NESticle: This emulator is 

I started this 'NESticle shrine' when NESticle was first released - way back then (April 3, 1997) there were no other emulators as high-quality as this one. Luckily some other emu authors are getting the idea that a good emu (a) needs a user interface and (b) should be FREE!

When MindRape stole the source code a couple days after its first release, the project was cancelled. Then a 'Save NESticle homepage' appeared, which encouraged people to send a buck or two to say how much we love the emu. This page had about 30,000 hits before it abruptly (but cheerfully) dissapeared when the new version came out on April 30. Yep, we emu fans couldn't stand to see the only good emu in existance be cancelled!

The original version (0.20) had a lovely selection of features. The emulation was very good, and some games (e.g. SMB3) ran even more accurately than in iNES. As a programmer, I was amazed by just how great this software was. Such an awesome program does not come into being in two weeks; it just doesn't happen! One day we were stuck with iNES, the next day we had more than we could have asked for with NESticle. By the way, Genecyst came into existance in a similar fashion. The features speak for themselves. I have combined all the notable features into one list:

• Versions for multiple operating systems
• Multiple resolutions (full screen in DOS. The closest Windows resolution, 320x240, is terribly jumpy on some computers, such as mine.)
• Sound (emulates square waves, triangle wave and noise channel) - Better than iNES. Unfortunately, on most computers the sound in the Win95 ver is aweful. Long live DOS!  0.43 adds support for the PCM channel - Ninja Gaiden II et al finally sound perfect.
• GUS as well as SoundBlaster support in DOS (can someone with a GUS verify this?)
• Instant saving and loading of your game
• Battery backup automatic saving and loading
• Graphics pattern, name table (??), wave output, and palette displays
• Two player input support
• Joystick support, with a built-in calibration dialog box and interactive button remapping.
• CPU-independant speed support. It matches the speed of the real NES whether you run it on a 486/66 or a Pentium II/300. You can also increase or decrease this speed (the "Virtual FPS")
• On a fast computer you can have perfectly smooth animation by choosing Frame Skip = 1, VSync = Enabled
• Saving of PCX snapshots
• A custom user interface, which can be turned off, with full window dragging.
• FPS and CPU use displays
• Graphics pattern editing (kinda cool :)
• Two player IPX, or TCP/IP internet games, in the Windows 95 version. Cool, eh? I don't know how it works and all those details, but I managed to do an internet game with someone and, well, you know how you play 'net Diablo and you have various types of lag? Well, when you're playing Contra, the typical one-second lag from when you press a key and when it happens is just unbearable. Still, I imagine a direct modem game would rule, so I hope that gets put in some time...
• You can use Ctrl and Alt as A/B/Select/Start
• Debugging stuff
• Palette editing
• Although it's not blatantly obvious you can have multiple saved games. The default saved game is gamename.STA. You can select another by pressing 1-9. This will cause games to be saved or loaded from .ST1, .ST2, etc. Press 0 to select the .STA file again.
• Long file names in DOS
• NES "movies". These are not FMV movies, but more like cinemas. NESticle records the NES state and then every key you press until you stop recording. I don't know what these would be useful for, but I guess as long as you have a friend with the ROM, you can send your cinema of how you killed that last boss or whatever to him. The files are very small, taking only 120 bytes/sec of disk space. Also, you can rename your .nsm movie file to .STA and it will act like a saved game (except without the keyboard recording).
• Game Genie codes are supported, now that the author has gotten the info about those mysterious strings of letters
• NES header editor (now you don't even need NESimage)

Speedy emulation and Smooth animation

• On my P150+ with Mach64 video and 32 megs ram: Windows 95 version runs at 110-130 fps. DOS version runs at 100-110 fps.
• On a IBM 486SLC2/66 under Win 3.1 w/o sound: 14-16 fps. Depending on the game, animation smoothness can be improved by lowering the hperiod, vblank lines, and/or frame lines. Oddly, although it may get noticibly smoother, the fps rating stays the same.
• On a Pentium 100 test machine, it went 60-70 FPS in the Win95 version and 120-130 FPS in DOS.

And portable too!

Usually, when a program is portable, there is a sacrifice in speed that goes with it. Yet this program comes in two versions, and is still the fastest emulator out there. Very interesting. Not to mention that it runs in several resolutions.... my guess is that Watcom C++ did an excellent job of optimizing the code... such a good job that it's even faster than the Assembly emu, NESA.

Kewl GUI...
Misc | CPU use: Hmm this is interesting. Maybe if the page flip would be faster it would run at 1000 fps? And 100 fps on a 486?

Anyway, that's the story of this gross-sounding but wicked emu.