Forest of Illusion has just released the source code to the infamous NES emulator called NESticle. Originally released in 1997, NESticle was one of the best NES emulators out there. In fact, it’s existence and features inspired many other emulation developments in the scene!
The original (1990’s) acquisition of the code has a sad story to it. Apparently, someone named Donald Moore, hacked into the original developer’s computer and stole the code. The event upset the developer so much, that it caused him to quit working on the emulator and quit the scene entirely.
There’s quite a bit of drama following Forest Of Illusion’s current release of the stolen code, regardless of the fact that the original theft happened over 20 years ago and they weren’t the ones that stole it. It even sparked an article from the more mainstream publication Motherboard.
It’s my personal opinion that I’d never feel comfortable hosting anything stolen, that could potentially take away from someone’s income or be detrimental to the progress of their work. It’s been twenty years though and there are many excellent NES emulators available for free, as well as FPGA cores! In this particular case, I’ll have to side with Forrest Of Illusion and say that this was an act of celebrating and preserving an iconic emulator and was done with love, not malice.
Source Code: https://archive.org/details/kronksrc
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Today I have released the source code to a very old Nintendo NES emulator, Nesticle. This source code has been lost for 20 years. It was originally leaked by a software pirate and computer enthusiast named Donald Moore. He went by the name "MindRape" online. pic.twitter.com/5IOm8pgBWI
— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) March 20, 2019
