When writing an article like this, I find it easy to stop typing and just sit back and relive the memories. I will never forget the first day I ever heard the word "NESticle". I was on IRC at the time, and someone came in and announced "NESticle 0.2 @ www2.southwind.net/~bldlust/NESticle.html". I thought it was a joke. What a surprise I got when I ran it, and loaded The Legend of Zelda! Things were never the same after that.

But has emulation improved since then? Well, let's take a closer look into the world of emulation. Emulators have been improving steadily as time has gone on. 1997 was definately the biggest year for emulation that we have ever had, with incredible emulators for systems such as Genesis, NES, SNES, Arcade games and more. In 1998, attempts have even been made at some next-generation systems like the PSX and N64. All of this started happening right after the first release of NESticle. But there is a problem. Many of the people who enjoy emulation also have to deal with other types of people.

These people only care about getting free games to play on their computer, and usually they don't care about the older systems. They couldn't care less about nostalgia, or the fact that so many people said 'It couldn't be done!' Nor do they remember the times they sat in front of their Atari 2600 trying to get the high score in Asteroids, or beating their best friend in Freeway. They only want to play their free 'r0mz'. This type of attitude is very sad, as people like this are harming emulation. An example of this type of attitude was a person who sent me an e-mail once. He asked me "Why do all SNES emus suck? Why can't they make it like NESticle?"

The fact of the matter is, all freeware emulators should be respected. It is sad when authors of freeware emulators are constantly bashed after all the hard work they do for free. Why are they bashed? Just because they want to give something back to the emulation world, but it's not done the way these begging hordes demand. It's talents of the authors of these emulators that allow us all to relive the days of the past. All of this has been accomplished through teamwork. What emulator exists that didn't receive help from many different sources? NESticle was coded by Bloodlust Software, but without the information from documentation such as Jeremy Chadwick's nestech.doc, and other sources, it wouldn't be the same emulator that it is today. Would it even exist at all?

So, have we gone progressed or regressed? It all depends on how you look at it. Yes, it has advanced as far as the quality of emulation is concerned. But, the quality of people's attitudes has diminished. The only possibly way we can break this current trend is to stop the ignorance that has surrounded emulation for so long. We must show these people that the Console, Arcade and Computer Emulation community is not about pirating software, but about reliving memories and proving that what was said couldn't be done, wrong!

I'll leave you with a thought. Is NESticle the cause of this new and disgusting attitude of people? If you say yes, then consider this. It's not fair to blame the author of a succesful emulator for causing ignorant begging masses to enter into emulation any more than to blame a baseball team that is doing succesful for attracting 'fans' that are only there to jump on the bandwagon. There's only one cure to ignorance. Education. The only way to stop the ignorance is to educate them.

Above all, remember what this is all about: Having fun.

NESticle Shrine
NESticle 0.2
NESticle 0.43