Yuji Naka, the father of Console Homebrew?

**Elven6** · April 25th, 2007, 15:46

I did some research lately and apparently Yuji Naka created the very first NES emulator on a console. The console in question was the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis! However he could not release it for obvious reason but it made him a respected member of Sega and AM8.

"There were a few other projects from this period, including the Mega Drive version of Ghouls 'N Ghosts. In his spare time between games, Naka tinkered with ways to play NES games on the Mega Drive, an effort the eventually resulted in the first video game system emulator. Releasing such a device would have proven impossible at the time, but his efforts gained him the respect and admiration of his fellow AM8 team members, due to the complexity and innovation such an undertaking required."

http://www.sega-16.com/Sega%20Stars-%20Yuji%20Naka.php

DiGG THIS

***wraggster*** · April 25th, 2007, 15:55

what a killer find, moving to network news

I would think that many good coders have dabbled in Emulation and Homebrew before getting jobs in the industry.

**Elven6** · April 25th, 2007, 16:24

Yea, I heard about the lady who named her baby Yuji Naka, I was going to put it on his wiki page but then I found the article that was mentioned, I thought it would be something people would really get into here. I wonder how his project went though, was it full speed? Playable? etc.

Come on people DIGG it!

**Basil Zero** · April 25th, 2007, 16:30

Awesome info, never knew about it

**g00gy** · April 25th, 2007, 17:09

that is really kool news. he created my childhood with sonic.

**mnuhaily22** · April 25th, 2007, 17:28

God...I never new this, thanks for sharing this with us...+rep

***quzar*** · April 25th, 2007, 18:14

wtf... this is common knowledge. Also, that would make him the father of console on console emulation (and not even, as there were older systems that emulated their predecessors partially in softawre) NOT of homebrew (which has been around since the very first non-military computers).

**gdf** · April 25th, 2007, 19:09

lol but still cool to know, never heard of this before...

**robocelot** · April 25th, 2007, 19:45

Originally Posted by quzar

wtf... this is common knowledge. Also, that would make him the father of console on console emulation (and not even, as there were older systems that emulated their predecessors partially in softawre) NOT of homebrew (which has been around since the very first non-military computers).

First homebrew for a closed console system? Hmm, not even that as the first Atari 2600 programmers who broke away from Atari to form Activision mght be considered homebrewers depending on how you look at it.

Note that we aren't told how successful the Megadrive/Genesis was at emulating NES (I assume it would fairly slow with no sound unless they were able to find a decent shortcut).

The term 'emulator' was not even coined at that point, they used to refer to them as 'simulators'. The timeframe that Naka says he wrote this NES emulator would place it around the same time that the first Z80 and M6809 emulators were appearing (the first of which emulated the TRS-80 Model I on Intel 808x).

The other possibility is that Naka may have been working on a way to automate disassembly of NES games and recompiling them for the Motorola based Geneisis. What you'd end up with is a NES game automagically ported to the Genesis -- which would *not* be considered emulation since it would not be in real time.

It is very possible the author of the article mistook this form of automated recompilation as an emulator. This method is certainly less common today than straight up emulation.