ZSNES was a revelation back in the '90s – an emulator that could run the best SNES games at full speed on even modest PCs of the day. It was wildly popular, and I'd reckon most gamers of a certain age have some fuzzy memories of its simple but iconic UI. Programmer zsKnight had little idea of its popularity, though, until EA suddenly wanted to hire him.
zsKnight recently emerged from the shadows for a rare interview with another legend of the early emulation scene: Zophar of, yes, the website Zophar's Domain. The lengthy interview covers some fascinating ground – our friends at PC Gamer picked out a few highlights – but zsKnight's explanation of how he came to realize ZSNES's popularity is particularly charming.
"There's a funny story to this," zsKnight says. "I actually did not know how popular ZSNES was until I left the project. So, this was pretty crazy. The reason for that is because I did not research into it. I did not Google search it. I did not read any message boards other than my home message board on my homepage. I did not check any reviews. I just wanted to just work on ZSNES. So I didn't think it was that popular. I just thought, oh, maybe a few thousand people used it. Maybe tens of thousands. I don't know, you know? I just don't know."
The only inkling zsKnight had of its popularity was from the emails he received, around a "couple dozen" each day. "I got that hint that it is kind of popular but I really did not know how popular it was," he says, and his "drive" was simply building a good emulator.
"I actually discovered how popular it was, interestingly enough, when I joined EA. Because I joined EA through the emulator," zsKnight explains. I sadly can't quite make out the name of the person at the publisher who zsKnight credits with reaching out to him, but this contact "kind of asked me, 'Hey, you want to work for EA?'"
"I thought, 'oh sure.' So I went there and everyone who interviewed me knew me as zsKnight. That was the first time in the office. Everyone here knows me, and everyone here wants me to work here. I've had one person there tell me that, 'oh, I'm here because of you.' I'd say 'wow, that's amazing.'"
One more bit of ZSNES trivia – us US folks have been mispronouncing it all this time. zsKnight is Canadian, so it's properly pronounced "zed-SNES."
zsKnight has a good reason for so suddenly appearing in the public eye again, as earlier this year he launched a game called Retro Endurance 8bit in Steam Early Access. It contains a pile of unique, retro-style games mashed together into a WarioWare-inspired shuffle mode, and it looks like an absolute delight if you're the sort of retro enthusiast with fond memories of ZSNES.
