Always wondered about the full stories behind these two! I remember reading about them in magazines in the late '90s, and I downloaded both of them back then too, but it was always a mystery to me where they went. I researched a little bit into Bleem a few years back when I did an Oddware episode on it, but had no idea what really happened to Connectix. In short, AWESOME video man.

This was a Patreon-voted topic. Initially it was only going to be about Bleem! But while researching, I learned about the Connectix Virtual Game Station and just had to include that story as well. The impact these emulators had on the industry and the law is huge. Hope you enjoy hearing about their stories. Also, I got a haircut. Have a good weekend!

11:35 "What did bleem stand for? That remains a mystery". If you flip the name "bleem" vertically, you get "p166w", or Pentium 166 Windows, which, as you explain at 11:52, were the minimum requirements for the emulator to run. I remember a friend telling me this at the time, though I've never heard it verified since.

Bleem: Although we've been battling copyright lawsuits for years, looks like they finally got us. Also Bleem: let's add Sonic next to a picture of our gravestone!

It's trippy as hell seeing Steve Jobs on stage officially supporting an emulator

When doing research for my own video about VGS, I learned that some Connectix employees ended up working for Sony after the acquisition of the product (which ended up working well for them, as Connectix went out of business shortly afterward -- while it had won the legal battle, litigation costs devastated the company). While Sony immediately killed VGS, it kept the source code, and the employees ended up putting it to use in newer PlayStation consoles for PS1 backward compatibility.

1998: *Apple announces a paid emulator* 2019: *Apple keeps revoking emulators on my phone*

Steve Jobs proudly introducing an emulator at a conference is mindblowing

Great episode as always! I never got to play Bleemcast but have always wanted to try it. And not only has the industry embraced emulation, but companies are downloading random ROMs from the internet to include in their products rather than ripping the game themselves. A good example is Super Mario Bros included with the NES Classic Edition. The header information of the ROM reveals that it was, in fact, downloaded from the internet.

You should check out Sega's Genesis collection for the Dreamcast, they were so cool about it, they even hid a TXT file on the disc teaching people how to put their own ROMs on the disc.

This is why almost all emulators today are free and open-source.

I would honestly LOVE to see you do a video on SNK. Whether it be their 3 lesser-known consoles, 2 handhelds, or their overall rise, fall, and slow progressive rebirth.

I beta tested for bleem! back in the day. if you go to the about information on the PC version, "Ron Nicotine Dean" is me. I loved that emulator. great crew too.

Damn that bleem! Logo is so 90s lol. I want a tshirt

This is one of the First videos I had ever watched from the gaming historian. I remember watching it in eighth grade. Every year I come back to it and I feel nostalgia. Thank you Norm for everything you do.

I was pretty deep into emulation at the time (I started in 1996 when Nesticle and SNES96) where the kings of emulation. I can't remember the emulator new from Steve Snake (SEGA Megadrive). I remember when Bleem was released and I remember what you say in this video. This video is great and very factual.... it was right around the time when I finally got high speed internet and went away from dial-up. Now I'm part of the openMSX team (MSX emulator) and due to any copyrights infringement we created our own BIOS (c-bios) which allows most ROM games to be played. I can't believe it's been over 21 years by now.

Ha! I used to be a beta tester and support board admin back in the day for bleem! Was also part of the 2001 e3 booth.

Court cases are my favorite Historian episodes. I need more.

I will always look fondly back on those early emulation days in the mid 90s. Finding roms on websites using dial up internet felt like a treasure hunt. It something very few gamers remember.

Respect to Connectix and Bleem. They died fighting the good fight. May their story lives on forever!

WOW. That clip of Steve Jobs showcasing a PlayStation emulator at a Mac event was crazy. Could you image if some soft wear company released a product that emulated Apple software? The litigation would be swift.

I have to find my old copy of Bleem! I used it to play Tekken 2 and Driver! Great video, Norm.

Turns out Bleem saved the Playstation Classic. Thank you guys from the past.

I just found this channel today. may I please say that your content is fantastic. It's well thought out and presented in a such a pleasant way. I'm about to binge watch!

I once owned all 3 Bleemcast discs for the Dreamcast. I didn't notice much of a difference while playing Metal Gear Solid on the DC, but the Bleemcast version of Gran Turismo 2 was like a whole new game.

