Snes9x: The Portable Super Nintendo Entertainment System Emulator ================================================================= Files included in the Snes9x archive: Snes9x.exe fmod.dll readme-windows.txt faqs-windows.txt changes.txt snes9x-license.txt version 1.53 April, 2011 Home page: http://www.snes9x.com/ Contents ======== Introduction Getting Started Requirements Controllers Support Game Saving Cheat Support Movie Support Netplay Support Miscellaneous Compatibility Problems Technical Information Credits Introduction ============ What is Snes9x? --------------- Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator. It basically allows you to play most games designed for the SNES and Super Famicom Nintendo game systems on your Mac, Linux, Windows and so on. The games include some real gems that were only ever released in Japan. The original Snes9x project was founded by Gary Henderson and Jerremy Koot as a collaboration of their earlier attempts at SNES emulation (Snes96 and Snes97.) Over the years the project has grown and has collected some of the greatest talent in the emulation community (at least of the SNES variety) some of which have been listed in the credits section, others have helped but have been loss in the course of time. Why Emulate the SNES? --------------------- Well, there are many reasons for this. The main reason is for nostalgic purposes. In this day and age, it's hard to find an SNES and many good games. Plus, many of us over the course of time have lost our beloved consoles (may they R.I.P) but still have our original carts. With no other means to play them, we turn to emulators. Besides this there are many conveniences of doing this on the computer instead of dragging out your old system. Advantages consist of: - ability to save in any location of the game, despite how the game was designed. It's amazingly useful when you don't want to redo the same level over and over. - built-in peripherals. This is anything from multi-taps, to super scopes, to cheat devices. - ability to rip sprites and music for your own personal use. - easier to organize and no stacks of cartridges. - filters can be used to enhance graphics and sounds on old games. As with all things there are disadvantages though: - if you have an ancient computer, you aren't likely to get a playable experience. - some games are still unemulated (though this a very tiny minority.) - the emulator can be difficult for new users to configure. Getting Started =============== Launch Snes9x using the Windows explorer to locate the directory where you un-zipped the snes9x.exe and the fmod.dll files and double-click on the snes9x.exe executable. You could create a shortcut to Snes9x and drag that icon out onto your desktop. Loading Games ------------- Use the Open option from the File menu to open the ROM load dialog. The dialog allows you to browse your computer to locate the directory where you have stored your SNES games. Single-click and then press Load to load and start the game. SNES ROM images come in lots of different formats. Snes9x supports zipped ROMs as long as there is only 1 per zip file. Also Snes9x can open gzip and jma compressed files. Game Color System ----------------- Snes9x displays the ROM information when a ROM is first loaded. Depending on the colors used you can tell whether or not a ROM is a good working ROM, or if it's been altered or is corrupted. white the ROM should be a perfect working copy. green the ROM is mode 1 interleaved. orange the ROM is mode 2 interleaved. aqua the ROM is Game Doctor 24M interleaved. yellow the ROM has probably been altered. Either it's a translation, PD ROM, hacked, or possibly a bad ROM. It may also be an overdumped ROM. red the ROM is definitely hacked and that a proper version should be exist. Some ROM Tools such as NSRT can also fix these ROMs. When asking for help on the Snes9x forums, please list the color and CRC32 that is displayed. This will help to find out what the problem is. These colors do NOT signify whether a game will work or not. It is just a means for reference so we can understand what may or may not be a problem. Most often the problem with games that don't work it's because they are corrupt or are a bad dump and should be redumped. SNES Joypad Emulation --------------------- The default key mapping for joypad 1 is as follows: 'up arrow' Up direction 'down arrow' Down direction 'left arrow' Left direction 'right arrow' Right direction 'V' A button 'C' B button 'D' X button 'X' Y button 'A' L button 'S' R button 'Enter' Select button 'Space' Start button Requirements ============ System Requirements ------------------- Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista/7. DirectX 6.1b or later. 300MHz processor BARE MINIMUM (1GHz+ rec for best settings.) 