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People seem to ask a lot about bleem, and how it came about... where we all met each other... etc. I thought I might write up a quick diary of how this whole bleem emulator started and what is known so far for all of you to put your grubby little paws on. But instead I stole the outdated version at emuunlim.com that I helped write a while back, and am adding to it. Thanks to Dragon¥en for some help with this. Wait.. that's from the original... thanks to Rhomey for allowing me to help him with the original. And later on, Bobbi also started including facts, so this page is done by Rhomey, DragonYen for preparing all those facts.
NOTES : There are misspellings in here, I don't care, don't mail me about them. I know this page isn't pretty, I don't care, don't mail me about it. Enjoy what I can remember about bleem and it's creation... This story is NOT supported, nor endorsed by bleem! However all information is gathered from actual webpages, so it should be pretty accurate. Most information enclosed is based on the PRE-COMMERCIAL release of bleem.
October 1st, 1998
Pure News posts
the first news of a new PSX emulator that could blow others out of the water based on
this email that was sent to some emulation sites by bleem. A part from it :
Dear Emulation News WebSite:
Wow, have we got some news for you!
Many of you won't have heard about us before, and that's because we've tried to keep this development project "hush-hush"
until it's been ready -- and that time is now!
bleem was developed as the premier PSX emulator for PCs and compatible systems, and we're very pleased to announce that we've entered our final compatibility testing before our public release!
Read the rest here. The first screenshot of bleem, which was to not be
posted : screenshot.
And the screenshot that started the purple line controversy.
October 5th, 1998
Screenshots are posted at Pure News while the debate begins as to the reality of this emulator.
The following e-mail was sent by bleem to emulation sites due to some issues involved with the initial announcement.
Dear Emulation News WebSite:
It has come to our attention that the recent news about our PSX emulator may have been interpreted by some as a "hoax"
or "fake", especially to those within the emulation community.
We're not really sure why exactly someone would even attempt to fool people like this, but perhaps you have some
insight and could shed some light on it? To us, it really seems like an awful lot of trouble with no possible
reward or benefit to *anyone*...
To be quite honest, it really surprised us at first -- we weren't quite sure exactly *why* people didn't believe it.
It also caught us a little bit off-guard when we discovered that there was an almost *negative* reaction to the
list of features that our software provides. What surprised us most, however, was that this reaction was coming
largely from within the programming and emulation community!
Read the whole E-Mail here.
October 6th, 1998
EmuViews posts an article questioning the reality of bleem :
"Truth
or Fake?". You may view it here in case the link ever goes dead.
Now we know that the guy who mailed them was wrong :)
October 7th, 1998
The following statement is made on the PSEmu Pro page:
"We are getting fed up with all those rumors about a new PSX emulator called Bleem. It is VERY well possible to make
a Playstation emulator with all the stated features, it would just be a lot of work to do it all. PSEmu Pro is almost
1 year in development now, and is getting better and faster every day. There is no reason that a few very skilled
professional programmers could not have done the same as we have, or even done better.
Would it be too much trouble to give them the benefit of the doubt, and stop spreading rumors about this emulator
until its release?
The more interesting question is not IF this is true, its how Sony will react when Playstation emulators get closer
and closer to perfection. The 'emulated BIOS' feature makes a commercial emulator very possible, but it will also
depend on the 'emulation scene' to show support for this.
So waiting for Bleem, we will see... Screenshots are Perfect (and they dont seem fake). But what about speed?
We personally applied for beta testing: www.bleem.com. We will see."
October 8th, 1999
EmuViews posts two articles about bleem "The Bleem Incident
Part1
and Part2.". In case of later
link problems, you can view those articles here (Part 1) and
here (Part 2).
October 11th, 1998
More shots posted at Pure News. Purenews is gone.. I can't get the shots.. :/
Sometime a few days before this (not sure of the date), I got on IRC and asked if anyone had gotten an email
back from filling out the beta testing form at www.bleem.com and someone responded yes. They gave me the email
address that the email came from, and DragonYen emailed them about an interview...
