Why I care about emulation 

Emulation gave us Dolphin, the ability to play GameCube and Wii games in HD and 60fps.

I remember switching from iPhone to Android back in the day solely for the ability to run NES emulators/ROMs

If anything emulation is a good thing. It's exposed me so many games that I probably would've never been able to play before.

Emulators have allowed me to play games I never would have been able to play otherwise. Nintendo should just make their own Steam like service.

I dont care if it is legal or not. Just the simple fact that somebody made a system run on another incompatible system by code is *impressive!* Im saying that.... And I'm a programmer!

Nintendo fighting emulation feels like Metallica trying to fight Napster back in the 90's.

Great video mate... thank you very much :D Reason I got into Emulation. I collected consoles and games as much as I could as a kid (not much money, but a game on Birthday, christmas etc). Built a big collection over the years and loved them all. Then I joined the Army at 21, had no way to take all these games with me, but needed a way to play them all... after 12 years of having to play games on any device I could get my hands on I had to "gitgud" at Emulation :D Now Im an even bigger collector now Im home and I love it all. Just playing my games however I want on anything I want. Same principle as movies and music. If I could simply buy a digital version of a game to use as I wish (like music and movies) I would be more than happy to buy everything I can :D But right now we are all just stuck doing all the the hard way until the publics perception of all this changes and companies are forced to do it. Some have, Sega releasing their games in packs with digital roms/games included it perfect. Nintendo... they dont and wont until they cant get away with it any more. They will try to do their best to gate-keep the games to a specific console, even removing games from their shops once new consoles are released. Means they cash in every console on the same games... but you all know that :D Until people start to vote with pockets, it will continue over and over. They have learned allot... how to milk and make tha mulla ;) I got no hate with Nintendo at all, they make some of the best games ever made. But the business side of it all is purely driven to milking its fans as much as possible :( Again.. fantastic video mate... thank you!

I know this will get buried, but here it goes. My story is pretty similar to Izzy's: growing up in Brazil in the 90s, having a videogame console was a luxury, and to many of us having a portable one was unthinkable. When Pokemon was getting popular I remember getting really frustrated that I couldn't play the games, but then a friend at school just said "don't worry, I got ya". That puzzled me for a bit, but then the next day he just handed me a floppy disk with some files. Opening the only executable in the disk (the emulator), only gave me an ugly ocher screen full of hex code... yes, that was No$gb, with its atrocious UI. after I figured out what I was supposed to do with the files (this was DOS, so no drag and dropping), I was blown away! I could finally play those games I so much wanted to on my shitty 486 machine! I remember that one day that emulator eventually became paid, and I actually saved money from my allowance, stuck it in an envelope and sent it to the developer in Germany so I could get a license key for the latest version that could play Game Boy Color games. Afterwards that same friend introduced me to Genesis and SNES emulators, and I finally got to play SNES games, a luxury I never had growing up. As for portable emulation, let me skip ahead a bit to 2008. By that point I had already had a Game Boy Micro (loved that thing) and a DS with a flashcart. I was visiting Canada, and happened to run into Izzy around that time. At the time I had been saving some money to buy a PS3 or a 360, when Izzy asked me why I didn't just get a PSP instead. I told him I already had a DS, and he said "no no no, check THIS out". And he showed me the emulators on his PSP. That settled it for me. I was getting a PSP and modding it ASAP. I think I played emulators on that thing more than any proper PSP game, and to this day I think that was my favorite machine for emulation. I only got rid of mine (gave it to my brother) many years later when I already had an Android-based machine (the nVidia Shield), but am still thinking of picking up another old PSP because there's just something about that old black brick that Android emulators just can't match.

Damn Izzy this took me back to when I started emulation ...

Basicly i just emulate games to have a childhood i never had,

The answer to the question you asked in the beginning. I have a PS4 and a High-end PC right at my disposal. Wouldn't take me even an hour or two to download a pirated game off of the internet, especially with the data speeds in my country (45 to 70 Mbps) and with a 500GB limit per month, I can download almost limitless amounts of games within a few months but guess what? I don't. Yes there have been times where I have had no option but to download an emulator to play a game that I really wanted because of the lack of availability, but other than that? Nope. I wait for the monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly and yearly sales everytime. Get my games that way. Same when it comes to my PS4, I can get a PS4 with a jailbroken system for as low as 100$ with games inside. Sometimes companies don't realise. It isn't the gamer or the pirate to be blamed. It's themselves.

I can still listen to Izzy talk about emulators all day😁

I've always been kind of broke, or at times flat broke, so emulation (and admittedly, piracy) has helped me play games I otherwise would never get to. Started off with emulation before I could get a Gameboy Color and played a fan-translated version of Pokemon Red. I still emulate DS and N64 games because I don't have those consoles and cannot afford to get them. I've only gotten to play some newer games, like the South Park games and some Steam games, via piracy. Some of my subscribers have been kind enough to buy me some newer games on Steam in recent days, but I'll probably pirate or emulate until I find myself financially stable enough to have disposable income. Gaming keeps me sane. It's the best outlet I have for frustration, depression, anxiety, anger, all of the bad emotions. Without it, I've be a nervous wreck. So I do what I have to do. My dad was also a computer tech. Pre-Y2K. There weren't much in the way of laptops at the time so I had a big old desktop. I was lucky enough to get my own after a while. Then started the emulation. lol

I think it’s great that there are people making these emulators for everyone to use out of passion alone.

