The First Ever Emulator You Remenber

[NardoBoom]

Nesticle way back in 1998. It changed my life, I even stopped using my N64 and ps1 for a few months.

 

[bobobobo]

I started big and bold with pcsx2, but potato pc couldn't handle it, story of my life

 

[Clippy]

I started big and bold with pcsx2, but potato pc couldn't handle it, story of my life

I remember version 0.9.2 or thereabout. Disgaea 2 ran ok but anything more demanding than that required loads of patience. I managed to beat Final Fantasy X at 12 fps average. Would not put myself through that kind of experience these days.

 

[BoysenBarry]

As far as I can remember it was ZSNES. Frankly, its UI is still completely unrivaled by any other emulator, the font, menu buttons, and, of course, that incredible gentle snow make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Unfortunately, I ultimately had to ditch it for SNES9X because its... interpretive approach to accuracy made games like Super Mario RPG (and definitely others, but that's the one I remember the most) impossible to complete. Even when playing the remake, I still subconsciously anticipated the game to completely freeze during the animation for the star you get after beating Johnny, because of how many times I played the game up to that point on ZSNES.

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

VisualBoyAdvance

 

[BoysenBarry]

As far as I can remember it was ZSNES. Frankly, its UI is still completely unrivaled by any other emulator, the font, menu buttons, and, of course, that incredible gentle snow make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Unfortunately, I ultimately had to ditch it for SNES9X because its... interpretive approach to accuracy made games like Super Mario RPG (and definitely others, but that's the one I remember the most) impossible to complete. Even when playing the remake, I still subconsciously anticipated the game to completely freeze during the animation for the star you get after beating Johnny, because of how many times I played the game up to that point on ZSNES.

Actually, after writing this I remembered clearly that my love affair with 8-Bit consoles (my first console was the Genesis, so aside from things like the GB/C, I missed out on that generation) actually began with a website called vNES I believe, which hosted a ton of NES games and had a functioning in-browser emulator, a bit of a novelty at the time I think.

I clearly remember playing things like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy without the ability to save, so I would just try to push further and further every time, as well as things like Monster Party and Cocoron which fueled my interest in niche interesting titles.

Anyone else remember that website?

 

[Leon]

ZSNES for me, i got into emulation kind of late.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Some browser super famicom emu so I could play Donkey Country in my high school computer lab

Shoutout to epsexe

 

[Solvalou]

NeoRAGEX back in 2000

 

[NanoSoft]

FCE Ultra, and the first game I emulated was Megaman 1 in an internet cafe. Emulating successfully felt magical and mysterious, like a portal into a new world. I remember being in awe over how far Megaman has come since then. My frame of reference was Megaman X4, so it felt like Megaman came a long way since that first NES game to X4

 

[mandrakes]

i use connetics as psone emulator, which has better graphics enchancement than the og

 

[Daemon_diles]

Kega fusion, downloaded it many years ago and still use till this day. it might not be the most accurate but it was certainly the most polished sega 16-bit emulator out there. Excellent CLI support, runs sega CD isos without much issue, plays 32x and genesis / megadrive games as well.

 

[RageBurner]

Kega fusion, downloaded it many years ago and still use till this day. it might not be the most accurate but it was certainly the most polished sega 16-bit emulator out there. Excellent CLI support, runs sega CD isos without much issue, plays 32x and genesis / megadrive games as well.

Yeah, I wish it weren't closed source, so people could update it. I haven't found a sufficiently functional alternative yet. Ares could be it, but the shaders I want don't work.

 

[JustLooking123]

Kega fusion, downloaded it many years ago and still use till this day. it might not be the most accurate but it was certainly the most polished sega 16-bit emulator out there. Excellent CLI support, runs sega CD isos without much issue, plays 32x and genesis / megadrive games as well.

Interesting! Actually i found it to be most accurate emulator when it comes to MegaDrive, especially its music emulation is one step ahead of others!
By the way are you using its latest version? i happened to use an old version for years, without knowing there's newer ones!

 

[Tronky.it]

PCSX-R for Xbox 360.

I was 16 years old, and I still didn't know much about emulators, and I was surprised to discover that I could emulate a console on another console. I then tried to run Crash Bandicoot, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy IX on it. My happiness at that moment was indescribable!

 

[Yukyon]

My first experience with emulation was an OG Xbox my dad gave us, it had Deadalus (N64), XboyAdvance, MAMEx, XSnes9x, and an atari emulator installed.

I believe the N64 one was the first I used out of those

Post automatically merged: Dec 16, 2024

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NeoRAGEX back in 2000

Man, I remember not being able to run any game on NeoRage back in the day because I didn't know what I was doing lol

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

I started big and bold with pcsx2, but potato pc couldn't handle it, story of my life

Same happened to me years ago when i try to emulate ps2 games.
Fortunately, it's not a problem now, my new Pc is Gigachad in that regard.

My first experience with emulation was an OG Xbox my dad gave us, it had Deadalus (N64), XboyAdvance, MAMEx, XSnes9x, and an atari emulator installed.

Dad of the year it's seems.

 

[Alina-Snowfairy]

For me it was techinally the PSP to play PS1 games after someone in my class at college put CFW on it back in 2006, then started using GPSP on the PSP as well, but after that I started using DeSmuME and ePSXe and PCSX2 on my PC.

 

[TheGamesArchivist]

ZSNES, FCEUltra, Kega Fusion, and VBA were my first dabblings into Emulation back in my high school days (around '01-'04.)

Got into a heap of trouble with my TechLab teacher when I installed them on damn near every workstation I was assigned to...though, my A+ training teacher was astounded by them, and practically insisted I plunk them onto a few of his class' workstation laptops.

Heck, I even remember the first site I used for finding games...the ol' Cult of Kefka.

 

[RashFaustinho]

no$gba

The emulation quality of that thing was TERRIBLE, but a friend of mine wanted me to try out Pokèmon Black & White when they were released

I didn't get very far. It wasn't an enjoyable experience due to the emulator itself, the game didn't have many errors but the sound emulation was awful.

gbSP (GBA emulator for PSP) is probably the first one where I properly played games in an acceptable quality, such as Dragon Ball Supersonic Warriors and Pokèmon Fire Red.

 

[Olimar_Retro]

Zsnes for me and playing chrono trigger for the first time, big deal for me as the game was never released over here in the UK, managed to play a lot of other US games soon after that, Kega for MD stuff and VBA, i also often used Project 64 back in the day, now things have changed with all these handhelds we have people can play them on the go!

OG xbox was a thing back then was my first console experience with using emulators, even modded it myself, the irony now that i have a Series X now which does the same thing

 

[ZeraX7]

can't remember its name but it was a Genesis emu and an obscure PS1 emulator called Emurayden

 

[frankied85]

Nesticle back in the late 90's.

 

[MajesticSiN]

ZSNES and I played so many games on it.

 

[ChronoArcaile2025]

my very first Emulator I ever used was LoopyNES (So much nostalgia memories i had with it) even though it had no AVI Recording,but it was able to run many games at the time,with my first ever Emulated NES game was "Kirby's Adventure" when i first got into emulation way back in 1999,and my first SNES Emulator was ZSNES