Likewise.. the amount of time spent looking for various emulators (and yes, roms) is something I remember somewhat fondly from those days.

For me, the game to beat was Star Ocean on the SNES, came out 1/1/2003.. the last translation that DeJap ever did.

I discovered Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia at the same time, in 2001. TOP was finished but SO was not translated (or maybe only item names…) and I remember being so impatient that I printed a walkthrough and played about one third of it in Japanese in the summer of 2002. I wanted to play it so badly that it pushed me to register on many forums at that time.

And now I can't even remember my usernames or even the name of some of the the forums I joined.

Do you remember Silhouette? That's the first SNES emulator I've used, back in 1996 or 1997. A friend gave it to me along with 4 roms, including Chrono Trigger. I wasn't into Video Games before that…