Christian Bauer (developer of a Mac 68k emulator ShapeShifter for Amiga) released the first version of Basilisk II in March 1999.

The emulator was expected to be highly portable across several computing platforms[3]: 36  and provided some improvements in comparison to ShapeShifter - e.g. no limit for number of emulated disks, improved CD-ROM support and support for the host file system.

[4] However, early reviews highlighted several issues like difficult configuration and limited compatibility with recommendation of ShapeShifter as a better choice for Amiga users.

Ports of Basilisk II exist for multiple computing platforms, including AmigaOS 4, BeOS, Linux, Amiga, Windows NT, macOS, MorphOS and mobile devices such as the PlayStation Portable.

Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Basilisk II is free software, and its source code of is available on GitHub.