Emulation was a poor kid's best friend back in the day, if it wasn't for zsnes I'd never know the joy that is chrono trigger.

1998 Sony: **sues company for an emulator and loses** 2018 Sony: **uses emulator for the PlayStation classic**

Been using emulators for years now, had no idea they were once a product sold in stores

Those were the days. I grew up in the 90s and I keep saying to younger people that 90s were the golden years of PC. It was the time when highspeed internet and file sharing arose, modding became mainstream, emulation were advertised, MMO were becoming a thing, and online multiplayer exploded into the gaming industry. I am so privilege to experience these first hand. Did anyone grow up in this era?

The moral of the story: It doesn't matter if you win or lose legally, just that you're big enough and rich enough to force your opponent out of business anyway.

I remember going into a media store when I was a teen passing through Mississippi in 2000. I remember seeing Bleem! in stock on the shelves and reading the box. Tech was exciting then because it was all new.

The fact that Sony lost the legal battles, but was able to outspent Bleem and effectively "win" the long game, is a clear indication that there are serious problems with our current legal system. I don't have solutions to these problems, but they still need to be addressed and if at all possible, solved.

I remembered beating Gran Turismo 2 on my AMD Duron PC with the VGS. The emulation was so good No wonder Sony took actions against it

MAME ZSNES/SNES9X EPSXE/PCSX PPSSPP DESMUME VISUALBOYADVANCE-M PROJECT64 and a few others... I cant thank enough the people behind these emulators. Now that i know about them, i should also be thankful to Bleem and Connectix

I love the back of the Bleemcast discs. "And to shut up all the lawyers:"

Gaming Historian, I was there and a part of what was going on. I supported the author Randy and his bleem project and even got my copy of bleem for free as a gift from him. We ran a channel for bleem fans on Efnet IRC during that time and it was a pretty fun time. Although a bit of a mess at first. Delays at first and a lot of pissed off customers who pre ordered the emulator who were awaiting the release. In the end after the battle with Sony, Randy ended up abandoning the project and selling off all related material on eBay to help make up for some losses. But to me personally bleem represented a win for us fans of emulation in terms of legality, and helped pave the way for future projects by other authors. I miss those days and was glad to be a part of it. So thanks for covering this topic and helping shed some light for todays users. I guess you could say our generation back in the 90s was what put much of what you see today on the map. I want emulation to survive and be known as a great way to both preserve older systems and provide a great way for fans to play their favorite games on PC, while looking even better than it did on the original system.

I had both of these emulators. It was so ground breaking at the time, to have a commercially released emulator that worked fairly well.

Emulators might be in a grey area. but they help preserve games. future gamers may not experience today's games 20 years on. I just recently bought an N64 because i've been playing N64 emulators for 20 years and that made me interested in getting the real deal. Thank you all Emulator Devs!!!

I loved the PBS-esque "funding for" title card... Really made me feel nostalgic.

I don't remember the Virtual Game Station, but I recall hearing a lot of buzz surrounding Bleem! and it's legal status. I even saw it in bargain bins once or twice when visiting my local mall. This was back in the day when CompUSA and Virgin Music stores were still a thing.

Amazing work as always, i love this channel, i never heard about this two emulators, when i started to use them i download the emulators from the internet like Project 64 or PSX

wow Steve Jobs introduced the play station emulator LOL. oh how he would change his tune

Rip Bleem We will not forget you and your great contribution to supporting PlayStation 1 emulation Now he is your successor Duckstion Doing Well

Today both working PSX emulators ePSXe and PCSX-R don't require original PSX BIOS. They both use HLE (High-level emulation) BIOS. It seems Connectix VGS was a predecessor of modern high-level emulators. Most emulators in development like RPCS3 (PS3 emulator), Xenia (XBOX 360 emulator) and Cemu (Wii U emulator) also use HLE and don't require BIOS. Exception is PCSX2 (PS2 emulator) where complex architecture of PS2 makes HLE almost impossible and PS2 BIOS is necessary.

Man, being able to reverse engineer technology is such an incredible skill. I have a lot of respect for people who can pull that off. ...well, if they do it properly. I'm not talking about cheap chinese rip-offs. That's certainly not reverse ingeneering.

It's a good day when there's a new Historian video.

