What was the first game you emulated?

[peanutbutter]

You got the internet and are aware there's fucking thousands of games available to dig out and play, your shitty slow internet could even download most them. What did you grab?



In school we had a dial up connection shared between like 20 computers, absolute dogshit speeds. Was able to grab a couple of gameboy roms and stick them onto a floppy only to realise they were horrible to play on a computer. I think I had the emulator already off some magazine I bought that had a section on emulation in it.

When we finally got internet at home Chrono Trigger was definitely the first one I grabbed. Can remember grabbing it the evening we got the internet, absolutely blasting my way through pages and hiding them before the mountains of hentai every rom site seemed to have would appear on screen.

[NoSleep]

It was probably Robotron 2084 on MAME. Otherwise it was Tempest.

[peanutbutter]

I think I got some ancient roms for mame first but couldn't figure out how to get them running. With no real knowledge of the early home computer era the original gameboy seemed like the best bet for a second try.

[bgmnts]

Mortal Kombat II on MAME.

[samadriel]

When we finally got internet at home Chrono Trigger was definitely the first one I grabbed.

Ditto. It never came out in Australia, and I never had a SNES in any case, so I went straight for it.  Sweet days.

[evilcommiedictator]

I would have had a NES and SNES emulator (probably NESTicle and SNES 9x) in the late 90s, I played Pokemon Yellow on emulator all the way through in like 2000/2001.
Unirally on the SNES baby!

[falafel]

Wave Race 64

[Waking Life]

Dizzy. The first one with the acid rain coat. That would have been late 90s and was obviously a lot closer to when the game came out than now (but somehow doesn't quite feel like it; time falls wanking to the floor etc).

I also enjoyed Tapper and spent ages trying to find a Spectrum football manager game, without really knowing the name. I've recreated that frustration when writing this post; it wasn't Football Manager or FA Cup but had a top down view of a football pitch and played similarly to early versions of Championship Manager.

[Chedney Honks]

Literally no memory because the idea of emulators is so boring. Hunched over my keyboard. Playing stretched ultrawide Mario 64 with mouse and keys and sound glitching five seconds behind the action on my pead box. Be right down mum, just trying to find a NAOMI bios!

[Consignia]

Circa 94/95 after reading an article in PC Format, I was made aware of emulators and being able to play Mario World on PC. The SNES emulation was very patchy at the time, but someone had released a really good Master System emulator that worked on our weak 486. I really couldn't remember the actual game, but I'm pretty sure knowing me it'd have been Sonic or Alex Kidd.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Yoshi's Island on zSNES in the college library in 1998. Could you even do that in this day and age? I'd imagine there's all sorts of filters and blocks and very clearly laid out codes of conduct when you enroll.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Definitely a SNES game, probably Super Mario World but maybe Chrono Trigger. I had a Mega Drive and was vaguely aware of having missed out on some great games. Turns out I was wrong.

No actually you know what it might be Metal Gear Solid with Bleem on the Dreamcast.

[Spiteface]

Got a Megadrive emulator and first thing I played was Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which has long been one of my favourite games ever.

[MojoJojo]

I emulated Pacman during the 90s rave scene.

[buzby]

Manic Miner using the PJPP emulator under DOS on my 486DX2/66 PC, around 1994. Downloaded the emulator and some .SNA snapshot files via the university's internet connection. It all fitted on a single floppy.

[madhair60]

Donkey Kong Country on Snes9x. Changed my life, without even a hint of exaggeration. I never had a Mega Drive/NES/SNES/PS1, and I could finally play all those games I'd missed. An absolute joy and a real tastemaker.

[Sebastian Cobb]

No idea what the first emulated game I played was, probably something for the BBC micro on an Archimedes. The first big emulation session I can remember having though was staying up all night playing Toejam and Earl on my chipped XBox.

[Famous Mortimer]

Mercenary, for the C64, on the PC, probably?

[MojoJojo]

I emulated Pacman during the 90s rave scene.

I tell a lie, before that I emulated Custer's Revenge during the colonisation of California.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I remember spending hours downloading a full NES, SNES, Master System & Mega Drive pack on Napster or Kazaa or similar. I think the first thing I tried was Sonic 3 & Knuckles because it was a favourite of mine growing up. I remember being really impressed by all the shitty interpolation filters you could use to ruin all the pixel art.

I still play a lot of emulator stuff to this day. I have a Nvidia Shield set up with everything from Atari 2600 to Dreamcast, Mame included. I spent a good chunk of time last year catching up on SNES classics I'd missed out on back in the day because I just had a Mega Drive, stuff like Super Metroid, Link to the Past etc.

Literally no memory because the idea of emulators is so boring. Hunched over my keyboard. Playing stretched ultrawide Mario 64 with mouse and keys and sound glitching five seconds behind the action on my pead box. Be right down mum, just trying to find a NAOMI bios!