Me learning of emulation is an unspectacular story. I mostly just want to share how I grew up with games and how recently my views of the practice of emulating changed thanks to Nintendo, which also went from one of my favourite companies to one that I despise almost as much as EA. Born in 1994 in Germany and still residing there, I grew up with computers as my father was really into them. I had my own machine in my room as early as I was 3 years old, perhaps even sooner. I vividly remember playing one of my first PC games, Z (Yes, it's literally just called "Z". It's a real time strategy game comparable to the likes of StarCraft, but without the base building aspect.), against my father in LAN mode. My clearest memory was of me going over to his PC when he was on the phone and getting his units to just fire at the places where his new units would spawn (kids really are jerks!). My other favourite type of games were jump and runs, particularly multiplayer ones. Almost every day I had a friend over we played Astérix & Obélix in multiplayer. Another huge local multiplayer game series we were into was Worms. Pretty much all of my friends had a computer at home. I don't think I ever knew exactly what a console was until my father brought home a PS1 one day. Computers were really expensive and not easy to assemble back then, so that's where this console shined - suddenly you could play video games in the living room on the TV screen, but that's pretty much where the excitement ended for me. Computers had always been these miraculous machines that I learned pretty early could do almost anything you can imagine, whereas that PS1 couldn't really do much other than play games using one specific controller. Barely any accessories, multiplayer limited to two players by default, memory cards cost extra, no such thing as a Joystick for those flight sims or this crappy wheel we had for racing games like Colin McRae. Despite that, I liked the PS1 and even got a PS2 years later almost entirely because of a single game series; Crash Bandicoot. I was really into cartoons as a kid and no game I'd seen before had ever captured the spirit of a cartoon as perfectly as Crash 3 did. Funnily enough, almost all of my friends started getting a PS1 around the time I did. I loved Crash Bash and Hogs of War to death and played those with my friends all the time. Some time later I learned of something that's an actually really big thing in my history with video games: That there were systems that could play games on the go, like the GameBoy Color. I got one of those, and subsequently the Advance, Advance SP and Nintendo DS. The ability to play games on long car rides was something that blew my mind at the time. Playing games on the go is still something I do on a daily basis, especially at the moment where I spend 2.5 hours a day on a train to get to the place I work at - for which I use my GPD Win, which I decided to buy instead of a Nintendo Switch - more on that later. The GameBoy systems are how I got my hands on a number of Nintendo's classics. I bought a Wii in 2008 and a Wii U in 2016 (that's pretty much right before I truly started to hate Nintendo), mostly for the unique motion control ideas. I had a friend who got himself a card reader for GameBoy cartridges which he then used to modify the Pokémon game he had by making his own maps and characters and dumped it onto an empty cartridge, which was pretty cool. When I fully switched to Windows XP, uninstalling Windows ME and Windows 2000 from my hard drives entirely, I did so because my father explained that a lot of games will still work with backwards compatibility, and if they don't, I can just use this neat program called DOSbox. Despite these things, it still didn't occur to me that there might be a possibility to play console games on a PC. This changed when I bought and played Earthworm Jim on the GBA. I loved Earthworm Jim 2 on PC as a kid, but I read online that Earthworm Jim was a pretty weak port on the GBA, and thus I wanted to experience it on PC instead. Searching online, instead of finding offers and shipping for the PC version, there was a site that claimed to provide old classic games for free, right there and then. I thought this was just one of those browser-based sites that recreated games from scratch, but instead you could download those original games onto your PC along with software to play them. It was a Sega Genesis emulator. Emulation was just something that I casually learned of, thereby. While I ended up playing most of my PS1 games on the PC, I never downloaded emulators for systems and games that I didn't own after that, as downloading games for free was basically just stealing in my mind. This is how I've done it up until this very year. I emulate console games only when I've purchased them, and law seems to agree except for the part where you're supposed to dump the games yourself. I couldn't give less of a crap about that, though, as the outcome is the exact same. So I've done things like buying Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo Wii but playing it on my GPD Win. However in recent times, Nintendo has started to become a thorn in my eye. First the way they treated RU-vidrs, taking away their revenue just because they talked about Nintendo games, which I thought was inacceptable and ridiculous. Game companies have started doing things like the text when launching Overcooked outright stating that you are free to use video footage of the game as you please, probably because they fear that people are gonna stop covering their games (which is still free publicity) due to the Nintendo debacle, despite Nintendo being the only games company who does this. Then they shut down the Wi-Fi connection just to save a teeny bit of extra cost, and then moved on to attempt to go after people who create mods for Nintendo games and provide the ability to play old titles online again through Wiimfi. They released this ridiculous statement against emulation on their website, though they were careful to never outright say that emulation is illegal, because it's not, but it's very much written to persuade people to not emulate Nintendo games. Hypocritically, they sold a Rom of Super Mario Bros. from the internet and sold it back to their customers over Virtual Console. They also shut down the Miiverse which was heavily linked to a lot of software on the Wii U, which breaks certain games in some ways like Mario Maker, went after the guy who created the multiplayer mod for Super Mario 64 (which used no proprietary code and is entirely legal) and finally released the Nintendo Switch with no web browser, no Virtual Console and with expensive games and controllers, naturally. Everything they do feels anti-consumer to me at this point. I've stopped caring about trying to legally obtain their games entirely. I've downloaded Smash Bros Melee and Double Dash and played them without ever having owned them. It's their property, but if they don't sell it, what the heck can I do, anyway. Getting a second hand copy for 2 to 10 bucks isn't sending any money to Nintendo, either. I'd rather wish not to support Nintendo anymore... Once the Switch emulators can run Mario Odyssey, I will probably still buy the game as it's relatively new and downloading roms is still stealing in a sense after all, but I'll probably try to get a second hand copy to legally get the product without giving Nintendo any extra cash.

I love to hear others' stories about how they started to play games. Your story was so nice and I can totally relate to it! I also didn't really have money as a child and I totally feel what you mean when you talk about your connection with emulators. I also like the way you talk about this topic! I don't know whether you realise it or not, but the passionate and loving way you speak about games and consoles can really touch people's heart! C:

I've subscribed because I love your energy and passion towards retro gaming.

Amazing video! I'm subscribed to this channel since day one (and to the other channel since 2013 I think) and this video is now my favorite one.

This story is so sweet! You are a very good story teller!

Emulation is viable due to the fact that the "collectors" over inflate prices on old games and push them out of the price range of most people,and all for it can sit on there shelf and they can say yup i have that one while it collects dust on there shelf reminds me a little like comic book guy from the Simpsons 😜

As a child growing up in the 90's in Romania , it's funny how much i can relate to this . Snes , nes, even Genesis , were almost imposible to find here. At least we got the Terminator Famiclone. Emulation was the only way for me to play all those games .

Loved your storytelling of how you started falling in love with your hobby and how that brought you here! I found your love for the first gamepad to be really charming as someone also remembering getting a USB gamepad for emulation ages ago :)

Sharing our love for old school games made me subscribe right away. Also, love your portuguese videos!

As a Colombian, all the story you tell about everything and how you enjoy portable games so much is so infinitely relatable that I've been following your channel for a long while due to that. You're about the same age I am so it makes it even more relatable. Keep up the good work man.