October 12th, 1998
Dragon¥en of EliteGamer posts this interview with the bleem author.
(In it's original color, misspellings and all)
Once this interview was done, DragonYen applied for beta testing, and was accepted. At this time, he only had 2
PlayStation games. Alundra and Final Fantasy 7.
October 16th, 1998
"The Big If..."
EmuViews writes more about bleem. A part from it :
The question has been floating around since it first was mentioned around the Internet. What if Bleem indeed was real?
What if indeed, some days after October the 18th, we are all able to play perfect PSX emulation on our PCs at home? What
if it wasn't a hoax as I myself thought before, and we all ended up with a real, fast, faithful, Playstation Emulator on
the Internet. Free or not, it does bring a lot of questions to the Emulation Community. Sadly, the possible consequences,
doesn't look good. Here's a reflection.
Assuming that Bleem was released for Free on the Internet. It is certain that Sony will instantaneously notice and jump
on its back. It's goal? Some people think it will bury it, some others think it'll buy it and sell it itself. Others,
think Sony can't do anything about it, and that the emulator in itself, cannot be sued, or blamed for any possible
consequences. Let's examine the alternatives ...
View the whole post locally here.
October 17th, 1998
More shots posted at Pure News. Again, Pure News is gone :/
October 18th, 1998
Dragon¥en conducts a second follow up interview with the bleem author
here. (Again In it's original color, misspellings and all)
October 26th, 1998
bleem author assures Pure News that bleem is still being worked on and the preliminary beta release is Oct. 31st.
(I don't have anything to back this up, but it was in the diary...)
October 27th, 1998
I sign and fax off my NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) to make my testing status 100% official.
MisterRed of the 411 posts this
interview with Dragon¥en and some questions arise pertaining to bleem.
(linked here in case of link problems later)
October 31st, 1998
Announced beta date pushed back to Monday.
November 1st, 1998
A mail regarding the release dates of the beta was posted on Elitegamer. A part reads as the following :
A Beta Site sent us this piece of EMail:
==============================
"Ok, it is now 10minutes after Oct 31st... Obviously for some reason the release date was pushed back again... and I
don't even care about that, however, if something isn't going to happen at a time/date given by yourselves, then
I would like to be informed... " "I am not trying to be a "jerk" it's just I stayed up until 2:00am expecting the
release, and since I didn't get mail saying otherwise, I expected it.... "
*WE* stayed up till 0300am working hard to finish this thing and get it out to you. Despite our best efforts, it
just didn't happen the way we wanted. We tried our best, we coded around the clock, we're working as fast as we can.
View the whole mail here.
November 2nd, 1998
Dragon¥en (and ONLY Dragon¥en) receives first pre-beta-beta.
November 3nd, 1998
Dragon¥en posts this AVI of Einhander. Which has since been lost...
Several emulation sites acknowledge the reality of bleem.
EmuViews posts these two news pieces.
Number 1 |
Number 2
November 4nd, 1998
The Fox of EmuUnlim conducts this interview
with the bleem author along with pics and avi's courtesy of Dragon¥en.
November 9th, 1998
The beta testers get their beta and ManBeast posts screenshots of his personal use of the emulator.
November 11th, 1998
Sadly or rather funny. FakeBleem and BleemBO are released for entertainment and or harm. I wouldn't recommend
either of these for download.
November 13th, 1998
I release the Top 10 (or so) reasons bleem is *STILL* fake!
#13 - bleem is fake... because I haven't played it yet.
#12 - bleem is fake... because Nicotine` Ownz j00!
#11 - bleem is fake... cause what the hell is a bleem, and who would name an emu that?!
#10 - bleem is fake... cause JoseQ said so!
#9 - bleem is fake... cause I heard the Easter Bunny tell Santa so!
