The First Ever Emulator You Remenber

[starseeker300]

visualboyadvance, the old version. it was old reliable for a while for me, though i only started emulating in high school

 

[NeonKnights]

Konami Collector's Series Castlevania & Contra CD Rom. Next it was MAME to play Donkey Kong after watching "The King of Kong" in 2007. Oh the irony.

 

[ffviiremake]

ZNES.. just thinkin about its gui makes my heart feel warm n fuzzy

also Snes AD plus on cydia, first go with Mario RPG was on a shattered iPod touch in which i had in a Ziploc bag as to not cut my finger

 

[RIK-C-137]

I remember nesticle and genecyst

This came first, though.

 

[Toppis]

Probably it was some emulator in the Play Store, but the first emulator I remember was ZSNES

 

[LiberoVulpesLiberoVulpes's icon]

Yeah ZSNES for me as well, that UI is iconic.

 

[jmb3k]

i think i was around 8-9 when i found project64 exists, i don't think i ever used it much but it was the first one i ever found out about. the first one i ever really used was definetly Dolphin though, despite the fact that i already had a WiiU

 

[Deleted member 231262]

VisualBoyAdvance, i have some nostalgia for it, i emulated my first rpg game, my first Pokemon game and my first GBA game.

 

[Renirambus]

The first emulator that I can remember was NNNesterJ for the NES. Delayed Triangle Channel note release, incompatible with a good amount of Mappers, like the ones used for Kirby's Adventure's explosions. But I played Super Mario Bros. hacks that don't work with newer emulators on it.

 

[Spoopz]

Probably GBA4ios. Remember my friend downloaded it onto my old ass iphone 5 and was like "oh wow its that easy huh"
then that broke and i had to move to happy chick
i had to go though hoops and hurdles just to play roms on my iphone now you can just get them from the appstore its wild

 

[AxeHammer]

The first one i remember using was some GBA emulator for mobile i got from the google play store, it came pre-packaged with a bunch of roms. I have many fond memories of playing mega man battle network, pokemon leaf green and f-zero gp-legend from that summer.

Another one i remember using a lot back then was a ps1 emulator that i had on my phone as well, i don't remember which one it was but what i do remember is playing final fantasy vii and lsd dream emulator during breaks while i was in seventh grade.

 

[Kryon_340]

ZSNES, god i still love that UI...

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

ZSNES I think

 

[Max]

I remember using Meboy on my blackberry until the battery swelled up lol

 

[SuperOkay]

No$GB. My school friends and I all had it on floppy disks we'd bring to computer lab and trade/battle Pokemon, play multiplayer Tetris and whathaveyou.

 

[Deleted member 231262]

I remember using Meboy on my blackberry until the battery swelled up lol
View attachment 40348

did you phone blow up? terrorist ass phone. XD

 

[Drewski90]

I remember the zsnes from when emulation was new to me when i was a kid

 

[Soulless Emperor]

My first emulator was snemulDS on one of my old R4's that I lost when I was around 12 years old. I had played the snes games on my r4 for a while until I lost it. Then 4 years later, I started using Zsnes as it's one of my first emulators I tried on my old laptop when I was 16 at the time I tried playing snes games on my old laptop.

 

[YakisobaSteak]

My First Emulator was 《MyBoy!》 (GBA Emulator) played lots of 《Boktai》, 《Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow》 (Best Castlevania series btw) and 《Pokémon》 back in the day.

I remember I specifically bought the 《Castlevania Advance Collection》 on my Switch JUST to play 《Aria Of Sorrow》.

Played some 《Drill Dozer》, Which is very underrated and NEEDS A comeback.

《Boktai》 needs a comeback too, Those games and 《Lunar Knights》 were pretty Revolutionary for the "SUNLIGHT!!" mechanic, and I'm so glad you can get the 《Gun de Sol》 in 《Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots》 (also an Underrated Movie- *ahem!* -Game)

I wish Games weren't afraid of being unique and "Free", Like 《Devil May Cry》 (I like DMC2 and DmC: DMC, Bite me!), and 《Metal Gear/Solid/Rising: Revengence/AC!D》, if it wasn't for the Movie 《The Great Escape》, 《Hideo Kojima》 wouldn't have made All these Awesome Games (No i didn't forget about 《Policenauts》, it needs more recognition)

Sorry for the long rant of a Reply, lulz

 

[Kremiso]

probably MagicEngine is the first i used back then, i think it can be great also today

or Dosbox, or MAME
or some emulator on Dreamcast, now i'm not sure anymore :)

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

My Boy and Awpsx back in 2016 thanks to repair man on cellphone shop he teach me how to use emulator (and where are pirate sites)

 

[ookamij64]

The two that got me interested in emulation (and video games in general) was SNES9x and Gens. Those were the earliest set of programs a cousin had running on his Windows 98 PC. I did play more of the Genesis emulator over the SNES though.

The one I remember loving was ZSNES before learning of its vulnerabilities. Couldn't even run Kirby's Avalanche or Kirby's Dream Land 3... It was cool customizing the heck outta it. But as a last minute addition, Kega Fusion really opened the door to Sega's other consoles pre-Saturn era.

 

[FloatIslands]

It would be some time around 1998 since right after we got the brand new original iMac (we'd been an Apple family since getting a Macintosh Performa around '92) and we subscribed to MacAddict Magazine which came bundled with CDs filled with various demos and free software, and one month it included a copy of iNES, probably because it was notable as one of the earliest emulators to let you play NESm games on MacOS?

I was only like 10yo and didn't fully comprehend what an emulator was yet, I toyed around with the settings, I played the included rom that was just an input test display, I could tell it was like a virtual NES but did not get how one could possibly plug a cartridge into a computer. I think it was only a couple years later when a gaming magazine (probably EGM) wrote something about the bootleg fully transalted NES version of Mother called "EarthBound Zero" and I think they even directly referenced a website that hosted it, which is insane to imagine a major publication doing today. From that I finally put 2 and 2 together and worked out how to emulate it, though I probably fell off once I got hopelessly lost in Duncan's Factory.

But from there I figured out how to emulate more systems (shout out to Richard Bannister), primarily SNES and checked out all the rare and unlocalized games I would've never had the oppertunity to try otherwise. I think Harvest Moon was my first huge time sink, "a game where you just FARM?" felt like such a unique and interesting novalty back then, and the dreamy atmosphere deeply immersed me.

After I dipped my toe in all the big hitters I happened to stumble on this kinda bizarre site I think was called "Son of Fat Head Cat" which was an incredibly comprehensive and well organized directly of all SNES/SFC games which also happened to host the roms on each wiki-like page. Does anyone remember this site?

 

[Livekraft]

Genecyst. I was a 6yo. My school had computers and I bet an older student copied it to each machine. That same year my sister got us ZSNES on our family PC.

 

[Ed36]

I was about 12 years old, and it was my first PC. I'd heard something about emulation, but I didn't know how it worked.

The idea of having all the consoles (at the time) on a single device for free was something I couldn't fathom.

I downloaded ZSNES and the Batman Returns ROM from Konami. My face when I dragged the ROM into the emulator's .exe and saw that the game was working was unbelievable.

And to this day, emulation forever.