BasicNES was officially released in 1998 at version 0.10 by Don Jarrett (aka geniusGZA) as a learning tool. It was designed for recreational purposes only. This emulator is unique because it was coded completely in Visual Basic 5 / 6. In 2000, BasicNes 2000 was released, sporting a big makeover with bitblt, some sound, a good amount of mappers, and a better palette.

BasicNES is an emulator on the Windows operating system for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Essentially, an emulator allows you to run games for old systems right on your desktop! BasicNES was written from the years of 1996-2003 in the Visual Basic programming language by Microsoft. It runs about 85-90% of all Nintendo games. The latest version of the binary is v1.5 [debug level 1], and the latest version of the source is v1.5 [debug level 2]. Maybe a new BasicNES coming sometime soon.