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This page contains information of emulation history.
Emulation , in general , gained popularity around 1995-1997, mostly due to increased CPU speed, increased usage of Internet, and increased number of decent emulators.
==History==
===NES===
The early history of NES emulation is vague, but there are some early emulators known to the public.
*'''Family Computer Emulator V0.35''' for FM Towns, by "Haruhisa Udagawa", with file timestamps of December 12, 1990. It could run some simple NES games such as Donkey Kong.<ref name="Zophar NES post">[http://www.zophar.net/forums/showpost.php?p=85512&postcount=1 MyaMyaMya's post in "First Famicom/NES emulator?"]</ref>
*'''Pasofami''' for the FM Towns, with a release date of May 1, 1993 , in its info file. It had very prelimilary preliminary sound emulation.<ref name="Zophar NES post"></ref> Windows version was released on 1995.
*'''LandyNES''' by Alex Krasivsky, which seems became the base of iNES emulator. At least one beta version for MS-DOS, called '''Prerelease "Stupid" version''', was released to the public on September 8, 1996 with the filename "DC-NES.ZIP".<ref>[http://lngn.net/archaic-ruins/features/ar-dc/nes-emu.htm#lnes Archaic Ruins: Nintendo]</ref> This version supported some simple Mapper 1 games and had graphical glitches.<ref>[http://oldies.malban.de/firstpage/EMU2.HTM EMULATOR PAGE 2]</ref> Unfortunately no copy of this emulator remains on the internet; it was mainly hosted on now-defunct FTP sites and none of websites that supposedly hosted it was archived by Wayback Machine. This project was discontinued after the release of NESticle.
*Marat Fayzullin's [http://fms.komkon.org/iNES/ iNES] (also known as interNES in early versions) is the first (or at least one of the first) emulator to use [http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/INES NES header format (also known as iNES format)]. The release date of the first version is 1996 according to its site.*[http://www.zophar.net/documents/nes/nesa.html NESA] (Nintendo Entertainment System in Assembler) by British programmer Paul Robson was one of the first free NES emulator emulators with source code available. [http://metopal.com/2012/04/06/interview-paul-robson-programmer-of-the-nesa-emulator/ metropal.com] has an interview with the author.
*[[NESticle]] (first version known as v0.2) was released on April 3, 1997. It was one of the first freeware NES emulators.
*There was an unreleased NES emulator for the Genesis that was programmed by Yuji Naka during the early 1990s as a hobby.
*[http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=8721 NES Emulation History] - nesdev.com
*Old [http://www.nesworld.com/ NES WORLD] archive pages
**[http://www.nesworld.com/old/emu1.htm Page 1] - Unknown Year, but probably in 1996. Has information of on Pasofami and interNES.
**[http://www.nesworld.com/old/emu2.htm Page 2] - Sometime around May 1996. Does not have much info of emulators (only lists variants of "Famicom (NES) emulator" which is likely Pasofami) instead forces on game screenshots taken from early NES emulators.
**[http://www.nesworld.com/old/emu3.htm Page 3] - Sometime around May 1997. Has information of on various early NES emulators such as NESticle.
===Game Boy===
Genesis emulation dates as early as 1994.
*An emulator simply called [http://segaretro.org/Megadrive_(emulator) Megadrive] released in 1994 could run Sonic the Hedgehog very slowly with no sound and many glitches. Quickly discontinued because the author lost its source code from a hard drive crash. It is currently the earliest known Genesis emulator.
*[http://segaretro.org/GenEm GenEm], first released in 1996, is the second Genesis emulator released. The DOS Version of it was the first emulator to feature (prelimilarypreliminary) sound emulation.*[[Genecyst]], first released in 1997 was one of the first widely used Genesis emulatoremulators.*[http://www.zophar.net/genesis/kgen.html KGen] was earlist the earliest predecessor of [[Kega Fusion]], released around 1997-1998.
===SNES===
Just like NES, the SNES emulation history is quite fuzzy, but there are evidences is evidence that SNES emulators existed as early as 1994.
*[http://www.zophar.net/snes/vsmc.html VSMC] was released in 1994 and could run select few Homebrew roms. Apparently it was updated a few times after its initial release, and later versions could run some commercial games including Final Fantasy 2.<ref>[http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/reviews/emu_002.txt EMULATION Issue #2 - 23/07/96]</ref> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7YXaaYdPGw (Video of one early version. Please note the music is inserted by video editing, not from the emulator.)]
*'''Super Pasofami''' or '''SPW''' (Super Pasofami for Windows?), developed by the author of Pasofami, was released sometime in 1996. Very little information is available about this emulator aside of the reports that version 1.4a deleted some people's Windows directories.<ref>[http://ftp.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/reviews/emu_004.txt EMULATION Issue #4 - 28/08/96]</ref>
*[http://www.zophar.net/snes/esnes.html ESNES] was one of the first SNES emulator emulators that could emulate sound. It later merged with NLKSNES to become NLKE.
*[http://www.zophar.net/snes/nlksnes.html NLKSNES] was one of the fastest SNES emulators, though it lacked sound emulation. It later merged with ESNES to become NLKE.
*[http://www.zophar.net/snes/nlke.html NLKE] is a successor of ESNES and NLKSNES and contained both speed and sound.
*[[Snes9x]] was a merged effort of '''Snes96''' and '''Snes97''', both released sometime in 1996-1997.
*[[ZSNES]] was first released on October 14, 1997.