My main reason now a days for emulation (my reasons were much different when I was a kid) is how you can have so much more control over the games you own. Your games can be made portable, graphics upgraded with filters, or patched to fix/enhance old games. I first started using emulation full time when I bought Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons for my 3DS. I was really ticked that I still had to use the password to transfer my saves back and forth. Downloaded an emulator and was able to use a virtual transfer cable AND get upgraded graphics, and even save states if I wanted to. I just want to enhance the games that, in many cases, I've bought from you multiple times.

Oh man. Hearing your stories takes me back to when I got my first PSP and when I had my first gameboy. Those memories of my childhood will always be my favorite. I’m so glad to be a gamer. I love this world.

I always enjoy your video discussions, keep em up.

Izzy. Lets start by saying that I love your channel and your devoted love for emulation just like myself. It is defo a grey area and I am super pissed off right now with Nintendo for not getting with the times. If they want to moan about people pirating games, then give us what we want..... A Virtual Console on Switch!

In my 2nd grade year (2007-2008) I always watched RU-vid videos of N64 and NES gameplay on computers with videos recorded with HyperCam2 (unregistered, of course) and I was always psyched about it. However, since my mom was always strict about downloading things I couldn’t do it. Then Summer of ‘08 came (I was 8 y/o lololol) and I was at my Dad’s for the summer and I always used his desktop and laptop. On the 4th of July I really wanted to play Smash Bros 64 so I just searched up how to play n64 games on a computer and followed every single step. And when the game worked, my mind was blown and I was so happy. Then I went outside to do some fireworks and almost got hit by one, so I went back inside and went back to play Smash 64 😂😂😂😂. Emulation is truly a blessing.

Hey Izzy. Recently found your channel and I can't believe I have not earlier! I love your videos about Emulation! Subbed

Given that Nintendo refuses to give access and legal methods to obtain more of their games, I've taken matters into my own hands and purchased a Super NT and SD2SNES. It's the best Snes hardware clone on the market, and is just as accurate as a real Snes, but with true HDMI scaling and no additional input lag. So yeah, hardware emulation, suck it, Nintendo.

This is actually true. Even to this day i still cant afford games. FeelsBadMan

First game I ever emulated was pokemon red. When I first saw it running on my friends computer (before I even had a gameboy) I was hooked. I wanted it just for the temporary speed increases so when grinding the battles/ searching for pokemon went faster. Don't play a lot of emulators now but occasionally I'll jump back into a playstation RPG or find some old game I wanted to play but never did. I had a Nintendo DS with an R4 cartridge at one point, but lost it during a move. Played a lot of emulators at that time. I think it was the hacking aspect that intrigued me more though, getting the DS to run what I wanted it to run, without having to mod it and risk damaging it.

This is video is awesome, your story is similar to how I got into emulation. Never had a Gameboy growing up but always played friends consoles. When everyone was talking about Pokemon in high school I felt left out until I downloaded Pokemon Blue and an emulator (can't remember which one but I still have the floppies I backed it up to). Now I could finally play and talk about the game with my friends at school :) Ended up getting a Yellow Pokemon Gameboy and the game when it released from my parents

Dude, hearing those words from you brings back those nostalgic memories. I remember me and my older brother just enjoy taking turns to play the Emulator, we just feel great seeing these boxed art games being played in a much larger screen (it may not be portable but at least we get to play it, not to mention that we played it on a desktop computer.😁 I feel exactly the way you feel it too bro, that time when you bought a controller just to have that feel good comfortable gameplay. I don't know but I think that if I'm already at my 70s or older I still be playing this retro games. I'm a gamer so when I'm into a certain game that I'm interested, I just do my research on that game's story just so I would know what I'm playing. There's so much to tell, so all I can say is kudos to you for sharing your experience with game emulator/emulation and for having that heart of a gamer...😉

Sir i like your enthusiasm.. The way you describe retro games...i really like it...i like how you keep playing with all the possible ways of playing retro games....thank you so much...u make me keep exploring too 😊😊

This brings me back... No$gb was my first step into emulation and it absolutely blew my mind. I used my dads work laptop to play games. Man times were different back then.

Fantastic and very informative video man. I agreed and can literally relate to everything you said.

Bro I understand your happiness with this entire video! Love to see others enjoying how far tech has come!

IZZY!!! This may be ur longest video, but it is THE BEST one to me. I don’t know ur age but ur probably close to mine at 35. Just listening to u geek out abt ur memories with games and what u encountered during ur childhood is like EXACTLY my gamer story. AWESOME vid bro. And I agree with everything u said 100%.

What got me into emulation was hearing about Mother 3 and other cool games that never came over to the west from a friend. I had a PSP so I looked up a tutorial to mod it which was easy enough for me as a kid, and I did that. I got a gba emulator and played it which started my emulation experience.

This video really resonated with me on a personal level. I'm a few years younger, so my version of this story happened with a modded 3DS instead of a modded PSP, but I feel the same level of nostalgia and attachment. Hacking and softmodding consoles (and the emulation that almost always follows) is one of my favorite hobbies to this day, and one of the driving forces behind me deciding to buy handheld and/or Nintendo consoles.

I come from a poor family and my first experience with gaming was through emulation and for that fact i still love it till today. But right now i earn enough money to buy games legally and the Nintendo e shop is a great way to get a lot of cool games. I think emulation is for a lot of young people the way to enter the retrogaming section and emulation is the way to discover the own passion for retrogaming. And in the future it will be the only way to save the digital heritage of gaming, we will need emulation to keep this digital heritage alive. Thank you for your videos izzy and much love for your work!

Love your enthusiasm and real rememberance-joy.

You clearly are passionate about this. Love your channel dude

I love your channel and your content. Your insights are the things that I would have said as a gamer. Keep it up. Emulation lives!!!