#8 - bleem is fake... cause it is easy to fake 15 second AVI's.
#7 - bleem is fake... cause it is fake.
#6 - bleem is fake... cause only a fake emu could provide such an unbelievable quality screenshots.
#5 - bleem is fake... cause DragonYen is a really good liar, and no one in their right mind would send him the beta, cause he would send it to me!
#4 - bleem is fake... cause It's missing all the purple lines like on the REAL psx.
#3 - bleem is fake... cause... No it isn't! I've got it...I'll DCC it to ya ;-)
#2 - bleem is fake... cause it's an international plot involving honey bees, pollen and mutant aliens and they germinate when your run the software.
And the #1 Reason Bleem is fake... because the N64 CANT BE EMULATED!!!
(original thanx to : Brywalker, Cybrwulf, ImpulsE69, MagicC, AgaricC, NorCOM, Ginxter, and p_thompso.)
December 11th, 1998
DragonYen released a MPG of MegaMan 8 playing in bleem! It was hosted by EmuUnlim...
Download it here
December 12th, 1998
Trying to feed the need of the people... DragonYen released screen shots of bleem playing :
Bushido Blade, MegaMan 8,
MegaManX4, Parasite Eve,
Street Fighter Alpha, Metal Gear Solid,
and Mortal Kombat 4.
January 6th, 1999
By sending a program to an emulation website owner, that was supposed to be a great emulator, someone unknown
was able to get a trojan on his HD, and to get a beta version of bleem!. This was spreaded over the web like
wildfire. People were amazed by the emulation which was already reached at this stage, what brought a small
problem with it - When people saw that beta, they thought bleem! would need to be ready soon ... What was a
big fault, since those small parts missing required a heavy programming work !
March 5th, 1999
Bobbi, now webmaster of psxemu.com, came in touch for the first time with bleem!, and was, although he didn't
had the leaked beta yet, amazed by the facts flowing around this emulator, and on this day, he also decided to
create a small homepage about it. (in fact, it was REALLY small, but that's another history).
March 13th, 1999
People met in California to test bleem! ... On their PC's, there were neither any CD-Roms, nor internet access nor
disc drives, so it was impossible to leak a beta there. People were able to check into the house using a web
cam, and to talk with them in the EfNet channel #bleem. At that day, a screenshot of movies in bleem! was released,
it looked amazing. MDEC Screenshot
March 18th, 1999
Inofficial screenshots started to spread over the web. The response to bleem! was amazing, people were really
exited about when the emulator will be released.
A bugs life D3D <-> s/w and
GT D3D <-> s/w.
March 20th, 1999
For the first time, Bleem.com released official bleem! screenshots,
as well as the promise for a compatibility list soon (from the test results from of those people who met in CA).
The first screenshots were from Tekken 3 (software and
Direct 3D) and
Bloody Roar (again software and
Direct 3D)
March 21th, 1999
And yet another screenshots update at bleem.com ! They also got a help page for bleem! up (yeah, you're right, bleem!
wasn't even released at that point of time =P). Also, Randy Linden was on IRC and published some new facts about bleem!,
like :
- Bleem will cost around 25$
- There'll be a demo soon, without memory card support and D3D
- Bleem! full will only use Direct3D
The shots published at that time were from Jet Moto 2 (software and
Direct 3D) and Gran Tourismo
(software and Direct 3D)
March 22th, 1999
An imporatnt day for bleem! fan's. First, the FIRST bleem! demo ever was released. At that time, there were 3 versions of
bleem! (JAP, US and Europe). For those of you who want to try out those again because ... ... oh, whatever, we still have
the versions here : US version, European version and
japanese version. Pepole were also able to pre-order bleem! for the first time. The
"special" price was only 19.95$ !
A bit more PSXEmu history : At that day, Bobbi left his small webpage @ Xoom and helped running the bleem! support page
at EmuHQ.com/bleem, which was done by DAN (who left soon after
that) before.
