How long have you been emulating games?

[rosemarymenace]

I've been screwing with emulation ever since I was 9 or 10 lol :P
mostly courtesy of frequently being left with old computers that can't do much else

 

[MistHunter]

Before 2000, that's for sure...

 

[Elpetro]

I think it was around 2000, when VGB (GB Emulator) was a thing and I managed it to run on my toaster PC.
I remember having a blast discovering that I could play Pokemon Red on my PC...but being wary that I needed to delete the rom after 24 hours or I'll be in SERIOUS TROUBLE.

Then, one day I just forgot to delete them and nothing happened so I downloaded a couple more of them and...the rest is history.

There are thousands of better SNES emulators, no doubt, but I still use ZSNES whenever I can just for the nostalgia factor.

 

[MistHunter]

I think it was around 2000, when VGB (GB Emulator) was a thing and I managed it to run on my toaster PC.
I remember having a blast discovering that I could play Pokemon Red on my PC...but being wary that I needed to delete the rom after 24 hours or I'll be in SERIOUS TROUBLE.

Then, one day I just forgot to delete them and nothing happened so I downloaded a couple more of them and...the rest is history.

There are thousands of better SNES emulators, no doubt, but I still use ZSNES whenever I can just for the nostalgia factor.

I can relate you, about the 'most sacred law' in emulation, back then. did the same thing...
and, technically speaking, its yours, if you finish it under 24 hours... you can't have the game, but the experience to the end, rest assured.

 

[DoubleSunday]

around 2009-2010 i think. I had an uncle who had to live at my grandparents for a while and he was playing punchout on his laptop and i was like woah thats so cool. Then he gave me his old ass computer full of NES roms on it and i got to play through the original final fantasy and this weird dragon ball game before the hard drive died. Good times

 

[Pokenami]

I started around 2012 likely in the summer time. I tried to play Kingdom Hearts on my old HP laptop and the result was the game running at 10-15fps. It ran older systems like the SNES, NES, Genesis, and Gameboy very well. This was the only way I got play the other Pokémon games I didn't get a chance to play.

 

[Gin]

approximately, since 2013 or 2014. I remember that the first thing I emulated was Super Mario Bros and it was on a Gameboy emulator. After that, I continued emulating the rest of the Gameboy and the Snes, then the PSX and the rest is history until the present.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

Around late 90 to early 2000 from a bootleg cd with zsnes and roms.
Earlier Dos versions of zsnes had a bunch of graphical bugs, you often needed to disable background layers to even see things like the characters sprites, the emulator had often problems with transparencies also, so for example a normally visible treasure chest may end up hidden by a tree ingame.

 

[Dazzler]

From about 1996, had a computer at home, not that many people did here I'm South Africa. Started with Gameboy emulation, can't remember the exact name.

 

[dr grim]

Started with Bleem! psx emulator ( back then my dad wanted to mod my ps1 and failed, breaking it... gave me a new pc as consolation and later bleem! to try to emulate my old ps1 games on it. )

 

[TheWanderer]

Like 2011 me and my friends were dumbfounded how can we play Mario kart 64 on the pc

 

[OmegaPunch's iconOmegaPunch]

Since 2019, after I stumbled upon PPSSPP by Complete accident

 

[tigg]

90s with the SNES emulators, I ended up being a MOD at an long gone rom site called SNESorama for many years

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

If i not mistaken i started a bit before NO$GBA could create save files for NDS games.
Don't know exactly the year, but a long time ago.

 

[MistHunter]

If i not mistaken i started a bit before NO$GBA could create save files for NDS games.
Don't know exactly the year, but a long time ago.

Circa 2006-2007?
Good old times, when I was trying to play New Super Mario Brothers, in my house... And in the second floor of a casino.

 

[MrFabulous]

25 years, probably longer even. SNES emulation was a big deal when I was just starting high school because you could run an emulator on practically anything and low file sizes made the ROMs themselves easy to download and store, albeit in a zip file on several (carefully labeled and numbered) floppy discs. This was a pretty poor area as well so internet access was both uncommon and limited, so a sort of parallel gaming culture had to spring up around these old console games on school computers while the majority of the gaming audience was enjoying stuff like Half Life and Starcraft.

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

Circa 2006-2007?
Good old times, when I was trying to play New Super Mario Brothers, in my house... And in the second floor of a casino.

Good times indeed.

 

[MistHunter]

Good times indeed.

Agreed.
every night, until the dawn (with the sporadical visits to that casino), a new nds game to play.
my world, my way, mario & luigi: partners in time, rune factory 1, castlevania: dawn of sorrow, etrian odyssey 1, etcetera...

 

[RetroHetho]

Sometime in the late 90s, trading games with friends on floppy disks and loading them up in ZSNES. The snow menu background is pure nostalgia.

 

[werewolfgimmick]

Ever since I was a little kid...must have been 11 or 12 (2014-15) when I got my mind blown by discovering GBA emulators for android devices. I was so happy to finally be able to play Pokemon.
But now that I think about it I've been using them since earlier than that without even knowing. Some guy selling bootleg PS2 games outside my school sold me one of those rom compilation DVDs with a bunch of emulators of old consoles. Of course I had no idea what an emulator was at the time but I was more than happy to play my megamans and my sonics on my modded PS2. Those were the days.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Thanks to my older brother that left a copy of a few emulators like ZSNES on the pc, easily accessible, I recall emulating as early as 2003, even before I had an email...

 

[sunofpearl89]

As long as I can remember. Especially if you count Sega Smash Pack 2 on PC.

 

[Trainer Red]

I'm pretty sure it was 1997 when my cousin came over and copy and pasted a most of the Mega Man titles for the NES to play ... ah damn that was almost 30 years ago ? NESticle sure ran well on windows 95

 

[OmegaKatanaXIII]

Around the early-mid 2010s via modded Wii and some older Android tablets/phones. Gpt more serious about it arpund the 2020s once I started watching people like RetroGameCorps and Mr Sujano.

I love Mr Sujano thats how I became good with the steam deck is because of his videos and retrogamecorp and grownmangaming and mondoworld youtube channels helped me out a bunch.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

Since... 1994?

Dialup was slow, but had access to always-online internet involving my dad having some deal with an ISP; So I managed to get Megaman games, Super Mario games... (and later a lot more, a whole cd's worth)

Then on Genesis it was Ecco the dolphin, Sonic the hedgehog, Shadowrun, and Phantasy Star 4...

Playing Nintendo and genesis games on a 100Mhz machine was certainly the best i could do...

Also remember putting a machine to sleep was an foreign concept, and startup could take 5 minutes. So you just never turned the machines off.