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Bleem!
Bleem! (styled as bleem!) is a commercial PlayStation emulator released by the Bleem! Company in 1999 for Windows and Dreamcast. It is one of the few commercial software emulators to be aggressively marketed during the emulated console's lifetime, and was the center of multiple lawsuits.
Bleem! was a PlayStation emulator designed to allow people to play original PlayStation games on Windows 95 or 98 or on the Dreamcast (the Dreamcast version was called Bleemcast!). It was released in March 1999. The company that developed and commercialized Bleem! initially consisted of just two people, David Herpolsheimer (president) and Randy Linden, but in the commercial phase included Will Kempe, Scott Karol, Sean Kauppinen, Bryan Stokes, James Sinclair, and Paul Chen, later of Rovio Entertainment.
To allow for full-speed emulation on lower-end computers of what was at the time a current generation console, the authors coded Bleem! in assembly. This allowed them to create precise optimizations. Unlike Connectix's commercial Virtual Game Station, it made use of a PC's 3D graphics hardware for rendering, allowing for enhanced resolutions and filtered textures not possible in real-time software rendering of the time.
Bleem! used low-level memory emulation and other real-mode technology. It did not function on operating systems using the Windows NT kernel, including Windows 2000. In fact, Bleem!'s statement at the time was that Bleem! would never support running on Windows NT-based systems, as Windows 98 was the dominant operating system at the time.
Sony, despite having lost its case with Connectix, continued to pursue legal action against Bleem!. Bleem!, financially unable to defend itself, was forced to go out of business.
As of 2005, two members of the team were working for Sony: Randy Linden was working for SCEA on porting titles and looking at the possibility of emulation of previous generation titles for the next PlayStation,[citation needed] and Sean Kauppinen was promoting EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies for Sony Online Entertainment.
To combat redistribution of the small downloadable emulator, the user had to buy the Bleem!-CD, containing about 35 MB of data: a DirectX distributable and the actual version of Bleem! available at the time of the CD's printing. The rest of the CD was only for copy protection and was impossible to copy by conventional means; nevertheless, the copy protection was cracked within two weeks of the release.
Further updates to the emulator were free until the company ceased operation several years later.
Hub AI
Bleem! AI simulator
(@Bleem!_simulator)
Bleem!
Bleem! (styled as bleem!) is a commercial PlayStation emulator released by the Bleem! Company in 1999 for Windows and Dreamcast. It is one of the few commercial software emulators to be aggressively marketed during the emulated console's lifetime, and was the center of multiple lawsuits.
Bleem! was a PlayStation emulator designed to allow people to play original PlayStation games on Windows 95 or 98 or on the Dreamcast (the Dreamcast version was called Bleemcast!). It was released in March 1999. The company that developed and commercialized Bleem! initially consisted of just two people, David Herpolsheimer (president) and Randy Linden, but in the commercial phase included Will Kempe, Scott Karol, Sean Kauppinen, Bryan Stokes, James Sinclair, and Paul Chen, later of Rovio Entertainment.
To allow for full-speed emulation on lower-end computers of what was at the time a current generation console, the authors coded Bleem! in assembly. This allowed them to create precise optimizations. Unlike Connectix's commercial Virtual Game Station, it made use of a PC's 3D graphics hardware for rendering, allowing for enhanced resolutions and filtered textures not possible in real-time software rendering of the time.
Bleem! used low-level memory emulation and other real-mode technology. It did not function on operating systems using the Windows NT kernel, including Windows 2000. In fact, Bleem!'s statement at the time was that Bleem! would never support running on Windows NT-based systems, as Windows 98 was the dominant operating system at the time.
Sony, despite having lost its case with Connectix, continued to pursue legal action against Bleem!. Bleem!, financially unable to defend itself, was forced to go out of business.
As of 2005, two members of the team were working for Sony: Randy Linden was working for SCEA on porting titles and looking at the possibility of emulation of previous generation titles for the next PlayStation,[citation needed] and Sean Kauppinen was promoting EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies for Sony Online Entertainment.
To combat redistribution of the small downloadable emulator, the user had to buy the Bleem!-CD, containing about 35 MB of data: a DirectX distributable and the actual version of Bleem! available at the time of the CD's printing. The rest of the CD was only for copy protection and was impossible to copy by conventional means; nevertheless, the copy protection was cracked within two weeks of the release.
Further updates to the emulator were free until the company ceased operation several years later.