofami win-g

was funny that they actually had midi emulation of the sound channels. and the roms were all split format back then. (.nes wasn't a standard yet until iNES?) the rest is history

[jlued686]

I'm fairly positive that it was in the late 90s, but maybe as early as 97? I remember being blown away that I could pop Bonk's Adventure on a floppy and play it on my shitty PC, even though it sorta ran like shit.

[jeffhlewis]

pasofami win-g and superpasofami win-g

was funny that they actually had midi emulation of the sound channels. and the roms were all split format back then. (.nes wasn't a standard yet until iNES?) the rest is history

I remember that midi emulation - it generally sounded like ass but it was still pretty cool. I think nesticle was the first time I heard a console's sound chip emulated. Blew me away.

I remember getting my college computer for Xmas back in the day (xmas 99 I think Pentium II 450) along with Half Life 1. It was the first computer I had that was fast enough to run Callus at full speed. I logged probably 10x as many hours on SF2 and Ghouls and Ghosts on Callus vs. Half Life heh.

[geise]

Haha!  Yeah Callus!  The first cps1 stuff I ever played emulated on a computer.   It was quite awesome for the time.

[Opethian]

haha yea I spend many hours with Callus and NeoRageX lol .

[esteban]

I remember having to use something  called "FinalBurn" (?) to play Capcom's 194X arcade game via emulation.

I had such a great time with 194X...I love that damn game.

[Opethian]

I think finalburn and kawaks came after callus

pretty much paved the way for newer games into MAME.

[jeffhlewis]

I still use Kawaks to this day - such a great piece of software.

[Gentlegamer]

I tried to use Kawaks recently for Neo Geo but it wouldn't work. Maybe I have bad ROM dumps.

[NightWolve]

Real men use Gameport joysticks ;)

Heh, how many of us are still left that can get 'em to work ?? ;)

[wildfruit]

I think it was kgens on my p75. Loved the "white noise" background when a rom wasn't loaded. Hypnotic.