Ironically, Sony used a third-party emulator on their PlayStation Classic

I remember the bleemcast disc that could run more than just the three games fore mentioned. I still have it somewhere in my stash of game back-ups I have when I sold my old collection of Japanese imports. I remember playing ridge Racer Type 4 on my DC but you had no way to save your data. I have to admit RR4 still looks better on the DC than it does on the PS2 or PS3. RIP Bleem I remember buying the Gran Turismo 2 kit from Best Buy.

Now that emulation is so prevalent today I wonder why the major console makers don't make and sell emulators of their old consoles themselves. I think a lot of people would buy an official nes, snes, n64 etc. emulator from Nintendo

Excellent video Gaming Historian!

I remember back in 2004 I was going to a small game shop and the guy who ran the place turned me on to emulation. He talked me into buying a jail broke Dreamcast him and his buddy modded it still played Dreamcast games plus the burns. Man I had literally every genesis ,nes,snes,n64 and ps1 game ever made! They actually played pretty good for the most part as far as I can remember

And now “classic” re-release consoles are literally plug in emulators. Kinda ironic that companies like nintendo fought their use and now have profited handsomely from them.

smart kids had their systems 'chipped' and simply burned PSX ISO's onto burnable discs. aww yee

I used to emulate a lot when I was younger, but nowadays I appreciate the hardware a lot more. I managed to get a Sega Mega Drive for £40 two years ago and beating one of my favourite games, Sonic 2, on the original console was so satisfying. With that being said, I have been emulating some GBA games recently because screw those eBay prices.

I love the use of the ape escape music

Dude how do you not have your own tv show lmao, you do these so well, I could do see this being a show on vice, or maybe discovery a 'la "how its made"

Imagine if Sony embraced the idea of pc disk emulating and was able to capitalize on it. PC gaming would be a completely different landscape with the console companies having a huge presence. Looking back at it now you can see that it was a missed opportunity.

Emulators get a bad wrap but I enjoy them. Retro games get too expensive.

One of the best episodes ever, imho. Glad to see episodes are coming again more regularly.

I remember being so confused seeing Bleem in retail store shelves. I just didn't understand how this could be a real product being sold in legit stores.

Zelda BotW on PC is as beautiful thing as Mother 3 fully translated.

Remember when Sony bullied Liksang out of business by using multiple litigations? Never forget.

I watched the video and when you said that Bleem! was being made for Dreamcast, I said, "Why don't they call it Bleemcast?" I thought I was so original. Then the next scene it shows the name was actually Bleemcast lol Laughed at my monitor. Great video!

Man, I'm beyond perplexed at how I've never seen your channel before?? I've been using youtube since day 1 and this is the stuff i'm always looking for and not once had I seen a video of yours pop up until today. Thats some broken youtube algorithm setup! Glad I finally made it though, your videos are so solid, thanks man!

Personally I prefer to use an emulator to play my PSX library, simply because I can use shaders to make my copy of Crash Bash in HD (that and I can finally save my progress).

Brilliant as always. I'm still surprised your subscriptors number is not so big when you quality videos is amazing. I'm quite sure that if you try to attach subs in other languages (spanish specially) that number will increase a lot cause south american viewers are one of biggest pieces of youtube cake.

My dad actually worked with a company that sold bleem to stores, I had a day off of school and went with him and got to play games all day. So that was cool

I used to own these two emulators - Bleem! and The Connectix Virtual Game Station. Those two was legendary. Thanks for making this video about it.

Emulators - primarily Dreamcast emulator Chankast - made this PC gamer switch to consoles almost exclusively. Since then, I bought 6 consoles and at least 500 console games, all legal releases, and 95% of them brand new. Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One is one of my favorite features of this console generation.

I really enjoyed watching your videos they're very informative but you know what I kind of miss the intro that you use to have

Yuzu is in the right, but they can't afford a long battle vs sony so they folded before it even begun. It's a damn shame that big companies can just bully small ones like that even if they're in the wrong.

I forgot to mention that I think Sony missed a golden opportunity amidst the push to get rid of the emulators; They could have put out an updated version of the Playstation with higher resolution and filtering. If the emulators could upgrade the graphics in Playstation games, there's no reason the same capabilities couldn't have been added to the actual console. In fact, there's no technical reason that consoles couldn't have a built-in save state mechnism rather than leave it up to each game developer to add a save option to their games. Of course doing so would require users to have more space than Sony's crappy little proprietary memory cards contain.

