Project Unreality was a

video game console emulator A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass ...

for the

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...

. It was notable for being one of the earliest attempts at Nintendo 64 emulation (predating

UltraHLE UltraHLE is a discontinued emulator for the Nintendo 64. Emulating the Nintendo 64 (which was only 3 years old at the time) made it the first of the N64 emulators to run commercial titles at a playable frame rate on the hardware of the time, and ...

by nearly a year), and the first Nintendo 64 emulator to successfully boot a commercial game.

History

Development on Project Unreality started in late 1997, just over a year after the launch of the Nintendo 64. In its earliest days, Project Unreality had few contemporaries; at the time, emulators for current-generation consoles were often

hoaxes A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

or "shells" with extremely limited emulation capabilities. By early 1998, Project Unreality could emulate homebrew games to some extent. The emulator's initial release saw its ability to boot commercial games, a first for any Nintendo 64 emulator.

Discontinuation

In May 1998, lead programmer Michael Tedder announced that Project Unreality would be "put on the back burner for now", though no future updates were ever released.

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evalu ...

later reported that one of Project Unreality's developers was hired to a game studio, leaving the emulator's development in limbo. This news coincided with Tedder's hiring to

Z-Axis Underground Development, Ltd. (formerly Z-Axis, Ltd.) was an American video game developer based in Foster City, California. The company was founded in 1994 by David Luntz and sold to Activision in May 2002. Following a rebranding to Undergrou ...

, where he continued to work until early 2000. Though Tedder repeatedly claimed that Nintendo hadn't contacted him regarding Project Unreality, the rumor that Nintendo halted the emulator's development spread throughout the emulation scene; it has been suggested that UltraHLE's development was carried out in secret directly as a result of this rumor.

References

{{Nintendo 64 1998 software C++ software Nintendo 64 emulators Windows emulation software Windows-only software Proprietary video game console emulators