Anyone remember the first NES emulator?

Discuss emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom.

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tineras
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Anyone remember the first NES emulator?

Post by tineras »

I'm just wondering if anyone knows any details about the earliest NES emulator to be released and what hardware it was running on.

EDIT: I should say that the real reason I'm asking is because I'm wondering what the slowest hardware is that you could run a NES emu on. I know that's up for debate since there are a lot of factors, but I'm talking about the most basic features. And maybe some corner cutting if necessary.
Last edited by tineras on Thu Aug 26, 2010 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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comegordas
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Post by comegordas »

don't know wich is the oldest NES emu, but i knew NESticle about 12 years ago. those were good times :cry: :cry: :cry:
i used to play a LOT in NESticle on my cousin's PC. i can't remember its hardware, but believe me: it was veeeery slow :mrgreen:
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MottZilla
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Post by MottZilla »

iNES started the NES file rom standard so... But there may have been something before it that didn't even use NES files. Maybe that PasoFami emulator.
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Post by Mednafen »

Possibly http://web.archive.org/web/200008170906 ... asotwn.lzh

...or possibly that 9097-byte emulator for the FM Towns with the suspiciously-early timestamp of December 12, 1990.
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tineras
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Post by tineras »

I was wondering what hardware they might have had to work with. I found a nice resource on Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mot ... ,1175.html
Last edited by tineras on Thu Aug 26, 2010 10:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
tepples
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Re: Anyone remember the first NES emulator?

Post by tepples »

tineras wrote:I should say that the real reason I'm asking is because I'm wondering what the slowest hardware is that you could run a NES emu on.
That depends on the target platform's display model. PocketNES runs on the 16.8 MHz ARM7 in a Game Boy Advance, but it helps that the GBA PPU has a video mode to which the NES PPU's display model maps fairly nicely. The GBA CPU emulates the NES CPU, the mapper chip, and about 10% of the NES PPU and APU, and the GBA PPU and APU emulate the rest.
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comegordas
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Post by comegordas »

MottZilla wrote:iNES started the NES file rom standard so... But there may have been something before it that didn't even use NES files. Maybe that PasoFami emulator.
yeah, remember that too. isn't that Marat Fayzullin's emulator?
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Post by tepples »

Marat made iNES. I don't know who made Pasofami, which took split ROMs, and even the Google translation of the site that zophar.net links to as Pasofami's official site doesn't clarify things.

I once had an IBM PS/ValuePoint with a 25 MHz 486SX CPU. Even Nesticle for DOS didn't run at full speed on it.
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tineras
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Post by tineras »

tepples wrote:Marat made iNES. I don't know who made Pasofami, which took split ROMs, and even the Google translation of the site that zophar.net links to as Pasofami's official site doesn't clarify things.

I once had an IBM PS/ValuePoint with a 25 MHz 486SX CPU. Even Nesticle for DOS didn't run at full speed on it.
Do you think 50 or 100MHz is feasible to get one running at full speed?
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Post by Bregalad »

I had Nesticle running on a Intel 486 based CPU PC (yeah that one with awful FM MIDI sound), that was already obsolete in the early 2000 years (I was an early teenager).
I don't remember the speed of the CPU, but I know that PC was made in 1994, and that was a very high-end one back then (probably why it was still functional working in the early 2000 years !). I had it working again last year when I was taking the opportunity that I bought a notebok to definitely got rid of all old desktop PCs of the house, and of course I tried Nesticle on it for nostalgia. It was a bit lagging.
Too bad I don't remember the CPU speed, but the PC has 16 MB RAM, and the CPU on it was probably one of the best available in the year 1994.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

I had an IBM PS/1, quite a strange PC (had a ROM with IBM-DOS 4.0, and microchannel bus). It had a 386sx, but I don't know what speed. I remember NESticle was running at about half frame-rate. Tweaking the CPU emulation settings it seemed like it would run a little faster (and break certain games too, of course). NESA was an earlier emulator, the first one I had tried. I never got to try iNES because I didn't have win95.

And really when it comes to 'slowest hardware', the clock speed doesn't matter much because hardware in general can do a huge variety of things on one particular clock cycle. I don't know if you mean PCs specifically. But I think probably the slowest system that can emulate the NES would be the SNES, because it's extremely well-suited to it. It would be more like a re-compiling emulator, rather than a 100% software approach. Cutting corners. :)
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Post by clueless »

tineras wrote:
tepples wrote:Marat made iNES. I don't know who made Pasofami, which took split ROMs, and even the Google translation of the site that zophar.net links to as Pasofami's official site doesn't clarify things.

I once had an IBM PS/ValuePoint with a 25 MHz 486SX CPU. Even Nesticle for DOS didn't run at full speed on it.
Do you think 50 or 100MHz is feasible to get one running at full speed?
Back in 1996 I found a NES emulator for DOS. It was very small, and could play metroid just fine on a 486 33MHz. The emulator did not support any sound though. I no longer have it though, nor do I remember who wrote it.

Some vague memory ... Seems like I remember it being written by someone whose email address was something similar to "autism uk" possibly. 1996 was a long time ago, so... um, yeah, I don't remember. Sorry.


I just read Membler's post. I think that the emulator was called "nesa".
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Dwedit
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Post by Dwedit »

That guy is Paul Robson, he made some nice TI83 software as well. I had no clue he made NES emulators.

According to some website I'm reading called "The Emulation Timeline", VSMC (snes emulator) existed back in September 1994, but that website doesn't list any NES emulators before 1997. The first NES emulator it mentions is "Nes Lord".
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koitsu
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Post by koitsu »

Try LandyNES. This came out before iNES. I still talk to its author, Alex Krasivsky, on a semi-regular basis.
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Banshaku
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Post by Banshaku »

The first one I remember using was Pasofami (1996/7?) then nesticle came. I had a 486 dx33 at the time. There were some talk about some snes emulator before them but it was not working. Maybe it was the emulator mentioned above. I think it was that one, VSMC. The name is quite familiar.

I remember that after seeing those emulators I felt the urge of writing my own (duh). I was young and stupid ;) I never worked on it. I sent email at the time to someone that is still on this board here. I'm sure that if I could read back that mail, I would be quite ashamed of the pure stupidity of the content ;;^_^ The bad old times!

edit:

grammar edit. too tired.
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