SNES emulator
There are a number of emulators for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (short: SNES) game console .
overview
The first emulation attempts started around 1996 with the projects "VSMC" and "Super Pasofami". However, both projects were discontinued in 1998. Also in 1996, development work began on the emulator SNES96, which was later further developed as Snes9x.
A little later (1998) other SNES enthusiasts started programming a free emulator called ZSNES , which is now the most popular SNES emulator together with Snes9x. With both emulators it was possible in earlier versions to play SNES games that support 2-player modes together over the Internet without using external services (direct UDP or TCP / IP connection). For ZSNES there are now different ways to find other players. Among other things, the programs serve zBattle.net and zConnector as well as the IRC - script Z-Net . However, from version 1.50 onwards, all three options are no longer practicable because the necessary Netplay function has been removed from ZSNES. A step back to an earlier version (e.g. 1.42 or even 1.36) is necessary here. The Netplay promotion is being revised and should be included in a future version.
Many SNES games got a big boost from emulators. The SNES console could count on a large fan base even after production was discontinued. There are now SNES emulators for a wide variety of systems, for example for the Xbox (ZsnesBox), for the Game Boy Advance (SNES Advance) or Nintendo DS (SnemulDS, SnesDS). In addition, there are now some ports of the emulators, for example SNES9xTYL for the PlayStation Portable , DreamSNES for Sega Dreamcast or OpenSnes9x for the GP32 .
The software to be emulated is available as an image file of the cartridge . In contrast to a real SNES, it is easy to reproduce games. Hardly any usable emulators were available when there were a large number of Internet sites that illegally offered the images for free download. This was not least possible due to the small file size of the copied games, which was uncompressed at a few megabytes and could be reduced again through compression (such as ZIP ). Nintendo took little action against such sites.
It is also thanks to the emulation and fan base that games that were planned but never appeared were rediscovered. The most famous example is Star Fox 2 from Nintendo, which should have been released in 1995, but was probably not released due to the Nintendo 64. The prototype of the game, discovered in 2004, is 99% complete and can be played through completely.
The possibilities offered by the SNES emulation ( debugging ) also enabled high-quality games such as Star Ocean or Seiken Densetsu 3 , which are only available in Japanese, to be made available to a larger audience through fan localization.
Emulators
ZSNES
| ZSNES | |
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| developer | zsKnight, _Demo_, pagefault |
| Current version | 1.51 (January 24, 2007) |
| zsnes.com | |
ZSNES is a free project within the meaning of the Free Software Foundation . The emulator is considered to be highly compatible with most commercial games and has been ported to various x86 platforms (including Windows and GNU / Linux ). Thanks to almost complete programming in assembly language , as well as processor-specific command extensions such as MMX , ZSNES is comparatively resource-saving. However, using NASM also has disadvantages, so porting it to other systems is a time-consuming undertaking.
ZSNES supports both formats of game images , which have existed since the introduction of the copy stations . The loading of ZIP-compressed modules is also supported so that a possible collection does not take up an unnecessarily large amount of storage space.
The emulator has its own user interface, which is identical for all ports.
Snes9x
| Snes9x | |
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| developer | Matthew Kendora, Brad Jorsch et al. a. |
| Current version | 1.60 (April 23, 2019) |
| snes9x.com | |
Snes9x is also highly compatible, not least because the programmers of ZSNES and Snes9x often worked together. In contrast to ZSNES , Snes9x is completely written in C (with a few optional parts in x86 assembler) and therefore also runs on other computer architectures such as B. Macintosh models with PowerPC processors .
Snes9x was originally developed by Gary Henderson and Jerremy Koot, who previously worked on their own emulators with SNES96 and SNES97 , respectively. Henderson and Koot later joined forces to develop Snes9x based on SNES96 . Other developers were at times Matthew Kendora and Brad Jorsch.
The emulator also supports the loading of compressed game modules (ROMs) .
The former closed source project is now being developed open-source . In the meantime, ports for other operating systems have also appeared. Mac OS X , Unix / Linux and Windows are currently officially supported . The GTK port is available under both the SNES9x license and the LGPL license.
Higan
| higan | |
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| developer | byuu |
| Current version | 110 (March 20, 2020) |
| operating system | Windows , Mac OS X , FreeBSD , Linux, etc. a. |
| byuu.org/emulation/higan | |
higan , formerly bsnes , is an emulator which is developed with the aim of achieving the highest possible compatibility without paying particular attention to performance. Achieve accuracy without sacrificing the scope and readability of the source code for speed optimization. For this reason, a computer with a CPU over 2 GHz is recommended for the most accurate program variant ("accuracy core"), plus a newer graphics card if shader-based graphics filters are to be used.
higan runs on Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD , Linux and, according to the author, on practically every other system with SDL support.
The special feature and the aim of this emulator, the highest possible compatibility, is shown in the attempt to map the hardware of the system as precisely as possible and thus, in contrast to other emulators for the SNES, to reproduce all special features correctly. The non-use of so-called hacks (program parts which return the correct information without actually processing it) is a basic goal for this project, so this project requires more computational effort than the two references.
SNEmulDS
| SNEmulDS | |
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| Current preliminary version | 0.6a (November 13, 2007) |
| operating system | Nintendo DS |
| snemul.com/ds | |
SNEmulDS is a SNES emulator for Nintendo DS . There has not been a version update since November 2007, which is why the development is considered discontinued.
DreamSNES
| DreamSNES | |
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| developer | Marcus Comstedt, Peter Bortas and Per Hedbor |
| Current version | 0.9.8 (October 31, 2002) |
| operating system | Sega Dreamcast |
| mc.pp.se/dc/dreamsnes | |
DreamSNES is a Super NES emulator for the Dreamcast game console . It is based on Snes9x for the PC and represents a port, but also has peculiarities. For example, there is a CPU core written in assembly language . The emulator developed by the Swedish programmer Marcus Comstedt and his team works with most Super Nintendo games. There is the possibility of saving scores on the Dreamcast memory card VMU . DreamSNES has been downloaded from DCEmulation over 300,000 times .
literature
- Hansjürg Wüthrich: Emulators - How computer systems and game consoles become immortal. Scriptorium-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-938199-08-4 .