Please allow me to rant a little... Back in the day, when dial up was the most common internet connection, I used to keep two phone lines so I could stay connected 24/7. I would spend multiple days downloading torrents including movies, games and TV shows by setting my modem to automatically reconnect whenever the connection died. I even installed a second modem and at night when no one needed the main phone line, I would connect to dial up twice and bridge the connections (we called it a shotgun connection... for some reason). I would also take my computer to my friend's house and download off their broadband all weekend and we'd trade files over the network. I even once paid a guy in Canada $14 to burn several "complete" romsets to DVD and mail them to me. Also much like in the video, I bought the nicest cheap USB knock off dual shock controller I could find to use with emulators and I thought it was the best thing ever. My point is that I spent a lot of money, time and effort getting access to movies, TV shows and games - a lot of which I couldn't buy with any amount of money at the time. I used to say "when I'm given access to all this content at a reasonable price then I'll stop pirating it". Well, when services like Netflix and Hulu came along, I felt obligated to put my money where my mouth was and give it a shot. I loved it! Then things like Steam and Humble Bundle came along and I loved that too. So these days, I almost never pirate movies, TV Shows and computer games - they're easy to obtain and affordable. The same cannot be said for classic games. Nintendo wants me to pay $9.99 (or more) to play an old NES game on an emulator, meanwhile I can buy old games from just a couple years ago for $5-$7 off Amazon. Not to mention that the emulation isn't even very good (it's actually waaaay too dark). When these companies provide me access to these old games at a fair price then I will stop pirating them, just like I did with movies and TV Shows. This is why I don't get the hate people are giving the Switch's online service. Access to NES games for $3.99 a month is a decent start. They just need a WAY better selection and a bunch of other consoles but as a proof of concept, I think it's great (and it's not weirdly dark like the Virtual console was). I would even pay more for more content.

I really appreciate your video! Emulation opened up my eyes to how big the gaming world is! It introduced me to many RPGS that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. I officially buy my games whenever possible though. I love supporting companies, however I do occasionally emulate a game first to see if I really like it or... if it's not legally available. A recent example would be final fantasy 6! I loved the game so much that I ended up buying the Playstation one classic from the PSN! When I was 11 years old I emulated everything unaware of the legalities, but in the end emulation got me more into video games, that eventually I was able to get a few consoles and start my physical game collection which I built up over the years. It's helped me make informed choices when it comes to buying a certain video game.

Thank you for sharing your story Izzy. - It is very interesting to hear how you got into your hobby and how you grew that interest, this is a nice thing that not enough youtubers do in my opinion. I am one of those unpopular people that disagree with emulation I am afraid. - I honestly think that emulation and the ease of downloading ROMs is one of the reasons why Nintendo do NOT have a huge library of their classic games easily available. I pre-ordered the PSP about 6 months before it was released, and loved it when it came out on day 1. I of course had to 'hack' it and get homebrew/emulation on it. Now emulation back then was very hit or miss in the early PSP days, you could not get large numbers of games easily and not every console had been emulated with success for the PSP. I enjoyed emulation because I could play the games that I owned back in the days of the NES, I could also discover a few new titles for the console. No-one had libraries of every release for every console like they do now. I stopped emulating because I had played the games that I had owned years before and they were no longer appealing. Years later I wanted to get back into emulation and downloaded a PSP game emulator, this sounded great at first until I realised that I didn't just need to re-play old games, but could play all the games I never managed to own. (Because with the cost of games and the fact that there is always something new, we only own a finite number of games released on a system) This was good for a few weeks, until I realised that I was playing games that people had put a lot of time into developing and marketing, but was not receiving credit for. Even though I could go out and buy a copy. As many people do here, I put it down to the fact that many of the titles were no longer available brand new, so they are not missing out. When I discovered the PSVita, I realised that some of the PSP games I had been emulating were available on the PSN store. This made me realise that I COULD have paid for some of them and sony COULD release old other titles in the future because the platform is there. Cue the Nintendo argument and the release of the Classic NES. - There are 30 great classic games on offer for everyone to PAY for. - Who actually owned 30 NES games back in the day? Not everyone. It was a great thing to be given, yet many people moaned about the choice of games, because everyone had been emulating or copying mario, zelda, DK and FF games for years. - Had we not had emulation then we would have been VERY greatful for this offering. The classic SNES was released with 20 games, and this did not please gamers who had been emulating those popular titles for years. People who had NOT been emulating for years were VERY happy with the titles on offer, and the fact that they could play both new games and games that were familiar to them from the past. Only the 'retro game' community kicked up a fuss about the titles offered. I do not doubt that piracy damages sales, I know enough people who were hyped about the Classic NES but could not get one, so discovered emulation. - These same people never bought a classic SNES or re-run of NES because they had found a FREE way to play thousands of titles. - - - Lost money for Nintendo. One look through the comments on youtube videos relating to this topic and you will see how many people openly admit to 'not wanting to pay nintendo $5 for a classic game on their Virtual console because I can get any title I want for free and not have to choose from their small offerings'. - If the free alternative was not there, I do not doubt that people would pay $5 for their favourite titles. Then people also moan about having to buy the same games again on the next generation rather than get their old copy for free on the new one. - That is how gaming has worked for nearly every new gen for 30 years.... why is it unfair? What is unfair is what Sony did with the PS3 and REMOVE backwards compatibility AFTER release - This sucks! Oh and HELLO from the UK!

Such a good vid you brought back so many memories.

And thank you for stretching the video to full screen there's a few I can't do, but most games have to fit. The 18.5 on the Note9 is too much, but on my Note5 the 16:9 was perfect!

Dude, I can totally relate.... absolutely spot on. Like you I also utilize Apple Music and Netflix, because, as you say, both cost a total of 20 Euros (in Europe), but these retro games are nigh on impossible to buy legally.... so there really is nothing one can do except, dang it, go for copies... Loved the video and your reasoning. Keep cool!

I loved this video, so much nostalgia! I used to played on stretch too LOL

Great video! My first emulator was for the game boy color and I only had the Pokemon Gold rom. then I got the Sega genesis emulator with a bucket load of roms to play on our Pentuim two pc.

Your story and the awesome passion you have reminded me of my own experiences of being young and playing SNES games on my computer. While some may see it as wrong, it brought and still brings so many people joy. If Nintendo doesn't see the value in providing a legal and easy way to enjoy these games, I don't see what harm folks playing old games is honestly to a billion dollar company.

really love your videos Izzy they make me very very happy You have inspired me to purchase two joystick controllers for PC as a gift for my sister that we will then use to play NES, SNES, GB, GBA games on emulator because she just mentioned a few days ago how she missed playing games on tv with joystick. It would make a great present for "Rakhi" festival which is coming up thanks Izzy for this idea I hope i will also feel the same joy that you felt when first playing with joystick on PC with Emulation 😁

I started doing SNES emulation back in 1998 with a DOS only emulator called esnes. Like you, I almost didn't believe it when people told me you could do this. Soon after I discovered ZSnes and Snes9x. It's funny, because back then my PC wasn't able to run the emulation with all features, so I had to play the games without transparencies. When I finally saw the games with the original effects, I was blown away :D

