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History
Emulation
Peripherals
Market Share |
Emulation
Like the NES before it, the SNES has retained interest among its fans
even following its decline in the marketplace. It has continued to
thrive on the second-hand market and through console emulation. The SNES
has taken much the same revival path as the NES (see History of the
Nintendo Entertainment System).
Emulation projects began with the initial release of VSMC in 1994, and
Super Pasofami became the first working SNES emulator in 1996. During
that time, two competing emulation projects—Snes96 and Snes97—merged to
form a new initiative entitled Snes9x. In 1997, SNES enthusiasts began
programming an emulator named ZSNES. These two have remained among the
best-known SNES emulators, although development continues on others as
well. Recently there has been a push for exact emulation,d[›] begun in
2003 by members of both the Snes9x and ZSNES teams and others, and
currently led by the development of bsnes.
Nintendo took the same stance against the distribution of SNES ROM image
files and emulation as it did with the NES, insisting that they
represented flagrant software piracy. Proponents of SNES emulation cite
discontinued production of the SNES, the right of the owner of the
respective game to make a personal backup, space shifting for private
use, the desire to develop homebrew games for the system, the frailty of
SNES cartridges and consoles, and the lack of certain foreign imports.
Despite Nintendo's attempts to stop the proliferation of such projects,
emulators and ROM files continue to be available on the Internet.
The SNES was one of the first systems to attract the attention of
amateur fan translators: Final Fantasy V was the first major work of fan
translation, and was completed in 1997.
Emulation of the SNES is now available on handheld units, such as Sony's
PlayStation Portable (PSP), the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance, the
Gizmondo,and the GP2X by GamePark Holdings, as well as PDAs.[44]
Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii marks the introduction of
officially sanctioned SNES emulation. |
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