You could've, you know, not opened the thread and posted in it.

[Marner and Me]

My mate reckons he had one of the biggest Rom sites in the world at one point GrestyRoms. I had Pokemon Yellow for a bit and couldn't be fucked with it

[Huxleys Babkins]

I remember spending hours downloading a full NES, SNES, Master System & Mega Drive pack on Napster or Kazaa or similar. I think the first thing I tried was Sonic 3 & Knuckles because it was a favourite of mine growing up. I remember being really impressed by all the shitty interpolation filters you could use to ruin all the pixel art.

Speaking of which, does anyone else find scanline filters annoying? "It looks like a real CRT TV!" Does it bollocks. My TV was bright enough to not be able to pick out individual lines, cheers.

[madhair60]

Speaking of which, does anyone else find scanline filters annoying? "It looks like a real CRT TV!" Does it bollocks. My TV was bright enough to not be able to pick out individual lines, cheers.

I like some of them. I generally prefer to play with them on when I find one I like.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Yeah I do often favour scanline filters myself, I tend to prefer the look they give to the pixel art which was often designed with CRTs in mind. I know they often aren't accurate to real CRTs though there's some good, if resource-heavy, shaders which come close. I do understand why others people don't like them though.

[Magnum Valentino]

Almost certainly Taz in Escape From Mars, which I've still not finished even with save states.

[peanutbutter]

I would have had a NES and SNES emulator (probably NESTicle and SNES 9x) in the late 90s, I played Pokemon Yellow on emulator all the way through in like 2000/2001.
Unirally on the SNES baby!

Jesus, the whole of Pokemon Yellow? Did you abuse the hell out of save states?

Literally no memory because the idea of emulators is so boring. Hunched over my keyboard. Playing stretched ultrawide Mario 64 with mouse and keys and sound glitching five seconds behind the action on my pead box. Be right down mum, just trying to find a NAOMI bios!

Did people play UltraHLE with joysticks? Analogue gamepads weren't really a thing for PCs at that stage, were they?



Emulators were really my first opportunity to get any games I wanted. I was generally limited to the games in stock at the nearest Tesco; got very lucky they bothered stocking the platinum release of FF7, might even have been the only copy. Had to buy a few games at massive premiums because they never reduced the price and the feeling I had was "man, I'm super lucky no one bought this overpriced copy of Crash 2!" To be suddenly able to get every Super Nintendo game and the earlier versions of various series doing the rounds at the time was massive for me.



I quite like the scanline filters on SNES/MD games but don't seem to give a shite for earlier things.

[ImmaculateClump]

I think it'll have been manic miner.
Before I had the internet, I bought some cd-rom in HMV that was like "1,001 speccy classix!" or something, just an emulator and a folder full of .sna and .tap files, loads of duplicates and shit that didn't even work.

I'd wombled together some crappy pc from something my dad brought home from work that they were chucking out and a few people leftovers.
Wanted a pc all my life but could never afford one.
I had to use an amiga for my sixth form cause work, kept having to convert the files back and forth and lost looooads of work. Utter nightmare.

Manic miner is so good! I think it's why I love spelunky so much, it's like manic miner evolved.

@honks. I've been helping someone else at the other place get up and running with shmupmame and the like.
Do you want me to help you out?
It'll be 100% stable not like the stuff on console you tried that kept chewing itself up.

[Cold Meat Platter]

I think it'll have been manic miner.
Before I had the internet, I bought some cd-rom in HMV that was like "1,001 speccy classix!" or something, just an emulator and a folder full of .sna and .tap files, loads of duplicates and shit that didn't even work.

I'd wombled together some crappy pc from something my dad brought home from work that they were chucking out and a few people leftovers.
Wanted a pc all my life but could never afford one.
I had to use an amiga for my sixth form cause work, kept having to convert the files back and forth and lost looooads of work. Utter nightmare.

Manic miner is so good! I think it's why I love spelunky so much, it's like manic miner evolved.

@honks. I've been helping someone else at the other place get up and running with shmupmame and the like.
Do you want me to help you out?
It'll be 100% stable not like the stuff on console you tried that kept chewing itself up.

Shmupmame better for latency, I assume? Recently got back into MAME, my romset is 0.223, the newest set I could find on archive.org. Using arcade64 and final burn neo at the moment.

[TheBrownBottle]

Fantasy World Dizzy on an Amstrad CPC emulator, either '98 or '99. 

[ImmaculateClump]

Shmupmame better for latency, I assume?

Yeah, the guy who made it hacked some of the drivers to remove lots of lag. You can read more about it here - https://shmupmame.wordpress.com/
It's still the one I use the most and I've got a really nippy version of 0191 for more modern games.