Nintendo64 Emulator Disassembled

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February 12, 1999 (5:57 PM EST)

By Andy Patrizio,

As Nintendo continues to ponder what steps to take against developers of a PC-based Nintendo64 emulator, the source code to the emulator has been released on the Internet as freeware.

The emulator, written by two programmers who go by the nicknames Reality Man and Epsilon, was only available for a few hours on a website called Emulators Unlimited, which hosts almost two dozen emulators, mostly based on long-defunct platforms like the Atari 2600 and Commodore Amiga.

The emulator, called Ultra High Level Emulator, or UltraHLE for short, acts as the "console." To play the games, the game code has to be "ripped" from the cartridge and loaded onto the PC. The hardware used to rip the N64 cartridges is sold illegally on the Internet, and trading of the games is considered copyright infringement.

Even though UltraHLE was only online for a few hours, hundreds of people downloaded it. It is available on other sites in addition to Emulators Unlimited.

UltraHLE is not the first Nintendo64 emulator. Emulators Unlimited hosts five Nintendo64 emulators, EmuUnlim64, Nemu64, NINCEST, Project Unreality, and Ultra64.

Nintendo is still thinking about what to do. "We are reviewing all of our legal options, one of which could be taking legal action," said Beth Llewelyn, a spokeswoman for Nintendo of America. UltraHLE, in Nintendo's view, does infringe on Nintendo's intellectual-property rights, but a final decision has not been reached, she said.

Stopping UltraHLE is going to be much more difficult now because the source code was released by a programmer who calls himself GossiTheDog. The code is actually the UltraHLE executable disassembled and partly converted to C++ code. The code does not compile in its current form, and part of the reason for releasing it was to get some help.

"I've decided to make my efforts of converting UltraHLE to C++ public," wrote GossiTheDog on his home page. "I want to make HLE Open Source, if possible. The problem is; what legal position does this put me in? To be honest, I'm not sure."