Does anything even use them?
Also, aren't there enough NES emulators already? While I can't speak for what motivates iq I don't see how emulating something which has already been emulated 200 times in multiple languages at a pixel perfect level is all that interesting.. there's nothing to discover which hasn't already been discovered.
Hmm. What mostly motivates me to port/emulate things is to learn about them and to see them in FBA. If I happen to enjoy a game/system, it gets moved up my "to do" list, but sometimes I will port something just because I have a few free hours and am bored. lol
Maybe reasons for doing things and motivation here is different, but when I emulate something it's always so that I can add to the knowledge pool in an open format (MAME) discovering things which were previously unknowns, or locked away in closed source projects. I'm sure even when stuff from MAME gets ported iq is looking to fix bugs, or discover something we might have missed?
Absolutely. I certainly look to improve on the emulation of games in general -- which is why I've submitted fixes here and there for stuff in MAME.
He recently pointed out 'PoPo Bear' which the DU purchased and dumped, that would be a more realistic immediate target for FBA, and the whole thing still needs reverse engineering / figuring out :-)
I hate to say it, but I am not particularly good at reverse engineering (for the most part, I'm not even a particularly good programmer). I love to try, but more often that not, i get nowhere. Give me something like an unknown encryption (especially where I have an idea what the underlying data should be) and I can usually get it.
![Smiley :)](https://neo-source.com/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
I have been working to improve myself though -- I've taught myself some 68k assembly and am working on learning about the i8080/z80 atm.