March 23th, 1999
First articles about bleem! pop up. One was by
Next-Generation and another one from PSX.IGN.com. Both
talked with the bleem! team about the development of emulation and bleem! in general.
March 25th, 1999
Another demo release from bleem!, which improves games like FF7 and Tekken 3, and, for the first time, you were able to
view color movies with it ! Another feature was, that this demo only had 1 file (worldwide), not 3 like the demo before.
You can still download it here if you want it :)
April 15th, 1999
A news post from Arcade@home made it's round through the web (it's a quote from IRC) :
"Bleem! to Ship This Week: Confirmation that bleem! will ship this week. From #bleem: "Yes it will ship!
Sometime this week." #bleem is the official bleem! IRC channel run by the bleem! staff. "
April 16th, 1999
And yet another release. At that point of time it was still unknown WHAT was going at bleem!, but they released
another demo with support for more games, download it here.
April 21th, 1999
What was going on behind the scenes ? It was still unknown, but bleem.com posted this :
THEY'RE HERE!
At long last, after much trial and tribulations, the CDs have finally arrived and the first units are already packed
and ready to go! Watch your mailbox for a confirmation notice when your order has shipped. Shipping takes place on
a first-in first-out basis and we'll be working all through the night and all through tomorrow and all through
whenever until every last order is out the door. Thanks so much for your patience -- we don't have much time to
explain the delay right now, but once we get your orders out the door, we'll tell you the whole story ... and it's
an ugly one!
April 29th, 1999
Bleem.com posted a first explanation what was going on :
- Sony filed another Temporary Restraining Order against bleem! on Friday
- Denied by a very cool judge
- The auto-email to tell you that your bleem! cd has shipped failed and wasn't sent
- The bleem! EXE will be out in a couple days and a big thanks to beta testers for helping
But it took 17 more days until the bleem! executeable was out ...
May 13th, 1999
It became public, that Sony tried to forbade bleem! to show pictures at the E3 of PSX games ... Later,
bleem! countersued Sony for being "unfair". Still no release, but Randy promised that it'll be out within
the next 48 hours.
May 15th, 1999
Finally, the bleem! executeable was released ... After many months of waiting, it was finally out. But the
opinions about it were splitted - Some people loved it, some were dissapointed since it didn't even run on their PC.
You can get all older full versions from our Bleem! page if you still want them.
May 23th, 1999
One of the PSEmu Pro programmers told the public about his thoughts regarding bleem! :
PSX hardware should not be underestimated. Maybe a fast Pentium can emulate almost full speed every piece of
hardware of the PSX but I doubt it can be done for all the hardware at once in realtime, especially when
dealing with Direct3D (I've never heard before of anyone coding D3D in ASM!).
...emulating PSX audio properly is a much more complex task than it appears to be. 24 voices going
44.1KHz (when all 24 voices play together frequency is sligtly less) with realtime envelope effects of
each voice, reverb, pre-looping samples (which DSound doesn't support) and high quality mix that linearly
interpolates samples generated while stretching them at different frequencies. But the biggest problem
is D3D texture managment. I haven't even tried the final of bleem but I read many comments...
I think there is one mistakes that many people do when hoping for bugfixes. Those "bugs" aren't
under total control of the emulator. Bugs are a mix of emulator fidelty (which can never be 100% especially
with D3D..) and how the games use the PSX hardware. The number of graphics bugs grow exponetially as
GPU needs to be emulated on 3D accelerators under D3D, because D3D isn't a standard imposed to hardware
manufacturers but rather an API that let's user programs use whichever feature the card supports.
