Even since my friend told me that he saw a Nintendo cartrage copier for sale in a catalog, I
couldn't help but wonder if there was a program that could play these games on a computer.
We though that since they were made on a computer(regardless of the TYPE), they should also be able
run on a computer as well. And since our 386/486 computers are much newer then the NES unit, we should
have no problem running these
games on our PC in the sence of speed. We also though that the programs to run the NES games were made
by the Nintedo itself. This software would allow the company writting a game to test-out the game under development on
a computer before they release it for mass distrubution. We assumed that the program would costs hundreds of dollars,
so we would have to rely on the underground to leak forward a copy of this little known emulator.
Well, most of our believes were false, except for the 386 being able to handle the NES graphics power.
(Though it is theorically possible, but since the computer will be running the program under
emulation, the general rule of thumb about emulation is that you should never except the equally
powerful computer to at perform 100% of the normal processing speed of the other unit.) Also, the emulators are written
by some an average computer programer named Joe, who freely distrubutes them over the net, not by Nintendo
where the program cost $100's of dollars, well, not exactly.
There were rumors that Nintendo did have an SNES emulator that ran on a MAC, (the Mac's processor is similar to
the one in the SNES, meaning emulation of the unit on the MAC would not be too hard.) The emulator ran slow
and did not support sound or Mode 7 graphic effects. It was just a tool for developmers to run a generic
test of their games on a machine to see if a newly implimented algerithum would work somewhat quickly.
The alternative would be to compile teh program and transfer the code to a CARTridge and then try it out on a
real SNES, which was very time consuming compared to teh previous method. Anyhow, Nintedo was going to
port it to the PC and have port games to run of the emulator. But they were too late: SNES9X and the free ROM
distrubution of the net killed their plan and the rest, well, is history. (If your still think why they can't just
develope it on the computer someone, the reason is speed. Think of the SNES as a "inexpensive super computer"
of the time and all normal PC's are all "inferior machines" used as tools to write programs and compile programs for
the unit.)
Anyhow, I later pushed my little philosophy towards a SNES emulator and even Genesis emulator to see if a Penium based CPU
could really out due the "blast processing", (whatever that is,) found in Sonic 2. I got my hands on many
fake emulators which brough my hope ups, but made it hard to face the fact that none were avalible. But now, with
the ever increasing popularity of the net, information about the console systems which where origianlly before hard to find in the
past are now widely avalible. Emulation of many systems have started or even been fully(95%) completed!
Now that a long time dream has somewhat come true, I just can't get enough of it! My purpose now is to somehow leave
a my mark on the emulation scene, and I have! With my discovery on how to combine Sonic 2 and 3 with Sonic and Knuckles and the
70,000+* hits lifetime for the page, I guess you can say I had some influence!
(50k before 1st counter reset + 1,750 with my cheep Russian counter, + 2,000+ with a counter that I used off
and on with my other counter that reads 6,000+, plus the 8 weeks of time that I went with out a
counter, (150 hits/day avg. at that time)) =)
* Figure highly out of date
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