===PlayStation===
Earliest known attempt at PlayStation emulation is 1998. PlayStation emulation is notable for two controversial commercial emulators, both of which Sony sued.
*[http://www.zophar.net/psx/psemu-psemu-pro.html PSEmu/PSEmu Pro], first released in early 1998, was one of the earliest PS emulator emulators that could run commercial games. It also created the plugin standard that is still used by [[ePSXe]].*[http://www.zophar.net/psx/psyke.html Psyke], released around 1998-1999, was the first PS emulator that used Dynamic Recompilation to speed up the emulation. It could run a few games such as Metal Slug and Tekken 3. An interview with the author on September 13, 1998 , is available on [http://www.emuviews.com/show.php?SERIAL=223 this site].
*[[Bleem!]], first released in March 1999 for Windows, was a commercial software that could run several commercial games in full speed with enhanced resolution and texture filtering. There were also three separate Dreamcast versions that could run Gran Turismo 2, Metal Gear Solid and Tekken 3.
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station Virtual Game Station], another commercial emulator, was released in 1999 but for Macintosh. Windows version was released later and allegedly had better compatibility than Bleem!, albeit without enhanced graphics.
*[http://www.zophar.net/n64/project-unreality.html Project Unreality], released in May 1998, was the first Nintendo 64 emulator that could run several homebrew ROMs and could show N64 logo screen of Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Wave Race 64. It was discontinued after the two main developers decided to join a game development company to create commercial N64 games.<ref>[http://games.slashdot.org/story/98/07/12/1713252/project-unreality-in-limbo Project Unreality in limbo (Slashdot)]</ref>
*[[UltraHLE]], released in January 26, 1999, was so good that angered Nintendo.
*[http://www.zophar.net/n64/Nemu64.html Nemu64], probably released in 2000, was one of the first N64 emulator emulators that used plugin system that is still used by [[Project64]] and was used in early versions of [[Mupen64Plus]]. It is also known for its extensive debug features which any of newer emulators do not have.
===PlayStation 2===
Unlike other consoles, GBA emulation and Homebrew scene was started as early as 2000, a year before GBA's release. <!-- Why? I don't know... I heard a rumor that some GBA internal docs have leaked (as well as Yoshi demo) but I have no source. -->
*[http://www.zophar.net/gba/gbaemu.html GBAEmu], released in September 2000, was the first known GBA emulator. It could run some Homebrew ROMs as well as Nintendo's "Yoshi's Story" tech demo.
*[http://fms.komkon.org/VGBA/ Virtual GameBoy Advance (VGBA)], done by the same author of iNES and VGB, was first released in 2000 according to its official site. In versions released in 2001, it could run a few commercial games.
*[http://www.zophar.net/gba/igba.html iGBA], which was available as early as February 2001 and last updated on March 25, 2001, could run a few commercial games with some graphical glitches and with no sound.
*Several GBA emulators with more accuracy were released in 2001, for example [http://www.zophar.net/gba/boycott-advance.html Boycott Advance], [http://www.zophar.net/gba/dreamgba-tng.html DreamGBA], [[No$]]GBA, and [[VisualBoy Advance]].
===Wii U===
* [[decaf]] was the first released Wii U emulator. Its first commit was on May 18, 2015.<ref>[https://github.com/decaf-emu/decaf-emu/commit/b121b9290c1eca5de0a2f43b5497c2ac6613c397 decaf's initial Github commit.]</ref> However, it didn't run any games until Oct 28, 2015,<ref>[https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/3qmcnm/decafemu_runs_a_game_now/ Decaf-emu runs a game now! reddit thread.]</ref> a couple weeks after Cemu had released.
* [[Cemu]] was first released Oct 13, 2015.<ref>[http://cemu.info/changelog.html Cemu changelog]</ref> It was the first Wii U emulator that could run games. The developer has stated that work began on it around the end of 2013.<ref>[https://gbatemp.net/threads/question-about-wii-u-emulation.398838/page-4#post-5712397 gbatemp disscuion discussion on Cemu.]</ref>
===Switch===
* CageTheUnicorn, now [https://github.com/reswitched/Mephisto Mephisto], was the first to attempt to emulate part of the Switch, it started development May 16, 2017.<ref>[https://github.com/reswitched/CageTheUnicorn/commits/master CageTheUnicorn's Github commit history]</ref> The developer's developers have stated their goals are for it to be used as a debugger and that there are no plans for getting commercial games running.<ref>[https://reswitched.tech/hacking/tools/cagetheunicorn CageTheUnicorn's page on the ReSwitched website]</ref>
* [[yuzu]], a fork of [[Citra]], started research and early development sometime in Spring 2017,<ref name="yuzu announcement">[https://gbatemp.net/threads/yuzu-nintendo-switch-emulator.494181/ yuzu announcement and public release.]</ref> with its first commit on September 24, 2017.<ref>[https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/commit/6bafd3f4f754e093fe0f99ebf2e1136d3398981a yuzu's NSO support commit on Github]</ref> It was publicly released January 13, 2018.<ref name="yuzu announcement"></ref>
* [https://github.com/gdkchan/Ryujinx Ryujinx] was the first Switch emulator to boot a commercial game, Puyo Puyo Tetris, when it released on February 4, 2018.<ref>[https://github.com/gdkchan/Ryujinx/tree/b7e1d9930db6d80fcb1f7c5c6b0aa627e42e6595 Ryujinx's initial GitHub commit.]</ref>
