Emulation is in the spotlight right now thanks to Nintendo's tussle with the creators of Yuzu, but hardware makers have been chasing down this kind of thing for quite some time – as a new video by Greg Gant (of Definitive Mac Upgrade Guide fame) attests.
Gant's video shines a light on an infamous moment in Apple's history when its Steve Jobs actually went on live television in 1999 to promote the fact that it was possible to play PS1 games on a Mac via Virtual Game Station (VGS), a commercially-available emulator (thanks, Overkill.wtf).
Speaking on the U.S. news network CNBC, Jobs even went as far as to point out that it wasn't available for Windows PCs, the Mac's great rival. Jobs announced the emulator during Macworld 1999 and even showed it running on-stage:
As you might imagine, Sony took a rather dim view of this; the PS1 market was still very large at this point, despite the fact that the console was almost five years old. Being able to play games on a Mac – and therefore circumventing the need to purchase a console – would have been damaging to the company's business, and it predictably took legal action, claiming that the fact that the system's BIOS had been copied constituted copyright infringement.
Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp. case is an interesting one; the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that reverse-engineering a copyrighted BIOS and creating an alternative does not constitute copyright infringement, thereby laying down the rules of emulation which hold true to this very day.
Sony and Connectix would settle out of court, and Sony eventually purchased the rights to the VGS emulator in 2001, withdrawing the product from sale later that same year. Connectix would shut down in 2003.
[source overkill.wtf]
Comments 5
I did not know about this, and it's hilarious. It's pretty rich to brag about Apple having something windows doesn't, even back then.
No only do I remember the Virtual Games Station, I even bought it for my iMac back in the day - and still own it
PC gamers from that era may remember a similar product called Bleem, which was likewise sued out of existence by Sony. I think both cases were similarly settled, but in the case of Bleem, it left the company bankrupt. I doubt Connectix was in a much better position after their own legal battles.
Connectix also had a killer product called Virtual PC, which let you install Windows on your Mac and run it in real time alongside the Mac OS. That same iMac with the VGS also had Windows 98 installed within Mac OS 9. Such a versatile machine, and the emulation with both Connectix products was more than satisfactory at the time.
The rights to Virtual PC were later bought out by Microsoft, who proceeded to release their own brand of the product. Imagine that.
Thanks for posting this article. Going off the first sentence, I've gotten quite the chuckle out of the online community's response to Nintendo's recent actions towards emulators. Dunk on them all you want, but if you assume Sony or Microsoft has never done anything similar in their company history, well...
Still have my bleem CD
@notreallyhere
Bleem actually did win against Sony, but the Costs were 5o hight...
Apple once also bragged about having halo coming to the platform, before Microsoft swooped in and bought bungie.
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