SNES9X is a Super Nintendo emulator which was originally designed by Gary Henderson, Chad Kitching and Jerremy Koot. It is now being coded by a new, anonymous team. The Macintosh version of SNES9X is ported by John Stiles. The source code of the original UNIX version of SNES9X is available at http://www.snes9x.com/ .
Operation of SNES9X is pretty straightforward. Choose a game image to open with the File menu's "Open" command, then it should open up on your screen. The key layout is customizable, so feel free to set it however you feel comfortable. Pressing escape brings you back to the Macintosh; once there you can reset the game, resume playing, freeze game or open another cart from the File menu.
Many options are handled automatically by SNES9X. The frame-rate is auto-regulated to be as smooth as possible without permitting slowdown, sound is automatically configured, and identification of cart image type should normally be handled without user intervention. Additional options are listed in "Preferences" in case you want to experiment with different settings.
Special thanks PB1400c-san for providing the icons used in SNES9X, and to Victar Mas and CivMan for designing the icons in the Goodies folder.
Frequently Asked Questions
• Where can I get game files?!!?!? (or: Where can I get game [xxx]??)
- Not from me. If you own or have access to a SNES, game copier devices are very inexpensive--they attach to your SNES and copy games onto floppy disk, whereupon they can be used in your Mac. If you mail me about where to get games, you die (after I report you to the proper authorities).
• You never responded to my e-mail....?
- There are several reasons. The most common is that your e-mail address in your mail program is wrong, or your mail server rejected the message, and the mail bounced. This happens extremely frequently with aol.com addresses; if you are an America Online user I would have to suggest that you switch to a real ISP as soon as you can. Another reason would be that you asked a question that was already covered in this document--I get too many messages a day to repeat myself that much for a freeware product. Sorry. Lastly, I am known to be extremely tardy with e-mail when more important things (like exams, projects, and parties) arise. Sorry, that's just prioritizing.
• The controls aren't working properly.
- Ensure that the mouse isn't turned on. Controller 1 isn't available when the mouse is active.
• I turned on mouse support, now how do I get out of this game?
- When the mouse is on, clicking to return to Mac OS wouldn't make sense—so the escape key is used to return to the Mac OS.
• ROMs that worked in SNES9X 0.2.4 are failing in the new versions of SNES9X.
- Recent versions of SNES9X incorporate an improved method for detecting the ROM type from a file. However, some ROMs on the Internet have been corrupted in such a way as to fool the auto-detector, causing it to guess improperly about the ROM's interleaving or HiROM ability. Try changing the HiROM setting or interleave setting then reopening the ROM. (Hitting 'reset' won't reload the ROM for you; you actually need to reopen it from the File menu.)
• SNES9X won't start; it wants "AppearanceLib."
- SNES9X is very reliant on the newest and coolest features of the Mac OS. Specifically, it uses the Appearance Manager, which improves the look and feel of the Mac OS interface, and Navigation Services, which finally updates the horrible file-open and file-save dialog boxes which have plagued the Mac OS since System 6. You can get both of these extensions from: http://emulation.net/snes/
• SNES9X won't start on my non-PowerPC Macintosh.
- SNES9X needs PowerPC. I don't want to hear any complaints about this, either--SNES9X doesn't even run well on early PowerPCs. 680x0 users, it's really time to upgrade.
• What does "SPC700 Timing" do?
- It fixes incompatibilities with games that lock up in the middle (especially games that start working if sound is turned off). Several games are fixed in the "Alternate" setting, most notably Breath of Fire 2. The only game known to be helped by "Uncommon" is currently Empire Strikes Back.
• TV Mode is slower/choppier than Blocky mode.
- TV Mode actually runs a relatively complex filter over the entire picture to smooth edges and produce a slightly scanlined effect. This takes a lot of processor time, and works best on 604e's or G3s.
• What's the difference between High Quality and Low Quality video?
- Low Quality video disables several of SNES9X's features that slow down graphics—transparency effects and mid-screen color changes are not supported. However, it provides extremely impressive speed.
• Should I start compiling a SNES9X compatibility list and mail it to you?
- No. The team is normally well aware of what games work and what games don't. The problem is not identifying bugs but solving them ;) If you have a specific issue that you think we might have missed, though, feel free to ask.
• Super Mario Kart/DOOM/Starfox/Mega Man X2/Mega Man X3/[xxx] doesn't run, or is missing some graphics!
- These games, and several more, all used custom graphics chips or hardware coprocessors. Many of them were unique, none of them were documented. The most prevalent was the SuperFX, but several companies like Capcom developed their own chipsets. Of these chips, the only one which is understood is SuperFX, and the implementation is still buggy--the only SuperFX game which is really playable is Yoshi's Island.
