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Comment by lscharen | Hacker News Reader

I've been follow Byuu's progress on BSNES for a couple of years, and I would like to state for the record that the amount of effort he had put into this project far exceeds the majority of "hobby" projects.

Just in the past few months, several SNES co-process chips that remained un-emulated for years, have been deciphered and fully emulated in BSNES. Without Byuu leading the charge into the last bastions of SNES emulation, I absolutely believe that some of these devices would be lost to history.

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For anyone who is looking for some code to read with I would recommended BSNES. It isn't a huge code base and worth the trip. Read through most of it last year after finding it and found it most enjoyable.

You would think that the OEM's are leaving a fair amount of money on the table by not offering a true software emulator.

Have you heard of anyone from Nintendo getting involved (in a positive or negative way) with Byuu's project (or maybe they already offer one via the Wii--not sure)?

Nintendo offers the "Virtual Console" on the Wii and 3DS.

Unless my knowledge is out of date, Nintendo's business model revolves around licensing for publishing software for their hardware, so it's in Nintendo's best interest to sell hardware, and not to support emulation on other hardware.

On a related note, when Sony sued 'Bleem!', it argued that running the software on other hardware destroyed Sony's control over the player's experience, and as a result hurt their brand.

I believe Nintendo intends to profit via software licensing and hardware sales. The Wii was profitable at launch[1].

But I wonder how the Virtual Console works on the Wii. Does Nintendo have an SNES hardware-to-software conversion guide? Do their VC releases turn out perfect? I've bought a few, and while they're certainly faithful, I'm not enough of a connoisseur to spot the flaws.

[1] http://www.next-gen.biz/news/fils-aime-wii-hardware-profitab...

I'm under the impression that each Virtual Console download includes an instance of an emulator. If that's the case, they may tweak the emulator for compatibility with each game (or hack the game itself). If you want to look into it some more, the guys who do 'Virtual Console WAD injection' might have an idea. ROM Hacking and (NES/SNES) console development sites/forums might have some information, too.

I vaguely remember hearing of instances where games weren't emulated accurately (or even as well as on other emulators), particularly with regard to slowdown on PAL consoles.

Yeah, in the one case where I tried the wii virtual console with a game that was big in my childhood (Contra 3), it just doesn't feel quite the same. Noone's gotten an SNES controller quite right, either. So I hang on to a SNES to bring out every now and then.

http://www.retrousb.com/ has adapters to connect the original NES or SNES pads to either USB or a Gamecube/Wii. I've used their SNES-to-USB adapter and it works perfectly.

Oh awesome, thanks! I'm gonna pick one up just for zsnes...

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