Sure, I'll contribute to the conversation. Here's my story. I used to be one hell of a pirate. I had every console I owned modded and capable of all sorts of cool stuff. At one point I felt hypocritical as a creator, myself, and abolished it entirely. Several years later, I find a moth flying out of my wallet as I look up rare and expensive scalped games that aren't available for digital purchase and must be played on their often expensive original consoles. Phantasy Star is a fun conversation, but I won't dive into it. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of decisions companies like Sony and Nintendo make over their older and now sometimes unavailable content, though still staying relatively lawful neutral myself. It comes to a point where it doesn't seem like a company actually cares, and any money spent on these older games go to monopolizing resale. In many cases, especially for decades old foreign titles, some content is almost completely walled, where a digital file and a simple localization patch is only a few minutes away to someone wearing an eyepatch over their lawful eye, and is sometimes completely out of reach for the person choosing not to jump ship. It's a shame that some games are gone forever to some people, especially for those who never got to experience them. You get to a point where it doesn't hurt the companies but it does hurt the civilians. Piracy is a touchy subject to a lot of people, and I'm glad we're starting to talk about it, though I still expect backlash for my opinions.

The year was 2001. I was a freshman in high school and I had just traded away my collection of Sega Genesis games and my system for a PS1 and two games not knowing how much I'd miss my console only days later. Then something magical happened. I was poking around online (back in the dial up days) and I found a site called Emureactor with roms and an emulator called "Gens". I remember the first two games I downloaded were the original Sonic The Hedgehog and a game I never had as a kid but I borrowed a lot from my neighbor, Toejam and Earl. For the longest time I too stored my roms on individual floppies (mostly because my family's desktop only had a 20GB hard drive if indeed you believe it) and played those games using just my keyboard. Fast forward a few months I was at a trade show with my aunt and a local radio station had a booth where they were giving away something called a "flash drive" or a "jump drive" that plugged into your "usb ports". Suddenly I no longer had to carry around a dozen floppies just to play my favorite old games on whatever computer I wanted to. And then within the same amount of time I had a friend who was getting rid of a bunch of computer things and one of those things was a usb game controller. A Microsoft sidewinder plug and play controller. I now had a better means of playing games than a keyboard. Fast forward to today. I've been into emulation for almost 20 years. I mostly enjoy Sega Genesis and NES games but I dabble in Game Boy and SNES games too. I have a raspberry pi "Retropie" system that I play all my favorite games on. What I have now, if I were to go back and tell myself as a kid what I have now, I would've thought I was crazy. Now I also realize emulation is a legal gray area but I'm not doing what I do to make any money. It's just a hobby to me. THE BEST HOBBY EVER!! 😁💞🎮

It was all about the arcade games for me. Discovering MAME about 15 years ago was a mind-blower. I've been a gamer since the late 70s and the first couple decades of the hobby you couldn't get anything close to that arcade experience at home. The home versions of the games never lived up to the "real" games. Now, being able to play all those classic arcade and Neo Geo games (the actual games, not conversions) on an android tablet anywhere I go is pretty magical.

Izzy, my emulation story is very similar to yours. I bought my brother-in-laws used Packard Bell PC with 1st generation pentium, 16mb of ram and a 1.2GB HDD in the late 90s. It was my 1st PC. I was always a big video game fan dating back all the way to Atari 2600. I stumbled across a TG-16 emulator from reading articles. After several hours of configuring and waiting for the ridiculous download times, I had a postage stamp size window running Galaga 90 at about 5 FPS. It BLEW my mind! I have been a lover of Emulation ever since. I spent countless nights with Zsnes and NESticle. I agree 100% with your stance on piracy. I did feel a bit guilty, especially in the beginning, but the big N could have easily cornered the market by now had they made games more available. I struggled many times wanting to buy various obscure games, yet they simply weren't available in my area. I do believe MOST people do not mind paying a reasonable price for easy access. I remember a few times forking over BIG cash for a game only to find out it was a dud, that also pushed me into downloading. I think this is true for most people. Anyway, I appreciate your passion for handhelds and games in general. I just purchased the relatively new Powkiddy x18\ Black Lion handheld, and although it's not quite as good as the GDP XD, I absolutely love it, and there is chatter a custom firmware will soon be available. I enjoy your clips and I am now a subscriber. Keep up the great reviews!

I got into emulation because when I was a kid, nothing was my own, I shared everything with my siblings. Then I saw my brother playing Pokémon yellow on his laptop and I asked how, he told me about emulators. But the problem was I didn't have a computer. Fast forward to when the psp came out, and I still didn't have one, but I knew you could emulate on it. But my friend had one and didn't really care about it, he had gotten it but didn't have any games to play so he was bored. Because of that he sold it to me for around 30 bucks, Then I took it home, immediately modded it , and have enjoyed it ever since.

I personally got into emulation about 2-3 years ago when I was 12 or 13(I'm 15 now.) I was on twitter and saw one of my youtubers put a raspberry pi zero in an old gameboy shell and could play so many old games. This along with youtubers like Sethbling doing speedruns of Super Mario World I found so cool with the old pixel graphics. I got super excited and talked to my dad who deals with computers for his job and owns an original pi himself. I talked to him and we bought a Pi3 for me and it was the best summer project I could ask for. I hooked up retropie and used a Logitech F310 I got a few Christmas before for who knows why and got right into Super Mario World, Crash Bandicoot, and Zork. Since then I've jumped between the Pi, a psp slim I bought for $40 on craigslist, and I put Hyperpie on my main computer. I still buy modern consoles and I have certain morality rules for emulation. I've even bought an old gameboy color just to try the original hardware and its definitely a different experience, not better or worse but different, nostalgic, even if I wasn't a kid when it came out. If it wasn't for emulation I would've never gotten into retro gaming, I could've never appreciated modern games as much, and I would never have become half the nerd I am 3 years later.

Really love your channel after a couple of months, in the beginning of 2000 emulators where a common thing till the end of 2000, then it died till couple years ago because retro gaming is hot again, now a lot of developers are developing amazing emulators.. from the beginning on I emulated a lot of consoles, nes,snes,etc.. then Bleem came out to play ps games on a PC. I live in the Netherlands so I couldn't get the bleem CD because credit cards where not a common thing here, so I asked my employee to order it with his credit card and I finally got it after 4 months or so... it where golden times bro!!

Really happy to find someone who shares my passion for emulation I have my old Samsung galaxy S2 filed with GB, GBC, GBA and Game Gear games.