• How do I pass level [xxx] in this game?
- I'm not the Nintendo Helpline! Ask someone else! Seriously, I'm the wrong person to ask; I haven't really played my way through that many games.
• It runs all slow and choppy!
- Try using low quality video. Transparency, while an impressive effect, still requires very fast hardware to appreciate fully. Also, sound support will slow down SNES9X. If it's still too slow for you, just upgrade your Mac. SNES9X is already quite optimized code; don't expect future versions to get much faster.
• Game [xxx] used to work in version [xxx] and now it doesn't work (or works worse)!
- Sorry. Usually stuff like that is patched up and nailed down pretty quickly, but as we fix bugs, sometimes new ones crop up in their place.
• If I give it more memory, how much faster will it go?
- It will not get faster at all. However, if you reduce the memory, it might crash.
• The sound rhythm is messed up, sound effects are wrong, or notes are dropping out!
- This is a bug in the Mac OS' handling of virtual memory (and RAM Doubler causes it too). Disable Virtual Memory (then restart) for best sound quality. Note that this bug will most likely be fixed in Mac OS X. I know it's a pain to go around disabling VM and restarting all the time, but I have to do it too and if there were an easy fix, I'd have fixed it.
• Game [xxx] doesn't work!
- Sorry. We do our best to ensure compatibility, but this is an early release.
• How do you pronounce '9X'?
- It's a mystery. The two best candidates are 'ninety-X' and 'nine-X'.
Version History
• 1.0.7:
- Support for 5:1 SPC700 ratio. Only one ROM (Empire Strikes Back) needs it, but hey, why not.
- Option to allow background tasks to keep running while SNES9X plays. Slows down the gameplay a bit, but allows stuff like downloads to keep going.
- Music Box mode added. This lets SNES music and sound effects continue while SNES9X is in the background. Very nice if you enjoy a music track from a SNES game, and would like to keep it running while doing other stuff. (Note: don't try running Music Box mode if your Mac doesn't run SNES9X at full speed. It's interrupt-driven, and if your Mac can't keep up with the music at 100% speed, it will slow your entire system--mouse pointer and all--to a crawl.)
- Fixed a bug with the keyboard layout dialog (hitting "default" caused all kinds of problems).
- Fixed a bug where dialogs wouldn't disappear if a game was double-clicked in the Finder while the dialog was already showing.
• 1.0.6:
- "Alternate SPC700 timing" selection added. This allows many games to run that, previously, would lock up if sound emulation was enabled (including Breath of Fire 2).
- New icons, thanks to PB1400c-san. Rebuild your desktop to see them.
- More changes to clip-window emulation (seems perfect now).
• 1.0.5:
- Preliminary work begun on the DSP chip (used by Mario Kart, Pilotwings and Top Gear 3000). So far, there isn't enough emulated to make these games work properly though.
- Bug in the SPC700 fixed, causing Terranigma to work properly.
- Several bugs in mosaic/tiling effect have been fixed (helping Pocky & Rocky, Cotton 100%).
- PAL games now always play music at the proper speed.
- Small fixes to clip-window emulation.
• 1.0.1:
- Mouse support has been added! Games like Mario Paint, Mario & Wario, Tokimeki Memorial and Lemmings 2 now support clicking and dragging. To use mouse button 2, use the keyboard and press any SNES control pad action key. (Note that controller 1 will be unavailable while the mouse is in use.)
- TV mode has been added! This is a new way to render the screen, making it look more like viewing SNES on a real television, with blurred edges and slight scanlining. After playing in TV mode for a while, I have found that blocky graphics look really ugly. However, to really appreciate this mode, you'll need a fast processor.
- Freeze and defrost now work during gameplay; just press cmd-F or cmd-D.
- Support for compressed games is now available—you can run a GZ compressor like MacGZip on ROMs in order to save disk space. This compression support also means that freeze files have shrunk massively, from over 400K to around 100K.
- Preferences dialog has been reworked in order to demonstrate the currently selected video mode.
• 1.0:
- SNES9X has grown up to version 1.0!
- Games which use high-resolution graphics now work properly. (A few special cases are not handled yet—causing minor inaccuracies in a few games such as Tokimeki Memorial—but the vast majority of games work fine.)
- Mosaic effect coupled with screen addition or color addition now works properly.
- Transparency effects in color windows are more accurate (but not quite perfect yet).
- Sound code speed-ups included.
- More Game Genie codes ought to work properly now.
- Controller 2 used to have both Y and X mapped to the same button; fixed.
- Minor changes to the graphics rendering engine.
• 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).