16MB RAM BARE MINIMUM. DirectSound capable sound card. Certain games use added hardware which will require a faster machine. The specs listed above is the minimum to use Snes9x in any playable form. It is recommended that you get a semi-modern machine with a 800MHz CPU if you want good results. A 1GHz CPU is recommended for those that want a near perfect experience. Software -------- You will need access to SNES ROM images otherwise you will have nothing to run! Some home-brewed ROM images can be downloaded from http://www.zophar.com/. Please note, it is illegal in most countries to have commercial ROM images without also owning the actual SNES ROM cartridges, and even then you may be liable under various EULAs. CG Shaders -------- If you want to use CG Shaders in Snex9x for windows you need to install the CG Toolkit from nvidia's developer zone: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cg_download.html CG shaders work in both D3D and OpenGL. Various shaders can be found in Themaister's Emulator Shader Pack: https://github.com/Themaister/Emulator-Shader-Pack Controllers Support =================== The real SNES has two ports to connect input devices. Usually 1P and 2P SNES joypads are connected but various devices and adopters can be plugged. Multi Player 5 known as Multi Tap; a five player adapter, allowing up to five people to play at once on games that supported it. SNES Mouse a 2-button mouse, originally supplied with a paint program. Super Scope a light-gun; it used infrared to provide wireless communication between the gun and the console unit. Justifier a gun similar to Super Scope, supported with one gun-shooting game. Snes9x can emulate those input devices with the keyboard, mouse and gamepad. Configuring Keyboard and Gamepad -------------------------------- Add support for your gamepad and calibrate it using Windows' applet from the Windows control panel BEFORE starting Snes9x, then use Joy-pad Configuration dialog in Snes9x to customize the keyboard/gamepad to SNES joypad mappings. The dialog is easy to use: select which SNES joypad you are configuring using the combo box (#1 to #5). Make sure that you click the 'enabled' box on that controller or Snes9x won't recognize a controller being plugged in. Click on the text box next to 'UP' and then press the key on the keyboard or button on your gamepad that you would like to perform the UP action. The focus will automatically move on to the 'RIGHT' text box, press the key or gamepad button that you want to perform the RIGHT action, and so on until you've customized all the SNES joypad buttons. Use of the special diagonal keys should only be used by keyboard users who are having problems pressing more then one or 2 buttons at a time. First you must hit 'toggle diagonals' so that you are able to change them. Using Input Devices ------------------- SNES Mouse, Super Scope, Justifier and Multi Player 5 are disabled by default, but you can enable them like so: First, load your game. Then select the optional controller you want enabled from the Input menu. Or, the controller is selectable by pressing '7' to cycle to it. If you use NSRT to add header information to your ROMs, Snes9x will automatically detect this information and choose the best controller configuration for you when the game starts up. Incompatible choices will also be grayed out from the Input menu, but if you really want, they remain selectable by pressing '7'. The default key mapping for input devices is as follows: '`' Superscope turbo button. '~' Superscope pause button. '7' rotates between Multi Player 5, SNES mouse on port 1, SNES mouse on port 2, SuperScope and Justifier emulation. (need to enable special controllers in the menu first) Game Saving =========== Many SNES games take a very long time to complete from start to finish, so they allowed your progress to be saved at the predefined places chosen by the game designers. The game cartridge contains a battery-backed RAM, known as SRAM, and your save data remain in this SRAM until the battery shutoff. Snes9x has two methods for saving games. One is the same as of the real SNES shown above; emulating SRAM. The SRAM contents are saved into a file (.srm) so you don't need to be worried about the battery shutoff. The other is more convenient way than the real SNES; 'freezing' or 'snapshotting' the game. It means saving the whole game state anywhere you want, beyond the game designers' intent - ideal for saving your game just before a tricky bit! Freeze files and SRAM files are normally written to and read from the folder called Saves where your snes9x.exe is located, but sometimes this is not desirable or possible, especially if it?s a CD-ROM, which is of course is usually read-only! You can change the folder where Sn...
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