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The year was 2005 (I'm fairly sure) and I had just finished Pokemon Crystal on the lovely BGB Gameboy emulator. At the time I had decided that I wanted to experience the games in order, and so I didn't look into GBA emulation until the time came to tackle Ruby and Sapphire, the next steps on my journey to becoming a Pokemon Master.
The first thing I remember was just how hard it was to find either ROM on the net... Blue, Red, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal had all been readily available as soon as I had typed their names on Terra's search engine, but these ones I had to dig for.
Then it was the fact that these were gargantuan files to download on a 56K connection (so much so that I actually had to wait until past midnight just so I wouldn't have to hold the phone line hostage during the day).
And, of course, there was the matter of running the damn thing.
At the time, the one true option was VBA -- VisualBoy Advance, highly touted as the best emulator of its generation, with a lot of mind-blowing features (even Link Cable!)... But, of course, my humble Pentium II had been completely outdone there. It simply couldn't run this one. Couldn't even really start it, quoting some missing DLLs as the problem. It may as well have told me that I was missing a Flux Capacitor, because I just didn't know what any of that meant.
But then I noticed the download link for Boycott Advance thrown almost shyly under VBA's, as if an afterthought. It was smaller, didn't look as complex and seemed to still be in development -- all pluses for me.
So, I downloaded it and gave it a go...
... IT WORKED!...
... Until you reached a store or Pokemon Center, then my whole rig would freeze.
It was unreal how reliably that would happen. The emulator was basically offering a hardcore Nuzlocke experience by refusing to ever letting me see the interior of either building... But I didn't want that. I just wanted to play the game.
I never understood why that was (or why it would also crash my friend's computer by opening the Pokedex), but I always remember that.
I have since learned that development was either abandoned shortly thereafter or continued under a different name, but nothing came out of it.
Whatever the case, it's fun to look back at something from the dawn of the emulation era, a proof of concept rather than a full thing that let you see just enough into the future, like Bleem! or those DOS-based Genesis attempts.
Did you ever get to play with this emulator yourself? What was your experience with it (or one similar to it)?. Tell us!
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