What was your first foray into Emulation like?

[Llammissar]

First? ZSNES was one of the few things that actually ran decent on the 1999 family computer! (...once I messed with the resolution settings.) I admit I'm still nostalgic for that jank-ass UI even though I know it's not a good emulator...

 

[Deleted member 322096]

You can definitely bring it back again with Delta on iOS which is basically the successor to that! In case you wanted to relive those days again :)

Hehe, I already use it! I use Delta since way before it was even on the App Store lol. It's great that we have good emulators on iOS now! Back then the iOS emulators situation wasn't great, so it's pretty neat that we have a lot of great options now

 

[WokiBakoki]

Born in '02, thankfully I dodged the early days of emulating. For me it was all about flash games on the family PC. One day, I'd guess around 2011. I go checking out random flash sites and scroll down a bit. Mixed in with some flash games are some retro games. I saw Zelda 1 and 2 and I guess I just had the intuition to know "This isn't like the others, this really is the first one! Wow!" To be fair, I thought Final Fantasy Sonic was actually made by Sega so maybe I was right by accident.

It played via a built-in browser emulator, so I just played with the keyboard like any flash game. After exploring Hyrule in the first 2 Zelda games, I wanted more. So my searches for "sonic games" became "old games" and I started checking out firsts for franchises I knew. I actually didn't even learn what an emulator was for a long time. I guess I just assumed people converted the old games into browser games with tech magic. So when I eventually found you could download a program to run games just like a console. That was a real "we live in the future" moment.

A lot of people I watched on Youtube way back showcased old games too, so I learned about Castlevania through Egoraptor for example. After a few years I had a pretty wide knowledge of classic games, even if I could only beat like 2 of them myself. Nowadays I've become far more interested in the world of bootlegs and unnofficial stuff. Which had lead me here. Seeing all sorts of random games from Japan getting translated is so cool. Like here's all the stuff we missed out on back in the day. Huge respect to people going through all the effort just to make a bunch of crappy old games playable worldwide.

 

[Brunkler]

idk which was first but it was either Zsnes playing kirby superstar or project 64 playing stuff like DK 64

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

The first emulators I recall ever using were visualboy advance/no$gba and project 64 1.6

 

[shunaria]

It was during elementary school my dad brings one of his school computer to home along with one CD-R disc contain snes emulator and over 100 roms. Only manage to beat two games :
Biker Mice from Mars
Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing

I never touch emulator again, until last year of my high-school with GBA emulator and become addicted with emulator until now.

 

[Natsuyasumi]

My childhood best friend, Cody Robinson, had ZNES and Nesticle emulators on his computer. I didn't have a good enough computer at my house to run them for a long time, but eventually I got a hand-me-down Windows 98 PC and he gave me a Floppy disc with the emulator and another floppy with some games. This was probably 1999 or 2000.

I remember playing Paperboy, Skate or Die, and the original Mario for NES on Nesticle.

The only game I remember playing on ZNES was Chrono Trigger. That was how I beat it for the first time, on my old beat up PC. The monitor broke about 3/4 of the way through my play through and stopped displaying Red/Magenta color, so the Black Omen is always tinted deep blue in my memories

I then took a long break from emulation for a long time. I got into collecting real hardware and games in the mid 2000s, then took a break from video games in general for most of the 2010s, then got back into them hard in the late 2010s, mainly by emulating the games of my youth through OpenEmu. I've been hooked ever since!

 

[sun0wl]

Like being a kid in a candy shop.

Especially having grown up at a time when there really weren't that many games on the market to begin with, and when my parents only had enough money to buy one or two for me at Christmas or on my birthday. It was incredible being able to freely access so many classics I'd missed out on. Not to mention the novelty of being able to enjoy Pokemon and Summon Night in the computer lab with my friends at school, lol.

 

[dr grim]

started with this

Worked so-so.. some games were fine some other very laggy or didn't worked.

Later i discovered Gens for the megadrive, was quite thrilled to replay some old games and discover some others ( street of rage, golden axe.. )

 

[Hourai]

My first time was downloading No$GBA and playing that Ed Edd 'n Eddy game, to middling success. Either the emulation sucked, or the game did. Forgot about emulation for a bit, then played Lucky Star: Moe Drill Tabidachi (edutainment game; disliked it) and the Death Note game years later. Years after that, I played Azure Dreams PS1. I liked it a lot.

