What was your first exposure to emulation?

[Mr.Yes]

For me, it was in a period where we didn't have internet or at least it barely (I mean it) worked.
My father would sometimes download some stuff in his workplace and bring it home via USB Flash. I was a little back then, I didn't fully comprehend the emulation concept,
I was introduced to "Stella" (Atari 2600 Emulator) where I played River Raid, Keystone kapers, Donkey kong and bunch of certified classics. I thought it couldn't get any better. But you guessed it, he also brought "Epsxe" (PS1 Emulator) and "Spider-man 2: Enter Electro". At the time I got very excited because I remember finishing the prequel not so long ago. And now, here we are in 2025. I am grateful.

Here's a plot twist, I didn't know I could play these games with a controller (even when I had a cheap one), I only used the keyboard to play.
What's your story?
P.S: Now that I put a question in the thread title, I feel like I'm on r/askreddit.)

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

Mine was VirtuaNES for Windows and that's where I started to emulate the Super Mario Bros. of a lifetime and that also because my cousin also had that emulator and also had the Complete Mario Trilogy and included the Mario Bros. which was a port of the arcade, Super Bros. 8 which was a Romhack of Don Doko Don 2 and All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. which was the Super Mario Bros. Classic but totally from Night and was from FDS. And that was back in 2013.

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

For me is the ps1 and psp emulator when I buy my new phone wt around 2015 the vendor told me he install a emulator awepsx and ppsspp as a gift and three free games too

Ps1

Bomberman Fantasy Race
Breath of Fire 4
Guardian Crusade

Psp
Daxter
Need for Speed Own the City
Gurumin

 

[Vexicrypt]

All my friends had PCs when I still played on my very old PS1 but I recommended them some games I like (which they could not play, because they were exclusive to PS of course). But then one time my friend said he played Crash Bandicoot on his PC on some kind of "emulator thing", I didn't know what it was until he showed me. It was some old version of ePSXe, I think, and yeah my mind was blown that day.

 

[χKai]

Sometime in 1998, we had America Online services and I discovered a emulators and a neat little website called FuSoYa's Niche, and some years later another called Zophar's Domain.

 

[Bakuma1997]

My uncle got us a disc that contained Project 64, it has the "mandatory" games (Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Golden Eye) which was good, since i was still a freshman regarding emulation and we lacked Internet, so i couldn't get more games even if i wanted

 

[raiden_dj]

Around 2000 and 2001 one day my father suddenly came home with some CDs with a bunch of SNES and Genesis roms, as well as a Mame32 romset with the emulator included, also the SNES and Genesis emulators were Genecyst and ZSNES. Played them for yeeeeaaarrrs until 2007 were we got a new PC and started getting into PC games and other emulators

 

[Dyne]

Around 1999 or 2000 I found out you could play old NES games on the computer. Somebody told me about Vimm's Lair and it blew my mind. Then I found ZSNES and I couldn't believe this sorcery existed! I've been into emulation ever since.

 

[Dany28]

I started doing this in 2015. Epsxe was also my first emulator I used and drastic.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

As a wee kid looking for better games to put on my PC. I had the notoriously lousy PC port of Street Fighter 2 World Warrior, and my disappointment in it led to me discovering that I could just download ZSNES and play the SNES port of SF2 Turbo on my PC instead.

 

[Kaze01]

I discovered emulation when I was 11 in 2012 thanks to VisualBoy Advance, because I really wanted to play Pokémon Fire Red

 

[solnK!]

My brother sended me the 1.6 version of Project 64, it was very buggy and some titles like TLOZ Ocarina of Time couldn´t even load, but it made me fell in love with retro games and emulation.

 

[Ppapeno7135]

It was 1999, the Pokémon cartoon was at its peak where I live, and all the rich boys were playing the games on their Gameboys.
Some days later some kid was giving a floppy disk with No$GMB + Pokémon Red and Blue to every poor kid that asked for it, and I got one.
It was like magic to play at home what I wouldn't have the opportunity to play otherwise.

 

[Mr.Yes]

My brother sended me the 1.6 version of Project 64, it was very buggy and some titles like TLOZ Ocarina of Time couldn´t even load, but it made me fell in love with retro games and emulation.

A rough first impression but I'm glad you continued exploring the world of emulation.

Post automatically merged: 56 minutes ago

By the way, I was wondering if any of you tried "Bleem!" ?

I heard they were distributing CDs until they got into legal trouble.

 

[SecretStrategist]

Around 2002-2004 near the end of my high school years when I saw a couple of guys playing Kirby Superstar, Mega Man X2, and TMNT IV: Turtles in Time on a computer during lunchtime. I quickly became interested on how to play my favorite classic games on the computer and after trial and error on how to use an emulator (getting help from the same guys who had taught me on how to fully utilize it), I found myself being completely immersed in emulation ever since, playing not only the classics, but also other games that I've wanted to try out via reading various GamePro magazines as well.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

A friend had some emulators on his computer and I copied them to try out, like the Nintendo DS one to play Pokémon Diamond.

 

[qw90700]

Mine was a lucky find, kinda literally.

I was going to the part of the city I don't often go for a personal matter, I left the bus and prepared to take the pedestrian overpass and saw a street vendor selling pirated disc. I asked if he had PS1 games (back then PS1 was a new thing in my country), he said "yeah" and put a box clearly not many people asked of him for his priority was selling movies.

Back then such street vendors had existed and they had "legendary items" sometimes like the famous leaked version of Silent Hill 4 way before its release date that some says it existed and was direct unofficial PC port of the game by using PS2 files, so they also said Metal Gear Solid 3 had such a port too but I never could find these. I would pay money to street vendors in my circle to find rare items for me for example but they could never find these games. Sometimes such legends were fake games so you had to take the risk sometimes. So among tons of BS games I found "NES Games" disc for PS1. Beforehand I had no idea of the concept of emulation so I asked the guy how it is possible, he didn't know but he promised it's a real deal. I was like "no way dude" and he was like "yes way dude" lolol. I didn't have much money on me and was saving it for trip back home but I said fuck it and bought the disc and after my business I walked like 10 KM back to my home.

And you know what? It was a legit shit. At first it looked like "100 in 1" games but the game actually didn't have fake duplicates to make the list seem bigger than it is. It had tons of games and also hacked NES games too like "Punk Tennis". The difference is the tennis players have spiked hairs and the referee says "bitch", "double bitch" and whatnot when you fail lol. I also loved "Toilet Mario" hack lolol. Pretty much it had way more NES games than I ever knew. Sadly the disc is missing, sometimes I wonder is there any game and hacked games in it that is not on internet. I remember playing some weird shit games I never saw them since that NES emulator disc lol.

 

[Agent Otaku]

GBA/DS emulation. I was emulating a LOT when I was a kid. Even made romhacks (though never released) for Pokémon. N64 as well. Great times... I'm pretty sure my first emulated game was either Pokemon Red, Pokemon FireRed, or Pokemon Ruby.

 

[Segadude113]

NESTOPIA