Li Jih Hwa (Nao)

Li Jih Hwa, known in emulator circles as Nao, helped turn System 16 Emulator from a promising Sega experiment into a stronger, more playable project. His 1997 patch addressed the visual behavior of Altered Beast and helped Golden Axe advance.

The contribution that got attention

Emulator development often moves through a sequence of almost-right images. A character appears, but the background shifts at the wrong moment. A game starts, but a scaled sprite behaves as if the arcade board had forgotten how to draw it. Those problems are difficult to explain to a player who sees only “works” or “doesn’t work.” To a programmer they are clues. Li Jih Hwa found such clues in Thierry Lescot’s System 16 Emulator and worked on an answer.

The surviving account of their partnership describes Nao contacting Lescot with a patch that improved zoom effects in Altered Beast and helped Golden Axe become playable. The significance was not just one repaired effect. The patch demonstrated that an outside programmer understood enough of the board’s behavior to solve a hard problem. Lescot invited him into the project, and Nao became a substantial contributor. Their collaboration belongs to 1997’s wider story of arcade emulation becoming more than a set of one-person demos.

Altered Beast and Golden Axe were good tests because they were recognizable Sega games with demanding visual presentation. A failed zoom effect would be immediately visible to someone who remembered the cabinet. Yet the visible result was only part of the challenge. Correct emulation also required attention to timing, inputs, sound, and the underlying relationship between processors and graphics hardware. Nao’s contribution should be understood as technical investigation, not as a cosmetic touch-up to a screenshot.

The benefits and limits of open work

System 16 Emulator’s development shows one benefit of making code and problems available to others. Lescot could not personally investigate every issue while also keeping up with other obligations. Nao could choose a problem, test an idea, and return a patch. The project gained momentum that a lone developer might have lost. This was especially valuable in 1997, when official board documentation was scarce and the machines themselves were not always easy to obtain. One person’s observation could save another person weeks.

The arrangement also required trust. An author had to accept that a collaborator might change core behavior or find an error in the original design. A contributor had to trust that their work would be credited and integrated. The surviving System 16 project page names Lescot and Nao, giving us a record of shared authorship. That may seem routine today, but early web archives sometimes reduced a project to a single handle. Preserving both names makes the technical story more accurate.

Nao’s role grew as Lescot had less time for the project. That transition is common in volunteer software and often difficult to date precisely. A founder remains central to a project’s identity while another contributor handles much of the active code. It is misleading to erase either person. The 1997 story is a partnership changing shape as real life constrained the time available for emulation work. The program continued because its people adjusted rather than waiting for one author to have endless evenings free.

What the project could and could not promise

The phrase “System 16 Emulator” could lead a reader to expect every Sega title on every related board to run equally well. That was never a safe expectation in 1997. Each game might have its own protection, graphics detail, or sound behavior. Nao’s patch made particular titles better; it did not solve the whole family at once. The small, specific nature of his recorded breakthrough is exactly why it is credible and worth explaining. A history that merely says “he helped” loses the feel of actual engineering work.

Later images of the emulator show a more developed interface and larger game list. They should not be treated as proof of what Nao’s first patch already accomplished. In this biography a question-mark portrait placeholder is followed by a preserved project image, not a 1997 portrait or a direct capture of the patch’s first result. The absence of a verified portrait is a limitation of the available source material. It should not keep his name out of the People index when the software and author credits survive.

Why Nao matters beyond one patch

Nao represents the contributor who changes an emulator’s trajectory without necessarily becoming the most famous handle on its download page. His work helped a specialist Sega program remain relevant during MAME’s rapid expansion. It showed the value of an author welcoming technical help and a collaborator staying with the problem after the first fix. In a scene that often celebrated dramatic first releases, that sustained labor could be easy to overlook.

The history of emulation is full of people like Nao: programmers who noticed one wrong effect, traced it through unfamiliar hardware, and made the game feel a little more like itself. Each fix could open the door to another title or reveal a deeper misunderstanding. The work was cumulative. Nao’s place in this story is therefore both individual and representative. His name belongs on the System 16 project, and his contribution reminds us how much of 1997’s progress came from someone sending a patch rather than announcing a brand-new emulator.

Li Jih Hwa (Nao) in the History of Video Game Emulation

Related People

• Thierry Lescot (ShinobiZ) — built System 16 Emulator for Sega arcade hardware. His focused project gave players a tantalizing look at games such as Altered Beast and Golden Axe on a home PC.
• Nicola Salmoria — brought separate arcade experiments together as MAME in February 1997. His reusable approach gave contributors a way to add new machines and games far beyond the original five.

Sources and further reading

• System 16 Emulator project page
• Archaic Ruins arcade emulator directory