 

[Piper Halliwell]

Hehe, I already use it! I use Delta since way before it was even on the App Store lol. It's great that we have good emulators on iOS now! Back then the iOS emulators situation wasn't great, so it's pretty neat that we have a lot of great options now

Niceee! Just wanted to make sure you knew about it! I definitely agree with you, there’s a lot of support for emulators now too and are user friendly. I still struggle to get retroarch to work most of the time :,)

 

[Deleted member 322096]

Niceee! Just wanted to make sure you knew about it! I definitely agree with you, there’s a lot of support for emulators now too and are user friendly. I still struggle to get retroarch to work most of the time :,)

Thanks! Yeah, always had troubles figuring out RetroArch too haha

 

[Boscobilly]

Probably on a Windows 98 PC. It ran like garbage. I never really cared for emulation (I'm sensitive to input lag) and prefer original hardware. I love using roms and flashcarts though.

 

[Cantarella]

Thanks! Yeah, always had troubles figuring out RetroArch too haha

trying to use retroarch now actually feels roughly similar to what it was like when I was first trying to use emulators. I think I figured out how to download zsnes and use it at the time, (10 or 12 years old or something) but I could NOT find the real chrono trigger rom. I had to go through dozens and dozens of fake websites until I eventually begged for my brother to get it. Much like how now I have to go through dozens and dozens of nested retroarch menus to perform such archaic functions as "change the controls."

at some point I did get chrono trigger to load up though, a game I'd only ever been able to read about in nintendo power. the idea that you could play a snes game on a computer felt like actual magic.

 

[Muklas]

Turning my PSP into a bootleg GBA/portable PSX, playing Pokemon Red on a PSP is a experience.

 

[CardcaptorEd2019]

I discovered emulation right around when I was in 6th or 7th grade. I found out about VisualBoyAdvance and started out playing the Battle Network series on it. I played a bunch of mostly Battle Network and Pokemon games on it.

 

[KirboDeku]

I used one of those online emulators where you download a hundred more files than you actually need.

 

[FR4M3]

I went to college, 1997. I had a laptop. Nesticle. I've been emulating NES games now for almost 28 years. I still have CD's I burned in that era with all kinds of roms.

I hope those discs are safe and haven't caught the Rot.

 

[HikaruKitsune]

Marcel de Kogel's DOS ports of Marat Fayzullin's fMSX and VGB. Not long after that was Pasofami for Win95. Those were really the only viable emulators at the time. The scene didn't really blow wide open until SNES96 (which would later evolve into SNES9X) hit the scene. And then it was off to the races.

 

[Antilocal123]

I stole a pack of Pokemon cards as a kid, that’s similar right? /j

 

[Nekurix]

I remember running across the emulator zone and downloading PJ64 and Fusion. The Genesis Sonic trilogy and Smash 64 were among the first games I've ever emulated.

 

[ZEGA ZONIC]

I downloaded a version of KEGA Fusion that came with some games.

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

A bootleg cd with zsnes and roms, gotten Around the late nineties played in all in one(Acer aspire, windows 95 if i remember correctly).
One of the first I remember downloading by myself was an old dos version of no$gb(not gba), and playing pokemon silver, funny enough I remember one of the elite four had an attack that resetted the emulator, I don't know if it's a known bug or an emulator misfire.

 

[Ash Riot]

Way back around 1997 I had an AOL dial up account and was part of some "warez" groups that traded programs over email, and along with the PC games I kept seeing files for Nintendo, SNES and Genesis games, Nesticle was my first nes emu, Genecyst for gen and snes9x (or maybe bsnes) for snes. I really fell in love with NES emulation and the Nesticle in general since you could look at the tiles and edit the sprites on the fly while playing, it made hacking a blast. I made some shitty rom hacks for a few years and would love to finish some of them some day i'm sure theres even better tools available now.

 

[Snorlaxbelly]

Geez, so long ago, I was just a kid. We had a Windows 98 family computer, with NESticle installed. I remember playing the original Metal Gear on it, I believe it was my first game I ever played through emulation. Little did I know that it would be the most dominate way I would enjoy games in the future.

Post automatically merged: Apr 20, 2025

I remember running across the emulator zone and downloading PJ64 and Fusion. The Genesis Sonic trilogy and Smash 64 were among the first games I've ever emulated.

Nostalgic as hell! The Emulator Zone was the place to be for me back then, PJ64, Fusion, ZSNES, and VisualBoyAdvance were my main emus.