The way I see it, if it wasn't for emulation then like 90% of non-ported games would practically be extinct. Especially when considering how niche the emulation audience is (though it has vastly boomed recently, thanks to the internet and guides). Not only that, but you get to improve the fidelity of the game, while (in my opinion) maintaining that nostalgia. Something that a remaster will always have a problem with, especially if it's made by a totally different artist/team. Oh and modding/cheating the actual game (not the hardware) couldn't be anymore easier than with an emulator. For me, it's having the ability to use and back-up all these old games. And being able to use any controller on my PC, is also a nice touch. My preference is easily still, the Xbox 360 controller. Great video, I really like how much detail you go into here. I hope it helps to inform some people and get them into emulation, too.

I bought a modded ps vita because I wasnt able to do it myself & didnt want to chance messing it up, & even though it was expensive, it was completely worth it because now I can play all of my favorite nes/snes games anytime that I want. I also agree that if Nintendo would just give us the option to pay a monthly cost for all of their older games I would have no problem paying it because of the joy that they all bring me. They have all these valued IP's that everyone wants access too & they can't say that they dont know how because they are doing it right now with the nes games on switch online. If they would add SNES games for the same price every month & then make tiers for the 64 & gamecube they would make money & everyone would be much happier with their services. I'm starting to think that they do it on purpose because they know that people are going to buy their game systems anyway. I love you channel & love all your content. Please keep up the good work, you have an audience that loves you & loves what you do for the retro gaming community.

A really touching story, at leat for myself. It bring out so many memories for me as a child growing and living on a 3rd world country, with no money to be able to play these games. I'll never forget my first console, the Creation, I played so many games of them and for so many hours as a child, that's how I feel in love with NES games. Everyone is like snes or 64, my cup of tea will always be the nes for what represents for me. Nice memories....

Yo my boi genius. Izzy breaking gaming boundaries at a young age. Up in here

Your videos just recently got me to buy the GPD XD plus, now I’m loving it for all my old school system emulation Just wish it was bit more powerful to actually play psp games at a more useable frame rate

Here is how i see it, if a company no longer sells a system/game, they shouldn't be too upset when someone else uses it in a way that wasn't intended. As the 8-bit guy said it *paraphrased* "When a company no longer tries to sell a product, i don't shed too many tears when someone steals it",

I had the exact same experience, my friend introduced me to a gba emulator which blew my mind at the time. And then i started searching on my own and downloaded a sega and an snes emulators and that tbh changed my life, because i never knew that these consoles even existed, i grew up with a ps1. And that was probably 10 years ago, and ever since retro gaming has been my favorite thing ever.

I didn't know you could mod a psp I found one of your video's and ordered one from Japan thank you can't wait to get it in the mail

I wanted to touch briefly on your comment regarding Apple Music. Does the Canadian version have much music from Brazilian artists? I would assume that would be an important criteria for someone from that country, and I’ve generally found that “standard” streaming services are extremely spotty when it comes to international music.

I got into emulation the same way a lot of people did...Through Visual Boy Advance. Being able to play GBA games on my PC was a bit of an eye opener, and it also made me realize that "hey, roms can be modded too!" So being able to play romhacks, translated games and being able to save anywhere is a huge deal. Now I've got a Moto Z2 Play and I plan on turning it into an emulation machine of sorts. Just need to get the Gamepad attachment first...

When I was in 6th grade, I didn't have much appreciation for Nintendo, I would always want my parents to get me a Playstation or Xbox but always said no. But when I added SM64 on my Wii, I was in love with checking out classic games I never played before, feeling like I found a treasure. That was when Zelda Ocarina of Time got me hooked on Nintendo. Now I'm here, collecting a lot of different consoles from the NES to PlayStation to Xbox, with even owning an actual Super Mario 64 cart and being a giant Zelda fan. Without emulation or piracy, I would most likely not even be a gamer or... I would just be playing COD or Fortnite which thank gosh I'm not playing Fortnite...

Romsmainia is awesome. I do not know why, but I always come back to that website. Ever since one of my friends introduced emulation to me about a month or two ago, I loved it. Seeing everything work on my phone was outstanding to me, and I did not even grow up with these games. The fact that I do not have to sit on a couch playing these games was also awesome, as I can enjoy my experience wherever I am. I do not support piracy, but playing them on a little screen during that time was great!

Dude great vid! I got really into emulators because of a friend who shared a love for SNES. Growing up in the 90’s I had a original Game Boy, SNES, N64, and a classic NES. When everyone else was playing PS1 and Xbox I still played my classic consoles. I loved Secret of Mana and I really wanted to play the sequel Sekndetsu but it was only in Japanese. Someone made a English version and I had to stop play it!! So from then on I used emulators for every console and and game I always wanted to play.

My emulation started with Pokemon games,so discovered roms and emulation apps so on I am into emulation and found your channel and many interesting.

Your story was so relatable i was seeing myself like the whole video😂

Amigo, parecia que estavas a contar a minha história. :) Uma das coisas mais famosas aqui em Portugal eram os emuladores, mas antes eram as consolas bootlegs, tipo Polystation e Family Game. Quando soube que a PSP dava para jogar os classicos 8 bits... A minha cabeça fez BOOM!! e antes de ir dormir... Super Mario! Mega Man! E claro, dava para jogar coisas que nunca tinha tido a oportunidade de jogar. Obrigado pela partilha!

