4 ms·

What was the first console/arcade emulator?

• bantunes 10y ago
  Not sure which came first, but I remember trying out a SNES emulator, VSWC (Virtual Super Wild Card) on my 486 before Nesticle. It was discontinued in April 1997 https://web-beta.archive.org/web/19990223191448/http://internetter.com/titan/software#vswc https://web-beta.archive.org/web/19990223191448/http://inter...
• jhbadger 10y ago
  In terms of arcade, I think the first usable arcade emulator (as opposed to things that could just boot up and get to the attraction screen) was "Dave Spicer's Arcade emulator" circa 1995 for DOS. It only supported a tiny handful of games (Pac-Man, Galaxian, and an obscure game called Amidar)
  • to3m 10y ago
    Neil Bradley did a vector arcade one as well around that time: http://www.emuviews.com/cgi-local/show.cgi?SERIAL=99 http://www.emuviews.com/cgi-local/show.cgi?SERIAL=99 For consoles the earliest ones might have been Virtual Gameboy? Or one of the Atari 2600 ones? I'm sure they came along in early 1996.
    • stuaxo 10y ago
      Emulators for 8 bit computers like the ZX Spectrum and CPC were around for a while, but I remember people saying that emulating games consoles would be impossible, then suddenly they started making leaps and bounds.
      • jhbadger 10y ago
        Yeah, I remember that ZX Spectrum emulators seemed to be early (before C64 and Apple ][ emulators). Being an American, I never used a Spectrum back in the day, but I used the early Spectrum emulators to play 8-bit games as many of them were the same games as I remember playing on the Apple ][.