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Earliest The earliest known attempt at PlayStation emulation is was in 1998. PlayStation emulation is notable for two controversial commercial emulators, both of which Sony sued tried to sue, and lost.
Initial The initial attempt to emulate the Nintendo DS was made in 2004. With so many emulators like iDeaS and the leaked [[Ensata]], it only got decent enough by 2007.
→Game Boy Advance
This page contains information of emulation history.
Emulation, in general, gained popularity around 1995-1997, mostly due to increased increases in CPU speed, the increased usage of the Internet, and the increased number of decent emulators.
==History==
*'''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 preliminary sound emulation.<ref name="Zophar NES post"></ref> Windows version was released on in 1995.*'''LandyNES''' by Alex Krasivsky, which it seems became the base of iNES emulator. At least one beta version for [[Intel CPUs|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 the websites that supposedly hosted it was were 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 emulators 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 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.
*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 on Pasofami and interNES.
**[http://www.nesworld.com/old/emu2.htm Page 2] - Sometime around May 1996. Does not have much info of on emulators (only lists variants of "Famicom (NES) emulator" which is likely Pasofami) and instead forces focuses on game screenshots taken from early NES emulators.
**[http://www.nesworld.com/old/emu3.htm Page 3] - Sometime around May 1997. Has information on various early NES emulators such as NESticle.
===SNES===
Just like the NES, the SNES emulation history is quite fuzzy, but there 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 a 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 emulators that could emulate sound. It later merged with NLKSNES to become NLKE.
===PlayStation===
*[http://www.zophar.net/psx/psemu-psemu-pro.html PSEmu/PSEmu Pro], first released in early 1998, was one of the earliest PS 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].
*[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 it angered Nintendo.
*[http://www.zophar.net/n64/Nemu64.html Nemu64], probably released in 2000, was one of the first N64 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 none of the newer emulators do not have.
===PlayStation 2===
===Game Boy Advance===
Unlike other consoles, GBA emulation and the 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 - Marat Fayzullin, 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$|No$GBA]], and [[VisualBoy Advance]].
*[[mGBA]], original going to be a written in JavaScript, development began in 2013 with its first release in early 2015. It aimed for accuracy on low-end machines and has since been one of the best GBA emulators around.
===GameCube===
===Nintendo DS===
* [http://www.zophar.net/ds/dsemu.html DSEmu], first released in 2004, was the first "attempt" to emulate the Nintendo DS, although it only emulated GBA hardware.
:Came back after a long hiatus in 2014 with version 2.7 and is now more or less under development - 2.8a notably is the first emulator to include DSiWare emulation.
*[[melonDS]]: Started development in early 2017 by a former DeSmuME contributor, its main claim to fame has been its attempt at implementing Wi-fi capabilities that others lack and to bring back interest to a stale emulation scene which started to see a renewed interest with new emulators beginning development such as [https://corgids.wordpress.com/ CorgiDS], [[mGBA#medusa|medusa]], and [[GBE+]], around the same time.
===PlayStation Portable===
* [[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 discussion on Cemu.]</ref>
===PlayStation 4===
* [[Orbital]] was the first released PS4 emulator, with its first commit on Oct 28, 2017.<ref>[https://github.com/AlexAltea/orbital/commit/064abb20f9e410f9ac1110ccedc7287820421253 Orbital's initial commit.]</ref> Due to the low-level nature of the emulator it needed to run the PS4's OS before being able to boot games, and the first step towards that happened on Mar 18, 2019 when it booted into safe mode with graphical output. <ref>[https://twitter.com/AlexAltea/status/1107865782472634368 AlexAltea's twitter: Orbital boots PS4's safe mode]</ref>
* [https://github.com/devofspine/spinedemo Spine] Was the first PS4 emulator to run two commercial games on June 5, 2019,currently is only available for Linux
===Nintendo Switch===
* CageTheUnicorn, now [https://github.com/reswitched/Mephisto Mephisto], was the first program to attempt to emulate only a part (Not not the whole) of the Nintendo Switch, it started development May 16, 2017.<ref>[https://github.com/reswitched/CageTheUnicorn/commits/master CageTheUnicorn's Github commit history]</ref> The 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>
* [[Ryujinx]] was the first Nintendo 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>