My story about emulation is similar to yours, except that being a bit older (my first console was actually an Atari VCS - BEFORE they started marketing it as the 2600), what really opened my eyes to emulation were MAME and RAINE, which were the two top emulators that began the concept of emulating more than one arcade machine. My father's cousin owned and operated an arcade in the early and Mid-Eighties, so as you can imagine, I was always surrounded by the classics. The prospects of being able to play my favorites, such as Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Jr. (a HIGHLY underrated game, IMO), TRON, Defender, Tempest - the list goes on and on... Well, it was heaven - I used to follow MAME very closely through the years as it clearly became the dominant arcade emulation platform, and even later as MESS eventually joined forces to become the (unofficially named) UME. I still follow it to this day. But to bring me closer to your point, despite having all these games in MAME, I still have purchased pretty much every arcade collection that has ever come out on consoles - The Namco Museum releases on PlayStation, PS2, PSP, XBox, and Wii are all in my collection. The Williams/Midway collections on the PlayStation, PS2, Xbox, PS3 and Xbox 360 are also in my collection - including the Midway Arcade Pack that was released for Lego Dimensions! The Atari Anthologies on PlayStation and Xbox - in my collection, not to mention the recent release of the Atari Vault on PC... The SNK and Data East collections on Wii, also in my collection. The point is, despite having easy access to these games via MAME, I still belive in the era and the Nostalgia it brings to me enough that I purchase and support any legitimate IP holder that makes those games avaialble for convenient play on the various gaming platforms today. On the classic oncsole side, I've even supported there where I can. Despite building and setting up a Raspberry Pi with RetroPie, I still have both Nintendo Classic consoles, I recently purchased the Genesis Collection (not to mention that I have the previous Genesis Collections released on PS3/Xbox 360). On the console side, I have all the classic Sega consoles - Master System, Genesis (with SegaCD and 32X), Saturn, and Dreamcast. All but the Dreamcast were reacquired after I had passed them down to my younger brother, who within a matter of 3 years proceeded to sell them all... >:( But I digress... I have the consoles once again, along with the rebuilding the collections I originally had for each, so life is good. As a collector, I appreciate emulation in the sense that I can TRY games that I'm interested to see if they are truly worth the sometimes high price they command. I would rather spend the money on a true classic, than some over-inflated piece of garbage that is expensive just because it is very rare (because no one bought the steaming pile that it was). I have exactly 2 reproduction Genesis cartridges in my collection - Gunstar Heroes, and MUSHA... but BOTH of them were purchased digitally in the Wii eShop. The fact that I supported the notion of making these games available again digitally gives me comfort in creating a copy that I can play on my original hardware. Even then, I would highly consider getting an actual copy of GS for my collection, it's that good. So is MUSHA, but Holy Cow, that price! I'm a complete collector, so it isn't easy. :) In a similar vein to what you mention, however, buying the original games doesn't benefit anyone but the person who sells them it to me. The publishers and console manufacturers made that money a LONG time ago. As for Nintendo, they will always be Nintendo. While I support their right to protect their properties, they really do overstep their authority sometimes, IMHO... The agressive stance on RU-vid content strikes that could clearly win in a case of "Fair Use" is a particularly sore spot (it doesn't help that RU-vid's system to easily claim copyright doesn't help matters). especially when that "Partner Program" of theirs does not allow for criticism of their products. They just don't get how much the free exposure can benefits them greatly more often than not.

Small nitpick but at 11:11 there were a couple of snes games that were ported to gba. This is the first video of yours I've seen and I'm impressed with the quality

Hey man, I'm from Brazil but I will text in english to not disturb the regular audience here. Thank's a lot man, I remember I used to play when I was a child some weird game that have a guy shooting at devil pigs and never remembered the name, and now I can search for BlackThorne! Thanks a lot, it made my day!

I'm a younger gamer and I never really got to experience any of the older Nintendo and Sega games in their time, having no income I'm not really able to buy original hardware or Virtual console games. After desperately wanting one for a year or two I finally got an SNES classic from my brother for Christmas. After beating Super Punchout and Super Mario World (now some of my favorite games) I learned I could hack my system to add more games. I had an extremely similar experience to you with the PSP and ultimately decided to try it out. I was able to bump the game count from 21 to 173, not only is the idea of that alone just balls to the walls crazy but not all of them are SNES games. I have GameGear, Gameboy, Atari 2600, Gameboy color, NES, Gameboy advanced, and Genesis Games all on one system AND I get to use the SNES controller. This is the coolest damn thing I've ever experienced and it's the only reason I'm able to experience some of my favorite games of all time, I feel truly blessed that this is possible. Now I'm trying to get these games to work on my old PS Vita so I can play on the go and I'm so stoked for when I finally finish.

I can relate with you. I didn't have that much money when I was a kid, and then a teenager, so emulation was a big thing for me. I had the chance to play games that I could have not played otherwise.

My story with emulation really isn't much different than probably most people, but like anything else, it was probably the motivation that was personal. Being 51 now, I was obviously a kid that grew up around Arcades, back when arcades were very much a thing - the Golden age, if you will. My first job while in High School back in 1983 was working as an attendant at an arcade (not quite the "dream job" most guys envisioned back then, haha!). Even in my early adulthood (we're talking late 80's, early 90's), when I had the chance, you could probably find me over at the most prominent arcade here in town. As the 90's came to a close, so did that arcade (along with pretty much Arcade culture in general here in the States ). Fast forward to about 2001-2,, and I discovered MAME at a time in my life when I really could've used the trip down memory lane. It was amazing to replay many of the games I loved back in the 80's and early 90's. It was around this same time that I was gaming prolificly with the PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast, so I eventually looked into console emulation as well. I mean heck, as it was, I wa already buying any collection that would come out (the Arcade's Greatest Hits series on PS1, the Midway Arcade Classics releases on PS2/Xbox, the Atari Anthology, etc.). In a nutshell, Gaming defined me growing up (Started with Atari, but became the Sega guy when the Master System came out - my younger brother is the one who grew up on Nintendo). It's the reason I became interested in Computer Programming at the age of about 13 (I had aspirations to be an Architect before that). Emulation is what has led me to being a game Collector. And I have to say that because of the current market for Retro gaming, I have relied on emulation to make intelligent decisions on how I spend my money. There is no value in buying expensive games just for the sake of being expensive. I want to make sure that if I spend $80+ on a classic game, it's something that is truly worth that experience. It's also a matter of convenience. When you have a large collection, it's not always practical to have everything "at the ready". Emulation (or at least playing games on original hardware by way of an Everdrive) makes it convenient. So there - yes, I use ROMs from time to time, and I'm not ashamed of it. It is also unfortunate that players in the industry are not interested in coming up with solutions to make these available in a uniform manner, such as how the Music industry conceded in the iTunes era. I wonder how piracy impacteed the Music industry in the "$0.99 per tune" era of purchasing digital Music. I really wish that they would focus less on the sites that provide access to the ROMs for conicidental profit from Ad revenue to cover the cost of maintaining the sites, and more on people who unscrupulously SELL the ROMs in convenient "RetroPie packages" preloaded with the content. If you look at the prices on some of these things, they are charging for WAY more than "their time" to put these little bundles together. THAT is outright copyright infringement, and is what should be pursued.

