Background

SNESticle was the much requested, much anticipated, much rumoured, but never
released follow-up to NESticle, the legendary NES emulator programmed by Sardu
and released by Bloodlust Software in 1997. Sardu instead went on to create the
excellent Genecyst and Callus emulators and was eventually hired by Electronic
Arts.

Years later, EA released Fight Night Round 2, a boxing game that is supposedly
pretty good, but what is way more interesting is that the Gamecube version of it
contains an emulated version of Nintendo’s Super Punch-Out!! (exclamation marks
part of the title, not for effect!!).

Data
mining
revealed the strings “SNESticle” and “Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Icer Addis” (Addis
being Sardu’s real name) on the game disc. This raises a lot of questions,
perhaps most importantly (and unanswerably): did he really have SNESticle ready
to go back in 1997 and then chose to sit on it just to spite the people who were
bugging him for it? Or is the 1997 date just a joke, to spite the very same
people now? Or is the whole thing a joke? Who