The SNES9X Information file grew to be too large for SimpleText to handle, so old (pre-1.0) version information has migrated to this file.
Version History
• 0.9.5a:
- Navigation Services has proven to be rather beta-quality software—it caused type 2 errors for a lot of individuals, and a few strange crashes as well. Now it's optional; if it works well for you, feel free to use it, but if you must remove it, SNES9X should still work without problems.
- Game Genie support was added back in. Codes should be entered in the form XXXX-XXXX.
• 0.9.5:
- What hasn't changed? SNES9X has pretty much been rewritten from scratch. The new team has done a phenomenal job of updating the code, as well as being helpful towards me as I implemented their new changes.
- Preliminary SuperFX support is in! Right now, it's not too impressive--Yoshi's Island mostly works, but most other games have major problems when trying to draw polygons. Also, if you don't have a G3, it's going to be slow--the SuperFX processor actually turns out to be four or five times more complicated than the SNES' internal processor, so there's a LOT of computation going on. (To run Yoshi's Island, you'll need to change the ROM Interleaving in the Preferences to "SuperFX Interleaving.")
- Transparency support has been added! Now you can finally see through stuff. There are a few special cases which don't work perfectly, but for the most part it's awesome. Note that some games slow down heavily when transparency is on, so it can be disabled.
- The sound code has been reworked extensively--filtering, echoing and other features have been added.
- Appearance Manager is now used to draw dialogs and windows.
- Navigation Services is now used for open-file and save-file dialogs.
- Screen snapshots can be taken. They'll be saved as Photoshop files, but other tools like GraphicConverter can open them as well.
- An option for changing the keyboard layout has been added. Extremely handy for games like Mortal Kombat 2 or Super Street Fighter.
- Freeze games now get an icon.
• 0.2.4b
- Smarter still about SRMs--now if you restart or shutdown the computer, it will try to save out the SRM data before the application closes. (I finally caught this bug, after FF2 ate my SRM file... rrrr)
- SRM files now have an icon! Cool.
- Games that change the horizontal scroll extremely often look better. This fixed, as an example, Cammy's stage in Super Street Fighter II.
- Small color glitches in the mosaic graphics were fixed.
- Options menu has become more "advanced." HDMA, windowing, processor load and IRQ toggling support has been added; these options can fix several games which experience incorrect emulation effects (like Super Punchout). Turning off Advanced Window Support should help Terminator 2, the Arcade Game. Turning off Advanced Processor Loading will slow down emulation considerably but has a high chance of fixing speed problems. All these options, by the way, were in previous versions; they were just always set to "on."
- A few opcodes in the SNES 65816 core amended so that less games should experience the "wrong sound speed" bug. It still isn't fixed perfectly though; this bugs me too.
• 0.2.4a
- Fixed a problem where opening multiple games in a session could cause SRMs not to get saved. (This bug again?! Sorry...)
- New 'goodies' folder. Includes the Super Famicom icon, and a new Gravis Gamepad set.
• 0.2.4
- Game Genie is in! Also Pro Action Replay managed to slip in there ;)
- Super Famicom icon bundled in. Paste that puppy on there if you want.
- Several emulation bugs cleaned up; they're all small things but you might notice a ROM or two is working a little better. A few broken games started working (Ms. Pacman, for example).
• 0.2.2a
- A mistake was made in building 0.2.2; namely, I ported the whole thing at midnight, after a long hard day. This mistake led to me forgetting entirely about two or three very obvious speedups that caused the speed of 0.2.2 to drop down to 0.1.3 levels. Fixed, and my apologies.
- A report came in that QuickTime was not switching resoutions properly on some computers. The fault for this is entirely QuickTime's, but nonetheless an option for disabling the resolution switch has been added.
• 0.2.2
- Some bug fixes and feature set enhancements added to Faster Graphics; specifically, mosaic effects and windowing effects should now work properly in most cases.
- Some emulated features and layering effects have become more accurate.
- A smaller video window is now available, for a tiny speed increase. Note that interlaced video will NOT become available for the time being, because it does not work with the SNES video code.
- SNES9X now enters 640x480 mode when entering a game, and reverts back when the game is paused. This screen size is perfect for full-screen video. Note that this feature requires QuickTime, and the emulator will no longer work without having QuickTime 2.1 or later installed. Well, if you don't have it, now's the time to upgrade.
- Sound improved.
• 0.2.0
- A few changes to the Macintosh port, but nothing dramatic.
- Emulation core is extremely improved. Expect a 50% speedup or better with some carts.
- Faster Graphics option is much more compatible now, although not quite perfect. The speed boost provided is also much more noticable. It's now made the default, since it works so well with the majority of games. If you see graphical glitches, try disabling this option.
- The vast majority of crashing/freezing bugs are totally eradicated.
- Compatibility in general is much better. Many (but by no means all) problematic games are now working.
- Note: if you force-quit SNES9X, or your computer crashes, your save-game might not be saved. Therefore, it's very important to quit SNES9X normally if you want to save your game's data. (Conversely, if you accidentally mess up a save game, you might want to consider force-quitting SNES9X!)
• 0.1.3a
- The previous version introduced a completely new bug that, once again, had the potential to kill SRAMs. Sorry; I pored over the code this time, making sure nothing could go awry, and I think I understand the mechanisms well enough now that the issue has been fully hammered down, and something like this shouldn't happen again.
- Carts you open now get a nice SNES9X cartridge icon. (ooh!)
- Background Layering support added; this fixes numerous glitches in games like Zelda and Final Fantasy 2 without resorting to manually disabling layers. It's not a full solution for SNES9X's current lack of transparency support, but it sure helps. It's included as an option but I haven't found any case where disabling it was an advantage.
- Faster Graphics support added; this feature is kind of useless since it currently makes most games look horrible, but if you're really hard up for more speed...
- Core AppleEvent suite support added. So, double-clicking SNES9X carts should open them up automatically now.
• 0.1.3
- Numerous emulation fixes, especially to the sound code and the freeze-game code (which does indeed work with sound now).
- A few speedups to the Mac code are in place.
- The Options menu is a new addition which lets you access many additional features. Sound can be disabled for greater speed (don't try turning it off and then on again during a game--that will confuse the sound chip and might cause serious problems). "Classic Joypad Emulation" fixes some games that don't respond to input normally by using a different input scheme. The ROM type can be selected manually, but I suggest leaving it at "Auto-Detect." (Caution: selecting an incorrect ROM type can sometimes cause lockups!) Graphic layers can be disabled individually, either via the function keys (F1-F5) or via the menu--this helps visibility in games that use transparent layers (Zelda, Final Fantasy).
- The code has been modularized to a large degree and hooks are in place for additional interface features; currently they don't do much, but the next few versions of SNES9X will most likely see the return of the SNES97 graphical interface.
• 0.1b
- In making a necessary fix in 0.1a, I inadvertently added a bug which essentially zapped the game's battery any time you opened it. It's fixed. Also, now the game SRAM is saved alongside the game file itself, rather than in SNES9X's own directory.
- Freeze Game/Defrost Game has been added. Unfortunately, after defrosting a game, it will no longer have any sound effects! This is a SNES9X limitation that will definitely be addressed soon in a future release. (It also happened in the other versions of SNES9X 0.1, not just the Mac version, so don't blame me!)
• 0.1a
- Bugfix release on the same night as the release of 0.1. A bug is fixed that would cause SNES9X to get massively confused if you opened a corrupt ROM image then tried to open another game (sometimes even opening lots of working ROM images could eventually cause problems). Also, "Reset" is sped up significantly (not that it matters, unless you like to reset games over and over).