Okay so I'm a bit different. When I was young I always wanted a psp but I could never afford it until years later when the psp was old news and my mum bought me one. It was amazing, sadly my console broke later that year. A couple years later I bought a psp 3000 (used) and I carry it everywhere, it's my pride and joy (Also I also emulate games so that they are stretched).

I have been using emulation for a while now and it has actually really helped me finding new retro games that I actually enjoyed more than newer modern games

The PSP was my favorite system when I was younger (was born in '00) late last year I purchased a white star wars edition 2000(same one I had as a kid) I then quickly discovered the wonderful world of emulation, and it literally felt like a whole new world for me. It's insane how much a system that old can do

i live in a country where games were hard to find exempt "nes colnes" and they were so expensive , i didn't have an experience with snes or mega drive in that time , until i discovered emulators it was my life joy .

Here is my story: The PS2 was my childhood! I koved it! Sonic heroes was my shit! But as I grew, I slowly lost intrest! I got the Wii and it was the same story! I missed both later on. Fast foward to 2016! My friend made a let's play on Mario 64! I said "How?"! I searched up Play Mario 64! And I nearly screamed when I saw it! And I play SNES games daily!

I have a long story about emulation as well. Had a 8 bit console that I my big brother got from somewhere, and didn't really get any games for. After that I got a PS1, but threw modding, was able to get a lot of pirated games every now and then. Emulation for me started when I had to sell the PS1 to buy a PC and textbooks for college. I remember hearing that my friend played the current GBA games on his PC, but knew that my system was not powerful enough, so I looked for older stuff. I fondly remember looking the games that would fit on the 1.44mb disks mentioned in the video and it felt like hacking when I located the "temporary internet files" folder in Windows XP from the college library PC that had the zipped files from the emulation sites that could fit the disks. In those college years I must have downloaded 600 games. These were the 8 bit ones that never made it to RSA, 16 bit SNES and Genesis games I had no clue about because I jumped to PS1, and some Gameboy Color stuff I really wouldve missed. Obviously I never played them all completely, but I got to experience the stuff I read about in Magazines for a bit. That opened my wallet to the current releases that I would not have known about without emulation. I should also add that my addiction to TETRIS ATTACK rivaled anything someone had with Flappy Bird, and almost failed a class playing it the 4 days before one exam. Thanks for the video. Brought up great memories for my experience.

Wow 64k? I always thought your channel was way bigger, maybe it's because of your other channel so I'm guessing the production quality matches that channel. Emulation is great, can't wait til PS2 emulation is perfected and we can play those great games from my childhood but portable on a emulator.

I have a cart of s-11 for GBC that I bought and didn’t work. The rom is now on my nes mini classic . I have 4 copies of MARIO 6 golden coins but it is almost impossible to find the rom now . ???? I just want my games I own in one place

My mom always held gaming as some sort of unnecessary distraction, so I was rather restricted. One time, she took away my laptop (which was a piece of junk anyway) and I was just left with several phones, one of which was a Nokia 3650. Searching for programs for it (on a K750i... joy), I found a GameBoy emulator and proceeded to have a lot of fun with Link's Awakening. I have a small collection of consoles now. Mostly home ones, though I got a very cheap PSP when I was 16. Many of them, I mod for the purpose of homebrew and emulation.

Dude, your story is so similar to mine. I actually had a Game Boy growing up, but it was a present from my grandparents so not only would the system itself been out of our price range, the games most certainly were as well. This left me playing Tetris in my room by the wall-socket (because screw batteries), thus the Game Boy for me wasn't necessarily about being 'portable'- just a way to still be able to play games even when the TV was already being used. I grew up playing Pokémon Blue on my Windows 95 PC, and I remember being able to justify it then in precisely the same way I can justify it now. Here's my take: It doesn't make any difference to the manufacturer whether I pay for the game or not. If I can't afford it, which I can't, then I'm not going to buy it anyway. Either way, whether or not I find a way to play it- ie, borrowing from a friend or emulation- they still don't get my money. The only difference is that I got to play that game, and it doesn't effect them in any way. Mean-spirited? Possibly. But if you're poor, you're probably not exactly who they were marketing at in the first place. Why accept that you're locked out of something you love, because of a legal technicality? If I was going to get busted for anything, I want it to be my emulation collection. It's the only illegal thing I'm actually proud of! (Great video BTW. It's one of those subjects we could rave about all day).

You sure seem like a nice guy would sure like to be your friend

Personally, I discovered emulation with the PSP (I could have discovered this before with the DS but it seems to me that people mainly used this to put many DS games in the same card, rather than playing old games). And omg this was really a revelation! I've felt this so amazing that today, I still play GBA games, for example, on my PSP (and to me I've got a so much better experience playing Pokémon on a PSP than on an original GBA, that's ironic). The only change I made since then was to switch from PSP Slim (the first console I've ever hacked to download homebrews) to PSP GO, that is so convenient to play emulators on the go (with its internal storage + a memory card, its small size, weight... and obviously to play Pokémon with the console closed only pressing L button to pass the dialogues... I'm such a weirdo 😅). Finally, after all this time, I realize that I especially play emulators to play again some games I enjoyed so much in the past (what the main way emulation should be used for, I guess). That's why I don't understand people who systematically associate emulation and piracy, I mean, I've never understood people who use emulation only for this. If I didn't know the SEGA Genesis (that is called Megadrive in my country), I would not buy a portable designed especially for this (that is a bad - and only - example because I own this portable and I think this is one of my worst ideas of my life, because that's not my era, so I can't feel the same things that a person who lived and grew in 80's). Anyway, I don't see the interest to download all NES, SNES, Saturne, PlayStation, N64... games just for fun, unless you've known these games during your childhood, of course. That's why I can say that my PSP GO is like a second GBA to me (a GB/GBC/GBA to be more precise, even if I prefer to play GBA games on full screen, with the graphics of the third generation of Pokémon, and obviously the L=A mode 😁). By the way, I'm sorry in advance if you read this comment entirely with a slurry of English words 😅

I was always a gamer, my mom was able to get used but still pretty new systems because of working at what would eventually become a Blockbuster, so when her coworkers sold off their N64 and then PS1, she got them for me for like Christmas and my birthday. Well, along comes 2000 or so, when I was 9 or 10, and I found a website when looking up anime. It had a bunch of SNES fanlations and other great/classic RPGs and thus my love of games that we never got stateside got started. If it weren't for that website(which is still around) I'd have never known how amazing Seiken Densetsu 3 or Romancing Saga 3 were, among many others.