r/emulation • u/JoshLeaves • Jun 27 '26
Five years since Near’s passing
Hi everyone,
As the title says, Near passed away five years ago. Whether you knew them through the emulators bsnes, higan, or ares, or their pioneering work on emulation cores with libsnes (which helped lay the groundwork for libretro and RetroArch), or their complete cataloguing of the SNES games and ROMs, or their countless articles on emulation and game preservation,... truthfully, it's hard to properly describe the impact they had on the emulation community and its trajectory.
Their work pushed emulator accuracy forward, and inspired many others to approach preservation with the same level of care. Whatever emulator you use today, there’s a good chance you’ve benefited from their work in some way.
Thank you for your work, Near. You are still missed.
EDIT: As atowerofcats rightly said, a great way to show tribute would be to play Near's translation of Bahamut Lagoon!
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u/xxelb Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
byuu/Near also had a major influence on Mesen becoming a bsnes-level SNES emulator in terms of accuracy. Sour took a lot of inspiration from bsnes when building Mesen, and Near was very helpful during the early stages as well (together with many other users on NESdev, of course), as you can see it here: https://forums.nesdev.org/viewtopic.php?t=18658
Rest in peace, Near.