How long have you been emulating games?

[Kamako]

ZSNES setup on a family PC at Christmas. The emulator had a snow theme. I played The Addams Family game and it was awesome. Must of been around the turn of the millennium.

First time setting it up myself was Kega Fusion to play Sonic + more, then ePSXe to play Metal Gear Solid, and more. I will forever be grateful to all the unknown souls who made that possible

 

[DanCalibur]

ZSNES setup on a family PC at Christmas. The emulator had a snow theme. I played The Addams Family game and it was awesome. Must of been around the turn of the millennium.

First time setting it up myself was Kega Fusion to play Sonic + more, then ePSXe to play Metal Gear Solid, and more. I will forever be grateful to all the unknown souls who made that possible

That snow theme...?

 

[Renirambus]

I've been emulating since the mid 2000s with NNNesterJ, afterwards NESTopia.
During my mid to late 2000s run, I liked ZSNES's menu look, especially with the snowing overlay in the menu.

 

[FreshDinoBone]

I probably started emulating in the last 6 or 7 years. Since then I've tried and beaten all sorts of games from different consoles.

 

[sun0wl]

I think it must have been around 5th grade in the early 2000s or so when we discovered that we could emulate gameboy games. I recall it wasn't great back then (or maybe we just didn't know what we were doing) but not too many years after that, SNES and GBA emulators and roms became a staple of the "cool kid computer stuff" that we always tried to get away with downloading and playing around with in the school computer lab in middle and high school. Those were the days huh...

Really good question. Thanks for the lil dose of nostalgia.

I've been emulating since the mid 2000s with NNNesterJ, afterwards NESTopia.
During my mid to late 2000s run, I liked ZSNES's menu look, especially with the snowing overlay in the menu.

oh man I loved the snow overlay!!

 

[RetroRei89]

It's started around 2006-2007, my first emulation is in a pc with VBA playing pokemon game. I remember playing it after college with full excitement. Now I do emulation in my phone with mostly RetroArch for older gaming system and Duckstation to PSX .

 

[haikujess]

I believe the first time was around 2002-2003. It was ZSNES on my dad's laptop, and I played Donkey Kong Country using a ROM off a Usenet site or something like that. I wasn't even using a joypad or anything, just mapping keys to the laptop keyboard. It felt like amazingly futuristic technology to me back then, being able to play decade old console games on a PC.

 

[ShotgunLicker]

I just recently started emulating games in 2024 on a gaming laptop my friend gave me.

 

[doktorwindo]

At least 20 years. Damn it's been awhile!

 

[NeonKnights]

Since 2007, it was Donkey Kong on MAME running on a Sony Vaio laptop.

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

Emulating? About 15 years. Pirating though I have been doing since the mid 90s.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

The exact details are a little fuzzy for me, but I know that you started around 2009-2010. My dad had these CDs full of roms for nes, snes, some Sega stuff (I don't remember what consoles specifically), TurboGrafx, and even some N64 titles. That was actually how I first played Clay Fighter and Banjo Kazooie. I couldn't tell you what emulator they used, it's just been too long and I was too young to fully get it. I started emulating games myself a few years later, starting with some Pokemon games.

 

[MRDeu]

In 1997

On the Callus, Nesticle, Genecyst era.

 

[Vaggplus]

If I remember correctly I've been emulating since 2009.

My first Emulator was Visual Boy Advance and the way I found out about it was through a Youtube let's play of Megaman Zero 1. Back then I beaten all the X games on PSX-PS2 and I really wanted to try out the Zero games but I didn't own a GBA or DS. Nintendo consoles weren't too hot over here at the time and practically no store was selling their stuff besides the Wii.

Prior to that when I was even younger 2005-ish my father brought home a MAME disc that had a bunch of Arcade games. At the time I only though it was just a big game collection just like they used to do with bonus CD-roms from PC magazines.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

I got my start back in 2012 on the PS1 emulator ePSXe. The first game I emulated was my favorite video game of all time, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Since the pandemic.

 

[Raidou Kuzunoha]

Super young, around 2005, give or take. Kgen and Zsnes, my beloved

 

[newageretrohippie]

1996... or 1997, maybe? I played some gameboy emulator first, i can't remember what it was called tho. And i had iNES, of course. The first emulator i ever had fun playing was Nesticle. Also SNES97. There were too many playstation games to play to bother much with emulation, tho.

I really haven't ever played emulators very much, but i always make sure i have about a billion roms on my computer and phone or whatever...

I swear I'm not into piracy just for the sake of piracy. I SWEAR!!!

I believe in: support your favorite developers and don't make money using pirated software! (and all that yo-ho-ho rhetoric)

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Since I was a kid back in '97-'99 just like many others here. Pokemon craze was apparent back then and I joined the bandwagon by playing it on my dad's office PC.

 

[MajesticSiN]

525,600 years

 

[MononokeDS]

For games it would have been around 97-98 probably started with MAME, I remember reading about emulation in a late Super Play issue.

A friend of mine emulated a MAC on his Amiga back in the day and I toyed around with that, but as far as I can remember that couldn't run games. No idea if it was software based or actually used some kind of hardware, as we are talking well over 30 years ago here.

 

[Gentlemanvaultboy]

Since I was a kid, back in the mid 90's. My dad and grandfather were both into it.

 

[YungBonz]

Man... all started with Snes9x in 2011, all my childhood I played SNES games together with my brother!

 

[newageretrohippie]

oh yeah, and there was an emulator back in the late 90's for the transformers arcade game that was written in ASM and it was pretty good. Also a Rygar emulator.

I miss those dedicated arcade emulators. I feel like the designers really cared about the specific game, and that's why they made them... where as MAME is more like "gotta emulate them all" mentality, and it sort of killed the standalone arcade emulator.

 

[leoflannel]

Probably since... About 2017/18? When I started emulating a bunch of 3DS games. Notably, Pokemon Sun

 

[Jeff]

Since 2006 starting with Super Mario World rom hacks.