NESter I'm not holding it against Sardu -- it was factually proven that he took an older version of iNES at the time where the source was leaked online (ie: stolen) and then used it to copycat all that into Nesticle. From there he added his crappy front end with all the immature potty humor to it, added his other little filters and tweaks and pretended it was his. Once he got caught, the whining went into overdrive trying to deny it and when backed into a corner, he quit.

So yes, he's a thieving asshole.

Marat charging for iNES sucked, I won't argue that, but I will argue that it was legal. The nerd if anything knew his processors and coded for stuff so he created that entirely on his own. Emulators aren't illegal unless you use stolen documentation from whatever you're emulating to create it. If you legally reverse engineer it, you're fine, and that's what he did so he had every right to charge for it as a 'tool' which is what it was. bleem! got busted as they were using Sony tech in there and they found out and ate them alive over it, later the company slightly revive itself on the Dreamcast with a couple of single PS1 game running emulator on a disc releases (boot bleem, then pop in PS1 game) but at that point they did their own stuff so it was fine but no one cared so it failed anyway. Sardu did bring more NES emulation to the masses as his stolen code was popped over into DOS mode and he cleaned up Marat's shitty audio core so he had a solid emulator for DOS that ran fast, but it was theft in the end and he got what he had coming. The core of the original releases of Nesticle were just iNES with a coat of paint over it, the reason why nesticle kept releasing was that he stole the source, got it up and running, ironed out some bugs and then started tweaking as he learned things going forward off Marats work. It's kind of like the bleem thing I noted, he stole other peoples work to get a start, but then did his own thing after but in the end once caught few cared anymore and moved elsewhere and he just closed up and quit (like bleem!)

I know of Zophar's Domain, I used to know Zophar who doesn't even run it anymore and worked with his biggest competitor Dave of Dave's Video Gaming Classics at the time (which was the #1 site in size/hits to ZD which was #2). Him and Sardu were online buddies so I take that story with a grain of salt. Long ago in those circles I went by VmprHntrD on irc efnet in #emu. Members of that area were pretty pissed at that guy and went about crushing the guy publicly embarrassing him over the theft despite no one in there liking Marat or his pay emulation tactics (as many would steal it, then distribute it when it got updated -- hypocrisy is fun isn't it?) I guess the difference is Marat was a dick up front, Sardu lied and continued to until he got hung out to dry then ran for it. Zophar is actually lying with truths mixed in to defend his friend on his public forum he had there on that site and he didn't get along with MindRape, which I knew and considered an online associate at the time in the 90s. He was right MindRape didn't like Sardu, but it was entirely about embarrassing someone he hated and when he found out the dude was a thief so he got pleasure out of making an ass out of him about the stolen code. I got into emulation in late 1995, eventually was one of the ops for #emu for a good many years as well as partnered up with some release groups among other things and even if you check gamefaqs you'll find under that nick I have the .NES header format doc up there too in the NES system faq section.