NESticle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| NESticle | |
 NESticle Version x.xx running on DOS |
|
| Developer: | Bloodlust Software |
|---|---|
| Latest release: | x.xx / August 18, 1998 |
| OS: | DOS |
| Use: | Emulator |
| License: | Freeware |
| Website: | bloodlust.zophar.net/NESticle/nes.html |
NESticle was a popular NES emulator for DOS, created by Sardu of Bloodlust Software. The name is a portmanteau of NES, the console it emulates, and testicle. Appropriately, the symbol of NESticle is a scrotum.
NESticle offered its initial release as NESticle v0.2 on April 3rd, 1997. The program originally ran under DOS and Windows 95, offering few features and only supporting a handful of games. It was one of the first freeware NES emulators, and quickly became more popular than shareware rivals such as iNES. Within a few weeks the program had become considerably more robust, and could play the majority of available NES ROMs. It was a massive step forward in emulation, making NES emulation accessible to the mainstream computer user. Some emulator programmers complained that a side effect of Nesticle's success was that it made people expect that emulation for more advanced systems, like the SNES, be just as finished.
The source code for NESticle was copied from Sardu's computer by mounting it with Samba, which led to the discontinuation of the project. August 1998 saw the final NESticle release, version x.xx, and support for the emulator was discontinued.
NESticle eventually became obsolete as other emulation projects continued to develop and improve. However, it was a major step in the evolution of console emulation, noted for the public introduction of save states, automatic frameskipping, in-game movies, netplay, and its speed, particularly on lower-end computers.
The current webpage for NESticle is hosted on Zophar's Domain.
