Some he'd buy more then once to find revisions of the same game (devs would sometimes reissue a game if there was a particularly nasty bug etc), and work with others to get to dump the EU library. He has also been a big proponent of preservation, and bought the entire catalogue of the JP and US snes library so he could dump them himself and make sure we had good dumps for every game.
NEAR HIGAN BSNES HAS FULL
For years he has also helped the snes9x devs port improvements back there, which in some ways takes him back full circle to the days he was asking matthew kendora (then snes9x lead developer) questions on the old snes9x boards before he started bsnes. Today, Bsnes has a compatibility of 100%, with no known bugs over the ENTIRE snes library. It was expensive even with the mates rates, but byuu got the money together (including a lot of his own), got the chips decapped and with that knowledge made bsnes even better. He also managed to find someone willing to decap many of the snes chips at a reduced rate (who amusing called himseld "dr decap"), which was a VERY expensive process. That state of affairs would continue for many years - the emulation scene was a very different place back then (not that he doesn't still get a lot of mud unfairly slung his way).īut Byuu persevered, and had help from some very talented people along the way. Many people who frequented emulator forums back then were used to emulators that would run on toasters, and disdained bsnes and often slung very rude comments Byuu's way.
NEAR HIGAN BSNES HAS CODE
That itself was very rare back then, as many emu authors concentrated on getting games working, and you ended up with a lot of black boxes, high level code which kind of worked, but the authors didn't know why because they didn't actually know what the original snes was doing to achieve the end result.īyuu focused on accuracy, and the result at first was a very slow emulator that only those with high end machines could play. Byuu decided to make an accuracy focused emulator. Near left behind a legacy very few others have achieved to the same. You can look at SNES9X 1.43 or ZSNES 1.40 if you want to see what they were like (assuming they still run). whats unquestionably the most accurate SNES emulator, Higan (Formerly BSNES). Before he started work on BSNES in 2004, snes emulation was vastly inaccurate. I've been following his work for over 15 years, and if this is the end for byuu, it's certainly a well deserved retirement.įor those who don't know who Byuu is, he is a console emulation author best known for BSNES, a SNES emulator. I am right in that cohort of people who found bsnes and was, in an odd way, found by it.Hopefully he comes back at some point, but he's done more than enough for the cause of emulation - to be honest I can't think of anyone offhand who's done more, not just in his push for emulator accuracy but his preservation efforts as well, and his role in changing the way people think about emulation. One of the most modest people I've ever known, they were unlikely to suggest hanging out in person, but never rejected an offer. I'd known them for several years, but after they moved to Tokyo a few years back we started talking more often. Near was also an incredibly kind, funny, and welcoming person. They also recently released their ultimate labor of love, a fan translation of Bahamut Lagoon that might well be the most exacting and meticulously crafted language adaptation of a video game of the era. Working out the most elusive hardware glitches and corner cases, they advanced the world of SNES emulation by leaps and bounds. Developer of the bsnes, higan, and ares emulators, Near was a relentless force for accuracy in the formerly haphazard world of emulation. Despite this, they continued to pour their life into the one thing they loved: emulation and retro gaming. Near was a brilliant mind in a corner of the web all too often rife with toxicity and harassment. In a twitter thread posted Saturday, Near disclosed their first name, Dave, and explained that they had been bullied, ridiculed and humilated their entire life, but that the bullying site KiwiFarms had made it intolerable.Ī friend posted a eulogy: "Near did not commit suicide.
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