May 31th, 1999
This actually was a great day for me (Bobbi). It was the first time I chatted with Randy Linden, the only programmer
of bleem!. At that time, I wasn't that happy wth bleem! yet. Today I know, that it wasn't bleem!'s, but my fault, since
my system simply wasn't configured properly. But version 1.1 should fix this all, there were some great promises like :
- Managed texture fix with AWESOME speedups
- Most sound problems should be fixed + no more problems with CD music
- Copy protection problems will reduce
- Speed limiter works now
- Most (not all) memory card errors fixed
- Support for MUCH more games
- General error of exiting is fixed
June 2th, 1999
Bleem! 1.1 Beta 1 was released at that day - This version fixed thousands of graphic problems (I was finally able to
play Tekken 3 at a good speed, still there were many graphic errors !). You can still get this version from
the Bleem! page.
June 8th, 1999
Bleem! 1.1B2 was released ... I myself loved that release since it ran Tekken 3 nearly flawless. 2 days later, I became
a "beta" tester (what I tested weren't really betas but it was a great success !) People noticed that Randy updates
bleem! real quick ! See the list at the bottom for all other release dates, I won't mention them here any more.
June 18th, 1999
Sony gets angry - Why ? After 2 useless tries to stop a legal product (what's really crazy !), they subpoenaed the beta
testers, the company employees and other companys. DragonYen took down Elitegamer.com to prevent his ISP of further
problems. A part of his post :
Now it is time to find out what is going on, I called one of the members of the bleem legal team (actually I emailed
him, and asked him to call me) and asked him what was going on. He was able to confirm that not only were bleem beta
testers were subpoenaed, but that there was a total of 1 company, and 12 people that were subpoenaed. If you take
away the Company (Maverick) and the Maverick Employee you are left with 11 subpoenas. There are not 11 bleem beta
testers. I also asked him if there would be anything wrong with me talking about the subpoenas, and he said as long
as I told the truth, there was no legal standpoint to keeping it quiet... "It isn't a secret" he said.
The beginning of a long fight between Sony and bleem! ...
June 29th, 1999
Bleem! is improving, improving and improving ... 1.3 is close to release, and, again, I got some exclusive facts directly
from Randy Linden :
- Significant Direct3D Speed Optimizations
- Significant Direct3D Texture Improvements
- Improved Direct3D support for Background Graphics
- Improved Direct3D Clipping (FF8's Popup Menus, etc.)
- Improved CDXA Sound
- Improved CD-ROM Support for Multi-Disc games
- Fixed Xenogears Saving/Loading
- Added AutoConfig for Gravis Xterminator
- Insert Disc Message doesn't lock out Configuration Menus
This version got released only few days later ...
July 1th, 1999
Blue news reported that bleem! hit retail stores in the US.
A press release just came rolling in announcing that bleem!, the PlayStation emulator for the PC, that has
survived legal hassles to see the light of day, should now be available in retail stores in the US (the
emulator was previously only available through mail-order online). The release says bleem is "now for sale
at outlets nationwide, including CompUSA, Fry's, Electronics Boutique, Hastings, and Virgin Megastores."
July 11th, 1999
A list of retail stores carrying bleem! got released.
I am sure many of you have already heard rumors, read facts, or seen it for yourself. bleem! has gone retail! So
everyone waiting to save a few bucks on shipping, get out there and get your bleem! We would suggest calling
any store before heading out to pick bleem up, but here's a list of stores you should be able to find bleem! at ...
Bleem! sells on much more stores now, you can always find a current version at
Bleem.com.
July 16th, 1999
Between all the bleem! releases, the bleem! site recived a new design (they kept this for a VERY long time) - Comments
were that it looks a bit like McDonalds :)
July 17th, 1999
A great discussion between Bobbi and Randy (nice guy BTW), where I was able to get more interresting facts regarding a
later bleem! release.
- PSX mouse support
- Fix for the "disable memory card" function
- Corrects weird textures and polygons on some TNT cards
- More database entries
- Un-installer fixed o
- Better logic for selecting a video mode for 24/32 bits
- FrameSkip disable fixes some games that have missing graphics
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