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Tag Archives: Emulation History

The History of UAE: From Unusable to Everywhere

History of UAE cover with an Amiga computer and Turrican imagery

The Amiga’s startup hand was holding something that looked roughly like a Workbench disk. Roughly was the problem. Bernd Schmidt’s emulator had produced a badly distorted version of the familiar picture, and there was still work to do before anyone could call this an Amiga they would want to use. Schmidt fixed his blitter code, and the picture improved. Later, Workbench booted from a floppy image with a convincing color display and… Read more

UltraHLE: The Emulator That Stunned Nintendo

Link in Ocarina of Time with fairy companion.

The Day Emulation Changed Forever On January 28, 1999, the UltraHLE emulator launched and stunned gamers by running The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time only months after its release, sending shockwaves through the entire industry. Before this, most players assumed that emulation could only cover older consoles like the NES or SNES. Suddenly, the hottest game of the year was running on an everyday PC, and the world of emulation would… Read more

From Hex Editors to Steam Workshop: How 90s ROM Hacking Built the Modding Scene

Sonic the Hedgehog game cover with retro modding theme.

A World Before Mods Were Mainstream Today modding feels inseparable from gaming. Entire communities thrive on places like Nexus Mods, and Steam Workshop makes adding fan content as simple as clicking a button. Bethesda titles like Skyrim or Fallout 4 are almost defined more by their mods than their base games. But long before modding became normalized and developer-supported, fans were already hacking away at their favorite titles. And they were doing… Read more