When I think of the "legality" of emulators, I think of risk vs reward vs morality. At this point, who am I hurting when I play a PC Engine emulator? No one. edit: missed a word.

I love that Patreon thank you message, it reminds me of when PBS used to be my main source for TV, and all the hours spent watching Reading Rainbow.

My first 2 years in highschool, I had to stay for about 2 hours after school to get the bus, so sometimes I'd hang out in the library. I had a SNES emulator with a bunch of games on a USB drive, and a plug and play controller that had all the right buttons, so I'd literally just plug into one of the computers in the homework lab and play SNES games. It was pretty cool. They couldn't really get mad at me because I wasn't hurting the computer, it's all on the fly, and I was stuck there because I lived out of county so I had to ride the late bus... Anyway, that was pretty cool. Also you could save anywhere you wanted, and there were some custom games and other fun things you could do, it had a built in cheating device

The subtle, ambient Ape Escape music in the background... just wow. Subscribed.

R.I.P Wii Shop Channel

Great video! It’s incredibly informative like always! It’s all stuff we barely knew!

I always wonder who dislikes this kind of videos... I found it amazing! Thanks for bringing back fond memories of times past with a lot of interesting information!

man this takes me back. I can't remember the names of the first emulator and ROM downloader I had in the early 2000s but they were one of the most amazing discoveries ever. I'm sure the one I had was illegal but being able to download 80% of every NES, SNES, Atari, etc game was mind-blowing.

Bleem! Was amazing. Also, I was 15 years old with a complete NES rom library at 16, not that hard at all. Im 39

Damn, my buddy had a bleem! CD haha i remember his older brother had it. To us children it was mindblowing

Ohhh man, I remember Bleem! 100 points for striking a nostalgic chord.

Omg I forgot all about Bleem. Brings back so much memory. Mind you I pirated Bleem even tho I had a Playstation just so I can play it on my PC so I can watch TV. That was the future man

PS Emu Pro hahaha... I forgot that existed, thanks Norm. Funny that even emulation is nostalgic.

They not only expose people to new games but also to be able to play those that where kinda expensive at their release date and that right now are so f*****g expensive xD

Man that Ape Escape training level music hit me in the nostalgia organ HARD.

Notice the Pulseman footage in 0:39 . That game was my blue spring, and even I'm now 20, this is still my milestone as a video gamer. Plus I love emulators (But of course I buy games and hardware data to dump in my pc), and I actually own the Pulseman game case with the cartridge & manual.

The name "bleem!" represents an interpretation of the Playstation(1) startup sound. I thought that was common knowledge.

And now we have Nintendo E Shop,the Playstation store and Xbox's Store.A real damn shame that we don't have all the games from these systems on their respective emu stores,but especially the E Shop,I want more of the more popular NES and SNES games!

In 1999 I took my games to school, cut class to play Wild Arms in the library, my friend installed it on every computer, he just renamed the shortcut and replaced the icon to some program that nobody used.

Your videos are so complete and fun to watch!!! It’s obvious you’ve put a ton of work into these, so while I’m binging these, just wanted to stop and say thanks! I’ll head on over to Patreon now

Nintendo still claims that "Emulation is Piracy and is illegal"

Console are becoming like cable tv service. And you know how cable tv is doing lol

Norman Caruso and Kristen Pitts are the Ken Burns of Video Game documentaries! Fantastic channel guys!!

I just discovered your channel recently and I really enjoy it. Thanks for the great work! One thing that I would be really interested to learn about is the history of AGDQ. It's only a few years old, but it's grown fast and kicked the speedrunning community into overdrive. Just a suggestion. But I think it would get a lot of views since AGDQ is so popular.

Excuse my ignorance, it's been a while. I had this gameshark / mod chip thing I stuck in the back of my PS1. Use to burn rented games back in the day, or dload them from IRC. Even had a little spring you had to put in the cd tray to get through the copy right. Insert legit disc first then put in the burnt game. Is this worth a video?

17:47 imagine not being able to die in peace

Hello, to add to the video we almost released BleemCast: Final Fantasy IX and BleemCast: WWF Smackdown too. We showed GT2 not GT1, plus RR4 and if I recall Omega Squad or what ever FPS game it was.

1:13 My god, that sure is an ad from the 90's