Yuji Naka, the father of Console Homebrew?

[Elven6]

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 (http://digg.com/gaming_news/Yuji_Naka_the_father_of_Homebrew)

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Yuji_Naka_the_father_of_Homebrew

[wraggster]

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]

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]

Awesome info, never knew about it

[g00gy]

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

[mnuhaily22]

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

[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).

[gdf]

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

[robocelot]

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.

[SSaxdude]

Sega has been the leader in many video game related things.

[Mikaa]

1. That excerpt almost sounds like it was lifted strait from the now-defunct Sega Base (once archived on www.sega-cd.org), and I mean word for word.

2. Naka created a program that ran NES games on the Mega Drive, this is true.

3. He is NOT THE FIRST HOMEBREW PROGRAMMER.

Let me sum this up as simplistically as possible: even if you subtract computers (ie - PC, Commodore 64, VIC-20, etc), people were cooking up their own games back in the late 1970's and '80s via several consoles, the most infamous one that comes to mind being the Balley Arcade.

Certainly a nice nugget of history that was unearthed, but the facts do need to be clarified.

Mikaa

[Cap'n 1time]

I dont know why this article is titled "Father of Homebrew". It sounds more like he was the first person to emulate a video game console on another video game console with totally different hardware, and for no profit. Still amazing, but to suggest he fathered homebrew is silly. Homebrew games were around decades before this guy created this nes emulator.

[Hungry Horace]

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).


thank you quzar, let this ^^ point not go missed. Cap' and Mikaa seem to have picked up on it.


the "homebrew" scene on many home-computers was massive.... well before anything appeared on consoles.

only difference was, we called it the PD (public domain) scene. It was still "home" users creating software to share... i.e. homebrew

I even had one of the early ZX Spectrum emulators running on a 1 meg Amiga500!

[TeenDev]

omfg! whos the mother?

[Vangar]

I agree with Quzar and Mikaa, this is common knowledge from Segabase. Anyone that wanted to find this information could have gotten it literally years ago.

[Elven6]

Well to have searched a site that does not exist is a bit odd. And some one who searched for this would probably have to know what it is, something a majority of ts knew nothing about. Those examples u guys gave are classified asscomputers so I guess father of console homebrew?

[Vangar]

Well to have searched a site that does not exist is a bit odd. And some one who searched for this would probably have to know what it is, something a majority of ts knew nothing about. Those examples u guys gave are classified asscomputers so I guess father of console homebrew?

http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=SegaBase

Use Google next time mate, the site still exists.

[Elven6]

Ok so l read their article and it says the worlds first video games system emulator. So I guess he was the fouder of console brew.

[Vangar]

He was the first console emulator. Emulators do not equal homebrew. Homebrew implies 100% home made game.

So now you can see this is very old news either way.

[Mikaa]

thank you quzar, let this ^^ point not go missed. Cap' and Mikaa seem to have picked up on it.


the "homebrew" scene on many home-computers was massive.... well before anything appeared on consoles.

only difference was, we called it the PD (public domain) scene. It was still "home" users creating software to share... i.e. homebrew

I even had one of the early ZX Spectrum emulators running on a 1 meg Amiga500!

And let us not forget the actual console home brew scene, that, while not as wide-spread as its computer bretheren, was still formidable. And do keep in mind that while the Bally Arcade was one of the more notable consoles that saw home brewing, the Atari 2600 had its fair share (in more ways than one, but that's a topic for another day).

On a side note, should anyone be interested, somewhere on this mess of a hard drive that I call a computer, I have the full .RAR Sega Base Archive, with pics, reviews, histories, and sources. I picked it up a few years ago back when Sega Base fell down and was archived by www.sega-cd.org a while back (and am unsure if THEY are still running it...).

Mikaa

[Elven6]

Alright I changed the title for those who were confused.

[Mikaa]

^^;

Thanks.